You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'General AnimNation News' category.
Another mass update of AnimNation news since the summer…and it has been an exciting few months!
Firstly, the CBeebies Big & Small online interactive game that I created the 3D environments for has been nominated for a Children’s Interactive BAFTA!
AnimNation have also moved into a shiney new studio in the heart of Brighton’s North Laines – more space, better facilities – the company is now more equipped to take on bigger projects.
Last weekend, the White Night festival took over Brighton for one night. I was one of the main organisers for the Brighton Animators animated projections event. I helped to put together a night of futuristic projected animations onto the very distinct Brighton Unitarian Church. 42 purpose made animations were chosen to be projected onto the church. The whole event received wonderful feedback from the audience & press. I created two animations for the event – a B-movie inspired opening animation to introduce the evening & a 3D animation of a Robot hiding out in the church from the police. More information about the event can be found here.
Over the past few months AnimNation have created work for Nokia and Punch & Judy prof. Glyn Edwards, as well as developing three new children’s television series – more information on that to come!
And the run up to Christmas looks equally as exciting – with a whole host of exciting animation projects, working with big name clients.
Here’s to a new era at AnimNation!
I’m now back in UK after studying at the amazing Gobelins Character Animation Summer School…what an amazing course! I would recommend this course to anyone wishing to develop their character animation skills!
I was very privileged to learn from the likes of -
Shelley Page (Head of International Outreach for DreamWorks Animation)
Fred Nargorny (professor of animation at Gobelins)
Alexandre Heboyan (ex-Gobelins student, co-director on Migration Bigoudenn, Dreamworks animator & now co-director on the French feature film, Mune, le gardien de la lune, for the studio Method Films.)
Robert Bennett (the amazing Corporeal Acting teacher)
Kyle Balda (who has worked for the likes of ILM & Pixar – as directing animator on Toy Story 2)
Daniel Cacouault (an incredible artist & production designer for films)
So the quality of the teaching was second to none!
I will be putting together a series of blog posts that cover some of the animation principles that I learnt whilst studying at Gobelins. So keep an eye on this blog to find out more.
A couple of weeks ago I received the amazing news that I have been accepted onto the Gobelins Character Animation Summer School in Paris!
For those of you who are unaware of Gobelins l’ecole de l’image – it is an incredible arts college in the middle of Paris that has been churning out award-winning animation students for the past 30 years. Their 2007 students short film “Oktapodi” was nominated for a 2009 Academy Award!
For the past four years Gobelins have been running a Summer School for animation graduates and professionals. The course is an intensive insight into the world of professional character animation & professional studio pipelines through a host of highly skilled industry instructors from the likes of Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Disney, Weta Digital, and Dreamworks.
So you can understand why I’m so excited to be attending the Summer School!
And I have just heard that Screen South have agreed to support me on this course.
I’m heading out to Paris on June 29th to start the course & hope to keep an up-to-date blog on how the course is going whilst I am out there (hopefully with videos of the animation work I have been doing during the workshops).
I can’t wait!
Recently I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the CBeebies Big & Small online interactive game alongside Plug-in Media and Kindle Entertainment.
We’ve just heard the amazing news that the Big & Small game has been nominated for a Flash In The Can (FITC) Award in their 3D Flash category!
You can vote for the game at the FITC People’s Choice Award under the 3D Flash category.
I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the new Big & Small Cbeebies game recently with Plug-in Media – which went live on the CBeebies website recently.
Outside the house
Inside the house - the lounge
Playing the Band Game
Playing the Hand Painting Game
Big & Small is a new CBeebies TV show created by Kindle Entertainment. The preschool series is about two friends who couldn’t be more different is voiced by Lenny Henry and Imelda Staunton.
I have to apologise – I last updated this blog in May! But things have been very busy recently & there have been lots of changes!
Firstly – my little piece of good news…I have been shortlisted for DiMA award. I’m down to one of 3 shortlisted finalists for Freelancer of the Year.
The DiMA awards are being held on 27th November.
Secondly – AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – a company set up to develop children’s television content. Talented children’s script writer, Jayne Kirkham and I have been working on a new kid’s TV series, Adrian’s Wall. Which we were fortunate enough to present at the recent Cartoon Forum conference, where we had to pitch the show idea and a 45-second animated trailer to potential broadcasters and investors. The project also took us off to Cannes to Mipcom Junior.
I’ve been busy working on a number of projects since May. One of which was a successful advertising campaign for Westminster Kingsway College – creating a 30-second 3D animated television advertisement that was recently aired on Trouble TV and creating 3D imagery and animations for print, online and mobile campaigns to promote their latest enrolment drive.
“The project commissioned to AnimNation was an integral part of our marketing strategy. They listened and responded to our exact needs and created something that we are extremely proud to have as part of the Westminster Kingsway College brand. The finished product surpassed all of our expectations and we look forward to working with AnimNation again in the future.” – Westminster Kingsway College
I have also been working with web community Netmums on creating assets for a new section of their website – more information about that to come.
And creating 2D and 3D animated graphics for an educational CD for geophysical and geoscience exploration company, IAGC.
I’ve also been creating a number of 3D assets for Plug-in Media:
Using the revolutionary new piece of Flash based software, Papervision (which enables 3D models to be viewed in Flash – the user can interactively move around the model in realtime), we created a 3D baseball player for the Major League Baseball’s Game Day section of their site. The aim was to create an interactive way of viewing baseball game data.
Plug-in Media also required a 3D storybook for their latest Museum of London game – Tales of London.
And most recently I have been creating 3D papervision assets for a new CBeebies show with Plug-in Media. More information about that to come.
So it has been a busy few months! And with more exciting projects on the horizon, I’m hoping that 2009 will be another exciting year for AnimNation!
Thanks for reading
Sarah
So much has happened at AnimNation since the last blog post about winning a Gold Award at the New York Film and Video Festival.
One of the big pieces of news is that AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – set up to concentrate on developing children’s animated television series. Our animated series currently in development has just been accepted into the Cartoon Forum conference in Germany in September – where we have to pitch the series idea to a whole host of European broadcasters and investors. Quite a scary prospect – but a very exciting time in moving both AnimNation and Brown & Sticky Productions forward onto bigger projects. More information on the series later.
Over the last few months we’ve been working on a whole host of projects :-
3D assets for a new feature on the Major League Baseball site (which led to a trip to New York to meet the clients!)
3D assets and animation for the Museum of London site
2D and 3D animations for a corporate video on marine environmental issues
Illustrations on the dress code at Ascot that was featured in the Spring 2008 Square Meal magazine
Illustrated assets for the revamped Netmums website *coming soon*
A television advert for a London-based college that will be broadcast on MTV, E4 etc. *coming soon*
Director, Sarah Bird, was also featured in a recent edition of The Argus newspaper.
I have just heard the amazing news that AnimNation have won a gold award at the New York International Film and Video Festival!
I produced a 10 minute 2D animation with Hove-based production company Supernova Learning on the issue of age discrimination in the workplace, “As Old As You Feel”.
Here’s the press release -
Age Diversity Video strikes gold in New York
Hove-based video producer Supernova has won a Gold Award at this
year’s New York International Film and Video Festival. The Awards
Ceremony took place last Thursday 30th January at Manhattan’s Tribeca
Rooftop. The Annual Festival attracted entries from 31 countries.
Supernova won the award in the human relations category with As Old
as You Feel. The 10 min cartoon, with a commentary by Woman’s Hour’s
Jenni Murray, promotes a positive approach to age in the workplace.
Supernova teamed up with Brighton-based AnimNation to make the video.
It was written and produced by Supernova’s Vincent Thompson, with
animation by AnimNation’s Sarah Bird.
Supernova director Vincent Thompson commented “I’m delighted that our
DVD has received this recognition. Age discrimination at work is a problem
for both young and old. We’ve set out to raise awareness and promote
good practice in a witty way without being patronising”.
More information and video clip at:
http://www.supernovalearning.com/catalogue_08_age.htm
Happy New Year!
Since the last post was about the BANG/Flash Brighton Carnival O Fun back in December – I thought it was about time I updated this blog!
Things have been going great at AnimNation over the last couple of months. Business is booming – I’ve got some very exciting projects happening at the moment & some more on the cards for this year. I was very happy to create the VisitBrighton Christmas animated e-card back in December. I have also been working on a number of 3D projects for Brighton based Flash game gurus Plug-in Media. I am currently working on some informative animations for an international company.
I received some great news this morning that I may have won an award for my animation work – but more news about that later.
Development on my kids TV series idea with the very talented script writer Jayne Kirkham is going incredibly well. We’ve had some amazing feedback from a selection of very reputable children’s broadcasters! The plan at the start of this year is to get some development funds together to make the project possible.
On 10th January I was asked by Wired Sussex to be a panel member at one of the Creative Catapult evenings. I had to give a talk about my career and running AnimNation to a selection of students and graduates. I’ve had some lovely feedback since – so I’m delighted that the evening was useful.
This year’s Brighton Digital Festival went off with a bang this year – quite literally!
Starting off with an amazing interactive Flash generated fireworks display by Seb Lee-Delisle from Plug-in Media on the front of the Unitarian church in Brighton.
Pictures from the night are here
It then continued the next week to include the Portfolio Clinic – where I was priviledged to share a table with local animator RichMitch and look over work produced by local students and freelancers and offer advice on how to improve their portfolios and where to take their career next.
Photos from the night are here
The following night I was asked to be part of the Animation Night. Together with the Hastings Animation Networking Group’s founder, Angus Giorgi – we compiled a 30 minute showreel of animation work produced by BANG and HANG members – which included a very varied selection of films – from commerical work produced by AnimNation and John Davison, to personal projects created by the incedibly talented Cyriak, Tim Frost, to name but a few.
On the night this was shown to the audience along with a selection of animations from some of Ireland’s most talented film makers and animators. A panel discussion was then put together – consisting of the Dark Light Festival organiser Nicky Gogan; Matthew Talbot-Kelly who created the haunting Blind Man’s Eye; Eoghan Kidney who created Stars; English animator/film maker and director at Slinky Pictures, Chris Shepherd; Angus Giorgi founder of HANG and myself.We all discussed how we all have sought funding for short films and how the process varies from country to country – with an English, Irish and Canadian perspective on things. We also chatted about how politics can influence animation.
