Animation Forum WM have teamed up with Dice Productions and Flip Festival to bring three separate programmes of screenings of the best UK animated films of 2010 and 2011 to Birmingham. The shorts will be screened on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th, and Saturday 11th February from 7pm each night at The Custard Factory Theatre and you can vote to help determine the Public Choice winners.

Buy tickets and get more information on the Animation Forum WM website.

The event is taking place tomorrow, 1 March, at The Studio, and is being presented bu Niel Bushnell, who runs award-winning Newcastle-based animation and VFX studio Qurios.

Niel will be sharing his experiences of establishing an animation business with practical tips on how to set up an animation studio from scratch.

There’ll be opportunity to ask questions at the end of the talk, plus the chance to chat with fellow animators in the fantastic surroundings of the The Studio’s city centre bar and restaurant.Directions to the venue can be found here.

For more information, take a look at the Facebook event page, or sign up via Eventbrite – it’s also free to attend, open to animators and designers of all levels, or anyone interested in establishing a studio-based business, and includes free drinks.

The event takes place on 13 January 2011 from 7.00pm at The Studio, Birmingham, and is the first in a series of joint events with BSeen aiming to help student and graduate animators find their way into the industry.

Open to animators of all levels, this event is free and includes refreshments and a Q&A with Curtis Jobling. For more information, take a look at the Facebook event page.

The next Animation Forum event is to co-inside with Flip Animation Festival on 4 November at 7.30pm – 10pm, Millennium Point.

Animating the West Midlands is a free event which will feature locally produced shorts from Flip 2010, and an introduction to Second Home Studios’ Viral Kitchen scheme. You’ll also have the chance to catch up with fellow animators in the iBar at Millenium point.

The event is open to non-members plus those without tickets to Flip. To reserve your place email info@light-house.co.uk with ‘Animating the West Midlands – RSVP’ in the subject line.

For more information, visit Animation Forum or their Facebook page.

Can Birmingham’s eclectic lucky dip of a festival help rejuvenate its Digbeth base?

That festival being Flatpack. Now, I was always told that if the title of a newspaper article asks a question then the answer is most likely ‘no’. In this case, the answer given is revealed to be more like ‘well, first of all Digbeth needs a cash machine, some residents, public transport, a post office and some street lighting’. Which is fair enough.

Hanging the cultural hopes of  an entire area on one annual festival (no matter how good) was a bit of a reach anyway.

On another matter, two parts of the article jumped out:

Amazingly, points out George Clark, a curator who put together Flatpack’s Build Them in the Mind programme of short films, Birmingham still lacks a proper arthouse cinema. This in England’s second-largest city.

Which is true but needs tallying against Ian Francis saying:

“I hate it when people say Birmingham is apathetic” about film and culture, he says. “The interest is there”

Which is also true.

That there’s only one independent cinema in Birmingham is a bit of a shocker, but mac reopens soon and don’t forget the Light House is only just up the road.

Even better, there are quite a few people getting off their backsides to put films on away from the multiplexes. Film nights are rife – off the top of my head there’s Moving Pictures, Juniper Cinema, Kino Concrete, Filmrats, Popcorn, the Animation Forum events, BIFS, Screen Sunday at The Plough and occasional things at The Sunflower Lounge. Those are just the ones I can remember, too. Pretty much all of those are in pubs, which isn’t always going to be ideal and they’re unlikely to show the latest releases, but I think Ian’s right about apathy not being the problem.

Some brilliant experimental musicians have provided tracks which animators can download for free. The animators need to use the tracks as a starting point to create music videos which can be submitted to the challenge Vimeo group. The best and brightest offerings will then be screened at a special event in Wolverhampton’s Light House Cinema on 21st July.

The bands supplying tunes are Pram (Domino Records), Epic 45 (Make Mine Music), Laurel Collective and Beat To Paris.

To enter:

1. Download one or more of the tracks.
2. Create an animated music video for the track(s) of your choice.
3. Upload the finished video(s) to The Great Animation Challenge Vimeo Group anytime before the 6th July deadline.
4. Contact david.luke.allen@bcu.ac.uk with your full name, email address, phone number and the title of your short.
5. The animators behind the best shorts will then be contacted in July for a screening copy of the piece.

The contest is open to animators across the UK at all levels (entries by studios are welcome) and the winner of the best short will receive a subscription to Imagine Magazine and a copy of  The Imagine Animation Directory at the Light House screenings on 21st July 2009.

]]> http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/2008/05/01/reporting-back-from-shorts-on-walls/ http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/2008/05/01/reporting-back-from-shorts-on-walls/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 11:51:45 +0000 http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/?p=1635 [Read more...]]]> I went along to the Animation Forum West Midlands event, Shorts On Walls, on Monday which was most enjoyable. The organisers were certainly pleased with how things went and have said so on their pleasingly blog-ish news page.

Also on that page is the evening’s screening schedule with links to the animators’ profiles. I understand they were trying their best to accept last minute submissions meaning giving out a running order on the night wasn’t possible, so it’s good to see it here.

It also helps me to pick out the films that I particularly enjoyed and give them an extra plug here.

First up, ‘Don’t Touch’ by Louis Hudson from Dice Productions.

The Nickolodeon-style anarchy of Pedro & Frankensheep from the Brothers McLeod was great and has apparently been picked up by CBBC.

A name that cropped up again and again was Natalie Ann Hinchley. She has a credit on Pedro & Frankensheep, her Second Home Productions outfit produced the jaw-dropping ‘The Animal Book’ (only the trailer here but it’s still a treat)

and, although I can’t find a video to embed, go and check out the Light House commissioned ‘Onions’ on Natalie’s website – animated bunnies are always a winner.

I’m at risk of just listing everyone here so I’ll finish with a few quick mentions:

• Although less polished, the video for Nyoto Ndogo’s track Dunia (remix) has a good energy about it and I like the song (presented by Andrew Burchell).
• ‘What If’ by Mat Parker’s Short Animations 4 Education was uncomfortable viewing for the right reasons (trailer only on the site).
• Steven Spencer describes ‘My Brown Friend‘ as a “dark exploration of addiction” which it is.
• Finally, the YouTube embedding has been disabled but I’ll forgive that (just about) to mention ex-BCU MA student Guillaume Weiss’s ‘4:51‘ which I thought was just incredible.

Whether or not you actually make short films, Shorts on Walls is a great chance for animators to meet and network after work with other freelancers, animation companies and professionals over a mid-week beverage.

It’s free to attend but please let them know if you’ll be going down. There are contact details and more info on the Animation Forum West Midlands website.

Incidentally, props to AFWM for showing how this web promotion lark should be done – the news page of their site has an RSS feed and features a map of the venue. There’s also a Facebook group (with a list of participating animators/studios) to join as well as a newly-minted YouTube group.