Animex Festival

Last week I had a great time - as ever - at the Animex Festival. From humble beginnings 11 years ago the event has grown to cover two locations in the North East of England, (Middlesbrough and Newcastle), and includes talks on film, TV, game animation, workshops, screenings and parties.

Its a chance to catch up with some old friends, and make a few new ones too. This year I gave a talk at the Animex Pro event on the subject of setting up a studio in the North. It was a chance to pull out some really old cine films from when I was a naive boy who believed he could be the first man on Mars.

The event was well organised, and well attended with delegates from across the UK.

Next week sees me in Birmingham for another talk - http://www.animationforumwm.co.uk/news-display.aspx?id=212

The event is free to attend, and open to animators and designers of all levels, or indeed anyone interested in establishing a studio-based business, and includes free drinks.

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.

The event, assembled by AFWM and BSeen – an entrepreneurship programme for Birmingham-based final year students and graduates – is the second of two joint events in early 2011 looking to help young animators on their way into their career.

Hope to see you there.

Anatomy of a Werewolf

I thought I'd post a few drawings from the Wereworld trailer we finished in September, just to shed some light on the process. The images started life as rough pencil sketches which are cleaned up until they resemble inked artwork. I used to do inking for comics using a brush and ink, so just using the pencil is a little bit easier. The principles are the same of course.
Once I've got the pencils up to the level where I know they'll scan well as solid blacks I move over into digital manipulation. The images are scanned and the contrast tweaked so that the blacks are really black and the rest is a clean white. Then its time for some computer colouring. The animation was quite stylised and didn't need too many drawings to pull off the finished piece. For example the shot of the claw was just one drawing which was chopped up and animated.

The chest rip was three drawings: a before and after, plus a hand. These were animated using After Effects and a simple mask to reveal the cut flesh does the rest.


The screaming face was two drawings - one for the face and one for the teeth. Both were stretched and distorted in After Effects to give the impression of movement and growth.

Wereworld trailer live