Bradford Animation Festival - Day 4

The last day of Bradford Animation Festival, I only made it for the Aardman talk and the screening of The Pirates film but even just those 2 was worth the trip. Will Beecher was a character lead animator for the Aardman film 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'. I decided to go along to this as even though it is stop motion, Will Beecher is still an animator and any advice or experience from an animator will be very useful, and I was not disappointed.

Will showed us his student film which got him into the industry and highlighted the fact that even though his character did not move around, the interaction between the two characters is key. This is an important thing to show and this is something I will keep in mind when it comes to animating my two characters together.

What I really enjoyed about this talk was the fact that Will gave us a demonstration on how he would go about changing the faces on the Pirate Captain and moving the rest of the body for animation. It was great to see how the faces were changed as this was something I was never sure about, for Aardman the faces are held on with magnets so it's easy to swap them in and out. There were all these small pieces to the character that you could alter such as the Captains beard; when changing the mouth shapes the beard needs to move with it or else it would break away from the believability of it all. In order to do this there was a small allen key that cold be insert into his beard and depending on which way you turn it, the beard would either move up or down. This was great to see as for myself, I would have never have thought about this. It makes me realise that I really need to understand and breakdown a character before it comes to animating. I need to work out what parts of them will move and how much they should be moved. There will be some things that only need to be moved subtly, however if it is not moved at all, that one small thing could be quite obvious. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative talk and once again just as LAIKA did, we got to see the puppets up close.

I watched the film itself after the talk and really enjoyed it, I had never got round to watching it when it came out so this was the prime opportunity to watch the film. It was interesting to see how even though both LAIKA and Aardman used the replacement animation technique, their style was still different and obvious in each. Unfortunately after the film was over I left Bradford as I had work that needed to be done. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to the closing award ceremony and after party, however I think that is something I will be definitely attending next year. It's something not to be missed, another opportunity to get a chance to talk to more people in a relaxed setting and it would have been a great way to end an amazing week.

This whole week has been enjoyable, informative and inspirational. It has opened my eyes to new things and got me thinking about techniques and processes. Bradford Animation Festival is something that I shall be attending for quite some time from now on, even after university. It has given me so much motivation right now to be the best that I can be and to push myself further in my animations. I'm planning to book my Animex tickets soon and hopefully it will be just a inspirational and motivational as Bradford, if not more.