LIAF presents the 2020 UK Animation Industry Event – four panels giving insider access to some of the hottest topics of the year. We’ve gathered together some of the most passionate, honest and insightful experts from a wide range of different areas and backgrounds who are ready to cover all manner of vital topics to give you much food for thought.
Animation doesn’t stand still; and debates and discussions with animators and creative experts are the best way to get in touch with what’s happening, whether it’s how online animation courses are booming and changing the landscape of the way we teach, the current state of the TV commercial industry, how animation can be used to enhance outdoor events such as projection mapping, public concerts and VJ-ing, and several of the world’s most inspiring filmmakers and animators talking about the sequence of animation that changed them forever.
For anyone currently working in the film and animation industry, thinking of working in the industry or just plain curious, these four talks are indispensable.
The panels will be chaired by Saint John Walker, Deputy Dean/Director at Escape Studios. .
With Special Thanks to the Arts Council England
Animation is a transformative medium, affecting us emotionally and intellectually. Depending on your frame rate, 1500 frames is around one minute of Animation. We asked several well-known film makers and animators to tell us about their favourite inspiring sequence of animation and how it changed them forever. We’ll see the clips and ask them to explain just what it is that is so special to them, how it changed them, and how we might see these clips with different eyes.
Recommended age 15+
Featuring
Alexander Williams - Escape Studios and Animation Apprentice.
Alex Williams is a cartoonist and animator whose film credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Lion King, The Iron Giant, the last three Harry Potter films, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He has worked for many studios including Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, Warner Bros, and Sony. Alex is Head of Animation at Escape Studios in London, and the founder of the online animation school Animation Apprentice. Alex also draws the weekly cartoon strip Queen's Counsel which has appeared in the law pages of The London Times since 1993, and has published many books.
Andrew Kotting
Andrew Kötting is one of the most resourceful multimedia artists of contemporary Britain, with works ranging from performances inspired by distorted mythologies, multi-sensory installations, online platforms, book publishings, to, of course, films—in which he applies mixed media and methods. He often adopts the situationist method of psychogeographical wanderings, within the British landscape, as a springboard for his autobiographical research, on the notions of identity, belonging, history and culture. He teases out both a melancholy as much as a Dada aesthetic from contemporary culture.
Caroline Leaf
Caroline has been making films since 1968 when she discovered animation at Harvard University, USA. Her initial technique was animating beach sand on white glass lit from below. The resulting film Sand or Peter and the Wolf (1969) won her a fellowship and the chance to work on a second film. In 1972 she moved to Montreal at the invitation of the National Film Board of Canada where she worked until 1991 producing primarily animated films but also live action and documentary shorts. At the NFBC she further developed her storytelling and animation techniques including using animated painting on glass. Her films have been seen all around the world at film and animation festivals where she has received numerous awards and prizes including an Annie lifetime achievement award in 2017. Caroline currently lives in London where she maintains a studio and works as a fine arts painter in oils, watercolour and mixed media.
Chris Shepherd
Chris is a multi award-winning director, writer and producer. He is mainly known for combining live action with animation. His work fuses comedy with commentary on the darker side of human nature. He is co-founder of London animation company Slinky Pictures with producer Maria Manton, and has directed short films, commercials and comedy series including a ten-part series for Channel 4 called People’s Britain and his acclaimed shorts Dad’s Dead, Brexicuted and Who I Am and What I Want amongst many others. In 2016 he won Best British Film at LIAF for Johnno’s Dead. He’s just finished animation for Sara Pascoe’s new BBC sitcom Out Of Her Mind and he’s working on his first graphic novel called Anfield Road.
Elizabeth Hobbs
Elizabeth Hobbs is an animated filmmaker based in East London. She has been making films for 22 years. Her films are experimental in form and often centred upon real life people or events. Her films often employ methods from her printmaking background, but always explore and stretch the material possibilities of the medium. Her films have travelled widely to international film festivals and won many awards including a BAFTA nomination for I’m OK in 2019. Elizabeth enjoys sharing her practice through workshops and collaboration with The Creative Research Collective, NIE Theatre and artist Emily Tracy. She is an associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and University of The Arts, London.
Joanna Quinn
Joanna discovered animation at Middlesex University while studying Graphic Design. Her graduation film Girls Night Out, a celebration of uninhibited female sexuality, introduced audiences to the character of Beryl and kick started Joanna’s animation career by winning 3 major awards at Annecy. The uniquely memorable character of Beryl became the focus for two more films Body Beautiful and Family Ties and the politics of gender and oppression together with Joanna’s obsessive fascination and delight with exploring the eccentricities of the human body, became the central themes of her work. Joanna lectures in major Colleges and Universities throughout the world and her films have won just about every major international award including Baftas, Emmys and 2 Oscar nominations. Joanna has recently completed a third Beryl film Affairs of the Art.
Mark Cousins
Mark Cousins is a filmmaker, critic and programmer. He programmed the Edinburgh Film Festival (1996-97), hosted BBC2’s Moviedrome (1997-2000) and Scene by Scene (1999-2000), and is the author of The Story of Film and Imagining Reality: the Faber Book of Documentary. His films include The First Movie, The Story of Film: An Odyssey and A Story of Children and Film. He is the co-founder (with Tilda Swinton) of the 8½ Foundation.
Paul Franklin
Paul J. Franklin is an English visual effects supervisor who has worked with visual effects since the 1990s. Franklin won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for Inception (2010), and won a second Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Interstellar (2014). Franklin has also been nominated for an Academy Award for The Dark Knight (2008). He was nominated for BAFTA Awards for Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Robert Morgan
Robert Morgan is the unsung hero of UK puppet horror animation where for over two decades he has created a body of work characterised by nightmarish stop-motion. Influenced by the horror of Francis Bacon, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Brothers Quay, Morgan’s animated shorts like The Cat with Hands and The Separation are disorienting trips into the subconscious. His uncompromisingly confusing 2011 short, Bobby Yeah was rewarded with a BAFTA nomination, among numerous other honors.
Samantha Moore
Samantha Moore is an animated documentary maker and researcher, specialising in science collaborations, working with archaeologists to neuroscientists and microbiologists and making films on such diverse topics as synaesthesia, septin cage assembly, sweetpea growing in Shropshire and bloomers. A graduate of Central Saint Martins School, she is the co-author of the book The Fundamentals of Animation and teaches at the University of Wolverhampton.
Shannon Tindle
Shannon Tindle is an American designer, story artist, television writer, screenwriter, and film director. Shannon won an Annie Award nomination in 2005 for Best Character Design in an Animated Television Production and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for Go Goo Go. Shannon most recently worked as a character designer on Sony Pictures Animation’s The Emoji Movie, DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods, as a story developer; and Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings, which he originally developed with his wife Megan. He is currently writing and directing an untitled animated film for Netflix.
Shelley Page
Shelley Page trained in the UK as an illustrator and has been working in the field of feature animation since 1986. She was one of the first group of artists hired to establish DreamWorks Animation in Los Angeles in 1995. As Co-Head of Artistic Development she was responsible for setting up artistic training programs for the animation artists. Her credits, on over 30 feature films to date, include Shrek 1-4, Shark Tale, Madagascar 1-3, Kung Fu Panda 1-3, The Croods and How to Train Your Dragon 1-2. She has a particular interest in student animation and is a member of the graduation juries and advisory boards of leading animation schools and festivals worldwide.
Signe Baumane
Signe was born and raised in Latvia. At 14 she began publishing short stories. At 16 she won poetry reciting competitions. At 18 she was singing and dancing with the folk group Skandenieki. Signe received a BA in Philosophy from Moscow State University. After graduating she started to work at Riga’s Animated Film Studio as a cel painter and later as a writer, director and designer. Signe directed three animated shorts in Latvia before moving to New York. There she worked for independent animator Bill Plympton as art director and production manager. In 1998, Signe received her U.S. green card as an ‘extraordinary ability alien’ and began making films at her own studio. She has since made many short animated films and the highly regarded feature-film Rocks in My Pockets which has screened at 150 film festivals worldwide.
Steve Burch
Steve Burch works in the animation industry as an effects artist, and has worked on major Hollywood films such as The Iron Giant, Space Jam, Lego Movie Girlz 4 Life and Osmosis Jones. He has also operated as Head of Effects and EFX Supervisor to 2 Oscar-winning Directors at Warner Bros and Dreamworks in Hollywood and Europe.
Sue Lyster
As Director of Studio Operations of Industrial Light & Magic London, Sue Lyster is responsible for the day-to-day management of the studio and oversees all aspects of production. Prior to joining ILM London, Sue served as Head of Production at London-based Framestore where she held a variety of roles. In her nine-year tenure with the company, Sue rose rapidly through the ranks, starting as a CG Manager in 2004 and arriving in 2013 as Head of Production. Earlier in her career, Sue was a Senior Producer in the commercials division of Hibbert Ralph Animation, one of the UK’s top animation production studios. She also served as a Producer at Richard Purdum Productions.
LIAF presents the 2020 UK Animation Industry Event – four panels giving insider access to some of the hottest topics of the year. We’ve gathered together some of the most passionate, honest and insightful experts from a wide range of different areas and backgrounds who are ready to cover all manner of vital topics to give you much food for thought.
Animation doesn’t stand still; and debates and discussions with animators and creative experts are the best way to get in touch with what’s happening, whether it’s how online animation courses are booming and changing the landscape of the way we teach, the current state of the TV commercial industry, how animation can be used to enhance outdoor events such as projection mapping, public concerts and VJ-ing, and several of the world’s most inspiring filmmakers and animators talking about the sequence of animation that changed them forever.
For anyone currently working in the film and animation industry, thinking of working in the industry or just plain curious, these four talks are indispensable.
The panels will be chaired by Saint John Walker, Deputy Dean/Director at Escape Studios. .
With Special Thanks to the Arts Council England
Animation is a transformative medium, affecting us emotionally and intellectually. Depending on your frame rate, 1500 frames is around one minute of Animation. We asked several well-known film makers and animators to tell us about their favourite inspiring sequence of animation and how it changed them forever. We’ll see the clips and ask them to explain just what it is that is so special to them, how it changed them, and how we might see these clips with different eyes.
Recommended age 15+
Featuring
Alexander Williams - Escape Studios and Animation Apprentice.
Alex Williams is a cartoonist and animator whose film credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Lion King, The Iron Giant, the last three Harry Potter films, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He has worked for many studios including Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, Warner Bros, and Sony. Alex is Head of Animation at Escape Studios in London, and the founder of the online animation school Animation Apprentice. Alex also draws the weekly cartoon strip Queen's Counsel which has appeared in the law pages of The London Times since 1993, and has published many books.
Andrew Kotting
Andrew Kötting is one of the most resourceful multimedia artists of contemporary Britain, with works ranging from performances inspired by distorted mythologies, multi-sensory installations, online platforms, book publishings, to, of course, films—in which he applies mixed media and methods. He often adopts the situationist method of psychogeographical wanderings, within the British landscape, as a springboard for his autobiographical research, on the notions of identity, belonging, history and culture. He teases out both a melancholy as much as a Dada aesthetic from contemporary culture.
Caroline Leaf
Caroline has been making films since 1968 when she discovered animation at Harvard University, USA. Her initial technique was animating beach sand on white glass lit from below. The resulting film Sand or Peter and the Wolf (1969) won her a fellowship and the chance to work on a second film. In 1972 she moved to Montreal at the invitation of the National Film Board of Canada where she worked until 1991 producing primarily animated films but also live action and documentary shorts. At the NFBC she further developed her storytelling and animation techniques including using animated painting on glass. Her films have been seen all around the world at film and animation festivals where she has received numerous awards and prizes including an Annie lifetime achievement award in 2017. Caroline currently lives in London where she maintains a studio and works as a fine arts painter in oils, watercolour and mixed media.
Chris Shepherd
Chris is a multi award-winning director, writer and producer. He is mainly known for combining live action with animation. His work fuses comedy with commentary on the darker side of human nature. He is co-founder of London animation company Slinky Pictures with producer Maria Manton, and has directed short films, commercials and comedy series including a ten-part series for Channel 4 called People’s Britain and his acclaimed shorts Dad’s Dead, Brexicuted and Who I Am and What I Want amongst many others. In 2016 he won Best British Film at LIAF for Johnno’s Dead. He’s just finished animation for Sara Pascoe’s new BBC sitcom Out Of Her Mind and he’s working on his first graphic novel called Anfield Road.
Elizabeth Hobbs
Elizabeth Hobbs is an animated filmmaker based in East London. She has been making films for 22 years. Her films are experimental in form and often centred upon real life people or events. Her films often employ methods from her printmaking background, but always explore and stretch the material possibilities of the medium. Her films have travelled widely to international film festivals and won many awards including a BAFTA nomination for I’m OK in 2019. Elizabeth enjoys sharing her practice through workshops and collaboration with The Creative Research Collective, NIE Theatre and artist Emily Tracy. She is an associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and University of The Arts, London.
Joanna Quinn
Joanna discovered animation at Middlesex University while studying Graphic Design. Her graduation film Girls Night Out, a celebration of uninhibited female sexuality, introduced audiences to the character of Beryl and kick started Joanna’s animation career by winning 3 major awards at Annecy. The uniquely memorable character of Beryl became the focus for two more films Body Beautiful and Family Ties and the politics of gender and oppression together with Joanna’s obsessive fascination and delight with exploring the eccentricities of the human body, became the central themes of her work. Joanna lectures in major Colleges and Universities throughout the world and her films have won just about every major international award including Baftas, Emmys and 2 Oscar nominations. Joanna has recently completed a third Beryl film Affairs of the Art.
Mark Cousins
Mark Cousins is a filmmaker, critic and programmer. He programmed the Edinburgh Film Festival (1996-97), hosted BBC2’s Moviedrome (1997-2000) and Scene by Scene (1999-2000), and is the author of The Story of Film and Imagining Reality: the Faber Book of Documentary. His films include The First Movie, The Story of Film: An Odyssey and A Story of Children and Film. He is the co-founder (with Tilda Swinton) of the 8½ Foundation.
Paul Franklin
Paul J. Franklin is an English visual effects supervisor who has worked with visual effects since the 1990s. Franklin won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for Inception (2010), and won a second Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Interstellar (2014). Franklin has also been nominated for an Academy Award for The Dark Knight (2008). He was nominated for BAFTA Awards for Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Robert Morgan
Robert Morgan is the unsung hero of UK puppet horror animation where for over two decades he has created a body of work characterised by nightmarish stop-motion. Influenced by the horror of Francis Bacon, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Brothers Quay, Morgan’s animated shorts like The Cat with Hands and The Separation are disorienting trips into the subconscious. His uncompromisingly confusing 2011 short, Bobby Yeah was rewarded with a BAFTA nomination, among numerous other honors.
Samantha Moore
Samantha Moore is an animated documentary maker and researcher, specialising in science collaborations, working with archaeologists to neuroscientists and microbiologists and making films on such diverse topics as synaesthesia, septin cage assembly, sweetpea growing in Shropshire and bloomers. A graduate of Central Saint Martins School, she is the co-author of the book The Fundamentals of Animation and teaches at the University of Wolverhampton.
Shannon Tindle
Shannon Tindle is an American designer, story artist, television writer, screenwriter, and film director. Shannon won an Annie Award nomination in 2005 for Best Character Design in an Animated Television Production and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for Go Goo Go. Shannon most recently worked as a character designer on Sony Pictures Animation’s The Emoji Movie, DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods, as a story developer; and Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings, which he originally developed with his wife Megan. He is currently writing and directing an untitled animated film for Netflix.
Shelley Page
Shelley Page trained in the UK as an illustrator and has been working in the field of feature animation since 1986. She was one of the first group of artists hired to establish DreamWorks Animation in Los Angeles in 1995. As Co-Head of Artistic Development she was responsible for setting up artistic training programs for the animation artists. Her credits, on over 30 feature films to date, include Shrek 1-4, Shark Tale, Madagascar 1-3, Kung Fu Panda 1-3, The Croods and How to Train Your Dragon 1-2. She has a particular interest in student animation and is a member of the graduation juries and advisory boards of leading animation schools and festivals worldwide.
Signe Baumane
Signe was born and raised in Latvia. At 14 she began publishing short stories. At 16 she won poetry reciting competitions. At 18 she was singing and dancing with the folk group Skandenieki. Signe received a BA in Philosophy from Moscow State University. After graduating she started to work at Riga’s Animated Film Studio as a cel painter and later as a writer, director and designer. Signe directed three animated shorts in Latvia before moving to New York. There she worked for independent animator Bill Plympton as art director and production manager. In 1998, Signe received her U.S. green card as an ‘extraordinary ability alien’ and began making films at her own studio. She has since made many short animated films and the highly regarded feature-film Rocks in My Pockets which has screened at 150 film festivals worldwide.
Steve Burch
Steve Burch works in the animation industry as an effects artist, and has worked on major Hollywood films such as The Iron Giant, Space Jam, Lego Movie Girlz 4 Life and Osmosis Jones. He has also operated as Head of Effects and EFX Supervisor to 2 Oscar-winning Directors at Warner Bros and Dreamworks in Hollywood and Europe.
Sue Lyster
As Director of Studio Operations of Industrial Light & Magic London, Sue Lyster is responsible for the day-to-day management of the studio and oversees all aspects of production. Prior to joining ILM London, Sue served as Head of Production at London-based Framestore where she held a variety of roles. In her nine-year tenure with the company, Sue rose rapidly through the ranks, starting as a CG Manager in 2004 and arriving in 2013 as Head of Production. Earlier in her career, Sue was a Senior Producer in the commercials division of Hibbert Ralph Animation, one of the UK’s top animation production studios. She also served as a Producer at Richard Purdum Productions.