Bradford Animation Festival 2011
Last week saw the arrival of the Bradford Animation Festival 2011. Karl and I went down on the Wednesday and spent the day there watching all of the professional and student animation films on show. We were in there for almost 12 hours, and you’d be surprise how much it tires you out just watching short films all day.
We went to see the two selections of professional screenings, the two student selection screenings, two panorama screenings (I suppose you could call these the independants) and the music videos/commercials.
Above is the introduction video that played before each screening, I quite liked how they represented the different mediums….although interestingly there is no 3D in it. Karl didn’t like the man with the top-hat (the festival mascot), a hidden phobia of top-hats perhaps?
Upon arriving at the museum we had a stroll around the place, and knowing that Ray Harryhausen had recently donated his entire collection of model work to the institution we were looking forward to seeing some of the classic stop-motion characters in the flesh. However, the exhibit was not yet open to the public so we unfortunately didn’t get to see them, but there were two of his models outside in glass cases as a kind of teaser. They were Kali from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and the bronze bull from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Needless to say they were amazing. I will definately be going there in the new year to see the full collection….as should you all be.
There were a lot of great films on show throughout the day, and some not so great….but that is a matter of opinion. There were many different styles and it was also great to see the inclusion of some infographics as part of the selections.
It was also good to see some of Barry Purves’ latest stop-motion films, one of which (Tchaikovsky) had its model on display in the museum entrance. He was attending on the Friday to present the student awards, so we didn’t see him around on the day.
Whilst not one of my favourites…without a doubt the film that seemed to make the most impact on the audience was Las Palmas from Johannes Nyholm, which mixed the live-action natural traits of a baby alongside string puppets. It was quite bizarre in places but it came out really well. I did wonder though, considering some of my recent posts on animation techniques, whether I would really class this film as an animated short.
Regardless, you can watch the full film here on their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/nyholmfanpage
It was also good to see some old arcade games in the museum lobby now that gaming is a big part of the festival. Me and Karl had a go on the original Pong game, which was surprisingly quite hard with its original wheel controller.
Overall I did come away from the festival with renewed inspiration for my own latest project, and who knows….maybe i’ll be on next years line-up. Hopefully!
