well i would have wrote these sooner but i was exhausted after Animex and been working on the Cerebus animation as well so i thought i would write this during my break.

Soooooo Animex is now over and i must say that this year was amazing and im really sad to see it end......

On Thursday we had lectures from some of the industries top professional in their fields ranging from animation historian Charles Solomon. His talk was about what Beauty and the Beast could have been if they had followed a different storyline from the many that are out there such as the French version entitled "La Belle et la Bête" which was made in 1946 or the Russian version "The Scarlet Flower" which was made in 1952. He also talked about the process that the Disney studio went through and how they changed the the animation for the dinner table scene from having Belle's father (Maurice) getting introduced to Lumiere, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts to Belle herself which changed the feel of the scene and the overall story.

We also had Karen DeJong talking about her studios new animation Gnomeo & Juliet which look amazing in my opinion, she talked about the art direction for the movie which i found to be extremely helpful to me as its something i've struggled with quite a bit and after hearing her talk i feel i have a much better grasp of how to get reference footage, which colors suit a scene and how to show the character against even a most
adventurous backgrounds.



Images from: Stitchkingdom.com
Sadly our next guest Susan Goldberg wasn't able to make it so to fill the time slot we got to have a panel of the guest speakers answer any questions the audience might have sadly we only had 3 speakers available to talk (Chales Solomon: Photoed Left, Scott Johnston Photed Right and Paul Wells).....it was still really nice as although i didn't ask any questions any other people ask thing i would have, so i got the answers i was looking for.


Photos by: Chi-Hung Cheung


The following talk was by Joseph Gilland who is a Special Effects Animator and author of Elemental Magic. His work was amazing and it was great to hear about how energy can effect and be seen in everything such as mountains or trees.

The next lecture was a little sad and a lot of people in the audience started to get slightly teary eyed including myself. It was presented by Tony West who was an Animators at Disney and he showed his documentary about the closure of the 2D department at Disney and how it effected the family of workers. The documentary is called "Dream on Silly Dreamer", after i saw the movie i felt so bad for being a 3D animator and started to think i would pack it all and go 2D......luckily that passed but i will be dabbling a lot more in 2D then i do at the moment to keep the art alive :)

After a small hour and a half break i headed back for the recruiter session.....some of the top studios in London where there (FrameStore, Double Negative and MCP), i got a lot of useful info on what type of work they are looking for and what i should include in my next CV, Cover letter and Showreel.

On the night was the lounge.....omg it was fantastic, this is the time when all the students and guests get the chance to ask for advice and critique on there work....also its a great place to make contacts and make in impression so much so that they remember you not just for your work but also your personality......when you just send CV's and Showreels off to these companies they have no idea who that person is, what they are like to be around or talk to and Animex Lounge give this chance. i feel i got the chance to show how passionate i am about the animation industry and in fact even offered to be the cleaner at Framestore, which i would do at the drop of a hat to get me into a place like that.

after that long night of talking, getting advice from people (and Eric Goldberg) and also asking all the guest to sign my Even Program i crawled home and crashed ready for the next day.


The next day started quite nicely with a talk from Shelley Page (Head of International Outreach, Dreamworks Animation), she showed us a collection of great animations that have been produced by students and indentation companies over the last year. some of them where astonishingly good such as The Eagleman Stag which before i went to IMDB to get the link for it i thought it was 3D made to look like polystyrene but in fact its Stop Motion so it is even more astonishing :) and The Little Boy And The Beast by Studio Sio

Next was a talk about rigging.....although it might have been a lot of interest to riggers in the audience i didn't find it that interesting, but it was nice to see the characters and how they had been setup for the new Harry Potter movie (Deathly Hallows).

Then we had Andrew West (photoed below) talking about the visual effects in Scott Pilgrim and how they did the stunning visuals during the fight scenes thought the movie. Once again since i didn't do visual effects i didn't find much relevance in it but it was amazing to see how they did it and just see how much work went into it.


But the HIGHLIGHT of the week and i have to say the highlight of my entire university life has got to be the talk by Eric Goldberg (photoed below). We had the privilege to hear about his career from the start and see some of his early work that not many people ever get to see. it was such a treat for everyone in the room and you could see it in everyones faces as they all look in awe at him and his life, he even used the overhead projector to do a bit of drawing there and then which was fantastic.


I felt kinda bad at the end of his talk though because the entire audience gave him a stand ovation and you could see that he was really taken back by it, so much so that i think he may have gotten emotional as he had to leave quite quickly but even though i felt a little bad, he deserved every applause in that room.....in my eye he is a master of his craft and i dont think animation would be where it's at today if it wasn't for him.

he even did a lovely picture montage of all his characters for the auction after his talk......the winning bidder was a lecturer at the university (Nigel Kitching) and he got it for £240 i believe so he got a fantastic deal there.

Well that was Animex for this year and now im working on Cerebus for WhatComix....said i would have the blocking to them on Monday night (10:00pm PST) so not long left.

been using EVERYTHING i learnt throughout the week to improve what i already had....should look fantastic once its finished :)

here's a shot of the process im going though at the moment....been working out what body parts i can lead with to give a smoother and stronger performance instead of dead center breakdowns.


Before i go i would just like to say thank you to Chi-Hung Cheung for the use of his photos in this post.

Laters peeps and keep creative.