Bradford Animation Festival 2010

 Last year I was lucky enough to attend 'BAF' (Bradford animation festival). The festival lines up all of the best animation from the year, ranging from professionals in the industry to student productions. There are awards given out in several different categories. For example : Best student film, best commercial and best short film.

 There were also a good selection of panels from professionals in the industry. My particular highlights being from the following:

Paul Mendoza (Pixar Animation Studios)
Paul Franklin - Double Negative (the visual effects on inception)
Tim Searle (Animation in the United Kingdom)
Nexus Retrospective (Interview with Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith and Jim Le Fevre)

The two more relevant talks to me were obviously the ones from Paul Mendoza and Tim Searle (I was also fortunate enough to acquire their autographs) as they both covered animation and its principles. I was actually surprised to hear Paul Mendoza say that most animators at PIXAR train in 2D animation before they even start to use 3D software packages. It certainly invokes confidence. Tim Searle (a famous British animator) briefly covered his own work but went more into depth about animation studios in The United Kingdom. Unlike most countries, the United Kingdom houses many different small animation studios. This gives us a wide variety of creative output. The Nexus Retrospective gave an insight into the advertising industry and the general way Nexus handles a contract. They work on a tight deadline so planning each part of a production is key to hitting their deadlines.

There was also a lot of screenings of student projects from around the world. All of which produced to a professional standard. Especially the C.G.I. short 'Loom' which personal was my favorite animation from the entire event. The animation combined elements of motion design, music and some ridiculously good looking character models. (check out it's concept art and trailer at Polynoid!)

 
One professional film in the same vain as 'Loom' was 'Love & Theft'. A 2D music video by 'Studio FILM BILDER'. It combined morphing iconic characters from the history of the animation industry using a very simple colour scheme and some very nice smooth frame by frame animation; all set appropriately to the animations music. (watch the full animation here)

There were also professional Music videos in competition. This section particularly got my attention as I take a lot of inspiration from music videos in generally. As they are generally very experimental and artistic. Although it wasn't the winner, nor the most technically impressive my favourite music video had to be Basement Jaxx's 'My Turn' directed by Tomek Ducki. The video demonstrated 2D animation, 3D animation and live action seamlessly playing together. Surprisingly this wasn't at all distracting this was especially helped by the subtle colour choices used.



It is also worth mentioning Ray Harryhausen received  the Lifetime Achievement award at last years BAF awards. Unfortunately he couldn't be there to receive the award. But just seeing a video of him appreciating the award and also seeing some the actual models used from the original 'Jason and the Argonauts' was heart warming enough. I think most animators will tell you that Ray's work is one of their main inspirations. He showed an amazing amount of dedication for his craft. To put into context how amazingly talented he is; consider than he produced all of the visual effects for 'Jason and the Argonauts' by himself. Now it is normal for a film to have visual effects team of two hundred plus people. To see what one man could acheive with such limited means will always be a constant inspiration to me.

BAF was deffinately a lot of fun and also very helpful. I've taken quite a bit away from the event and hope to attend this years event. I'ts certianly made me persue more music based animation, as it seems to be a really great way of expressing myself without feeling limited.