Leeds Young Film Festival: Animation Central

This weekend I volunteered at Leeds Young Film Festival at Carriageworks Theatre. I was working in Animation Central from 9am until half 5pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and doing a screening from 5pm until half 10 on Monday. 

They gave me the option to request which workshops I would prefer to work on and then they would try and get me into those. 
I, obviously, requested the stop motion workshops and on the Friday and Saturday I was placed in the Stop Motion Animation workshop with Paul Couvela who currently works as an animator at Factory, and has previously worked at Mackinnon and Saunders and Cosgrove Hall. The workshop consisted of my assembling wire armatures from animation toolkit multiple times (as the kids kept breaking them) and then assisting the children with their animating them once Paul had shown them the basics of stop motion animation. On the second day, we were joined by some other animators who's workshop didn't start until the afternoon. Charlotte Blacker, from Goodcopbadcop productions in Wakefield, gave me a lot of helpful tips on how to get into the animation industry and how to travel with your animations which I am very interested in. Apparently if you put them into international festivals, some festivals you can then go to the screenings. You will get paid to go to the festivals if you do a masterclass or something.
She worked at Mackinnon and Saunders for a production and she suggested that I find a hobby that I can make money off of so that I can do something I love when there are no animation jobs going. Apparently all animators at most companies, especially Mackinnon and Saunders, have another business on the side, or freelancing, to keep them going between films. I had a lot of fun with this workshop and got some good tips from Paul. 

On the Sunday, I was working with the Lego Animation workshop. This workshop was a lot of fun and the kids were pretty much left to get on with their own lego animations in groups and we were around if they needed help with anything. 

I will definitely want to volunteer again next year, it was a great opportunity for networking and I had a lot of fun teaching little kids to animate.