Up and coming animation festivals

Last year I attended a couple of animation festivals - Bradford Animation Festival and Animex. I loved both and gained so much out of both. This year I'm only attending a few talks at BAF Game (mainly to help with my research for COP3) however I'm still planning to absorb all that I can and as I'll be attending some talks from animators I know that I'll get lots out of it. I think I'll also be attending some of the networking events held at both BAF Game and BAF - I'll be more prepared as I have complied a showreel that I'm fairly happy with and includes more highly polished animation than last year. I would also love to go back to Animex in February (money dependant) as last year it was invaluable. The range of speakers were great and I took something from each of them, even if they weren't an animator.

A recent festival that just passed was BFX held down in Bournemouth. This was the first year it had started up and it would have been nice to go however I had already moved back to uni and quite a few of the speakers I had already seen at Animex. It's definitely one to attend next year, especially for their careers advice and having industry people there to talk to about getting that all important job.

FMX is still on my list of animation festivals to go to but it's just the cost. I was annoyed that I didn't get the chance to go last year (and I doubt I can afford it this year) but there were some live streams that I got to watch so hopefully this year they'll be doing those again. It would be great to get myself over there as they too have a lot of industry professionals giving careers advice and there are many masterclasses and workshops.

There are a couple more conferences I would love to go to one day and I would have to save a lot up for this but it would be more than worth it. SIGGRAPH and CTN Animation Expo, both are world renowned and would be just incredible to go to. The speakers they have at each at always major industry professionals, people you look up and aspire to. Back in 2012, Glen Keane gave a talk on how he animated Disney characters (luckily I was able to catch this online) and it was so inspiring. It opened my eyes to the smallest things and I gained so much from it. That's what I love about festivals and conferences, there are people there that love what they do and have so much knowledge in their field, you can't help but be inspired and be motivated to do more and become the best that you can be.

Animation Festivals

Over this year I am planning to try and get to more animation festivals to network and get a better understanding of the industry. There were a few I came across last year that I found interesting however I wasn't able to make it due to deadlines from my course and not finding out about them soon enough. The one I was really excited about was FMX - Stuggart, Germany. This festival covered not only animation but VFX, games and films and had some big studio names giving talks last year - Pixar, DNeg, Dreamworks, LAIKA, Axis Animation and Aardman to name a few. What's really good about this festival is that is covers a wide range of topics within the industry, movie screenings, gives masterclasses, portfolio reviews and so much more. I had previously looked into going to Fantoche as this was meant to be the best animation festival out there, however after seeing the line-up for FMX last year I think that I will definitely be trying to get to this one.

One that is closer to Leeds is Animex held at Teeside University, again I had seen this last year but never really got round to getting tickets for the event. Animex is the international festival for animation and games and previous guest talks have been given by Eric Goldberg, animator and director from Disney, Production Designer, Karen deJong, Epic Games, Naughty Dog, animators from Valve. Along with these talks, there are masterclasses and workshops to attend as well. I need to start looking more into these masterclasses and workshops that are available at these festivals as they can be of great use to myself as I would be learning from an industry working person.

Animated Exeter is one that could be nice to go to however it all depends on whether I could get there or not as it would cost a fair amount of money to travel all the way down there and to also pay for accommodation; I think I will wait until November (when the programme is announced) before I make my decision on this one. Animated Encounters in Bristol is close to my actual home and would have loved to have gone, however the dates for this year had changed and I was already moved back up to Leeds when it had started. The problem with some of the animation festivals is that they tend to not be anywhere close to where I am and involves paying out quite a bit to attend them. Because of this I think I will only try to make it to a couple but the one at the top of my list will be FMX. It definitely seems worth the money going by the programme last year and so I'm going to try and see if other people in my year will be interested in attending this in April.