Bradford Animation Festival

Bradford Animation festival was a really awesome few days. 

I got to see some of the animations I saw at LIAF again, which was awesome because I'd forgotten how good they were! We got to see the Tram again, and also the talking armchairs again.

Also we got to see a lot more new animations that I hadn't seen yet. The picture below is from an animation about a woman who lives in a little kiosk and dreams about going abroad but can't leave her kiosk. I loved the story of this animation and how at the end she ended up in her kiosk somewhere hot and sunny. I though it was a really cute animation and I loved the style it was done in.

The highlight for me of the weekend was the Mackinnon and Saunders talk, learning how they make all their characters and finding out how many films they'd actually made characters for- I knew they did the Tim Burton ones..

I also managed to meet Mackinnon an Saunders, which was awesome and inspiring, and got to see some of their characters up close and see just how much detail went into them.

The Lee Hardcastle was really good too, I really like stop motion animations and it was nice to see his animations and find out about how he got into doing them. We also got to see his new film 'Ghost Burger' which was amazing. 

I also got to meet Barry Purves!

PPP1- Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want to learn?

Why did you choose to study on this programme?

-I love the city of Leeds, it's got such a good atmosphere, a good music scene and I've always had a good time whenever I came to visit.

-The course looked interesting and fun and I thought I'd learn a lot.

-It was the only course I applied to that even knew about the Disney and Pixar internships that I'd researched.

- It's a specialist animation program, and all the other courses I applied to were illustration and animation, but I knew I wanted to do animation.

- LCA looked like a really good place to study and it's just an art school, full of creative people, which I love because often art students are really interesting people, but it's close enough to Leeds Met and Leeds Uni to be able to meet non-arty people for a bit of a change of scene.

What do you want to learn during your time on the programme?

- To animate stories and ideas and images. Just make things move.

- To create interesting a loveable characters.

- How to get into the industry.

- How to manage my time better and knuckle down and get on with my work instead of procrastination....

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What skills do you think are your strengths?

- I'm determined and driven to achieve what I want.

- Hand drawn stop-frame animation.

- Lots of ideas (I just dont know how to approach them)

- Getting work done by deadlines (even if it means no sleep)

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What things that you want to improve?

- Time management.

- Computer animation and technological skills.

- Storytelling abilities

- Character design

- Researching abilities

What ways you will evaluate your progress?

- Feedback on Blog Posts

- Comparing to other students on my course

- Comparing how it turned out to how I wanted it to turn out- evaluations

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Talk Talk Advert 2013

I absolutely love this advert. The story is really cute and the animation is simple and adorable.
It was created by Si and Ad, who have been a directing duo for more than a decade. This animation was created in traditional 2D and drawn up frame-by-frame by a team of animators. The characters were then placed in a real world situation and together I think it works beautifully. 

Avenged Sevenfold- A little piece of heaven

Avenged Sevenfold's A little piece of heaven video was produced by Matt Fischer and Core Entertainment Inc. (Twentyfourcore Productions) and Directed by Rafa Alcantara.

The Illustration was done by Landon Armstrong, animation by Ray Tsai and Jonathon Price and visual effects and composting by Stephen Krystek.

The video is very controversial and really creepy and gory, but I think it's really well done. It is mostly 2D animation, however the one scene where just the womans arm is on screen looks 3D and CG animated, which is kind of strange but it works. The skeletons playing instruments all look as if they're cut outs which separates them from the main story, so that works well too.

I like that animated music videos cover such a wide range of subjects and genres of music. It shows that animation is very versatile and can be used in so many different ways.

Disney's Tangled

Disney's Tangled is one of my favourite films of all time. I love so many things about it, from the story, to the humour, to the character design. I like this take on the original fairy tale as it doesn't completely follow the story, but adds in so many details that appeal to children and adults, and adds more adventure and excitement. A lot of the film is fast paced and exciting and it keeps the viewers focussed and engrossed in the film.

Character Design... Maximus, the horse, is my favourite character in the whole film. It's not so much the way he looks.. as he just looks like a horse.... but it's the way he acts and behaves that makes him the best character, in my opinion. I love the way he acts almost like a dog at times and how he has more of a personality than his rider. 

I'm really excited for Disney's new movie, Frozen, that's set to come out in cinema's soon. The trailor looks like it'll be a funny movie, and I think it'll be a lot like Tangled. Even the design of the main character, Anna, looks ridiculously like Rapunzel from Tangled. The similarities are crazy, they could be twins. 

I can already tell that Olaf, the snowman is going to be the Maximus of this movie, with a loveable personality and humerous moments. I'm really excited to see this movie, and I really hope it lives up to my expectations and is as good as, if not better than, Tangled.