The Manchester animation festival (MAF) is a new festival that started this year celebrating the work of animators and animations over the past year(s). The festival spanned over three days and covered animation from 2D to Stop motion to 3D and each day there was a multitude of events going off in one of two cinemas or in the event space.
The first event i went to was the graduation films, as i felt they would have the most relevance towards what i will be doing in the coming years. Over all i found them unfortunately depressing as almost all of them included the theme of death, or more specifically suicide. This was a great disappointment for me because i love to watch animations which factor in enjoyment, but i feel sad thinking that the animations in the coming years could also possibly include such morbid topics. In the case of animation quality however it was all really impressive ignoring some of the story lines. I also found that the most prominent form of animation used here was stop motion.
Tomm Moore is an acclaimed illustrator, comic artist and animator, he is the co-founder of Cartoon Saloon the studio that created the film, 'the song of the sea' and his master class gave us an insight into how his studio worked and how they went about making the film 'The Song the Sea'. The talk was interesting in the sense that it gave us an insight into the work and life style of a studio. how they had to spread the work across multiple partner studios, working to a deadline and making the film accessible to other countries as the film was initially in irish/gaelic.
There was a second set of graduation films which had a much wider variety of subject matter which included a wider variety of animation, still mostly covered morbid subjects which i understand are needed at times to get messages across. There was animation that i found to be most absorbing, Chiaroscuro, a film with no dialogue, and its characters being a gas ball and solid particles but i felt it told a better story than a lot of the other animations because of the way the objects got characterised by there actions, there speed, velocity and strength showing the change. The quality of its animation as well was fascinating and it almost looked lifelike but not at the same time.
Skwigly Online Animation Magazine show cased many of the animations from its website. The magazine covers everything animation. In comparison to the graduation films these were a lot more light hearted and funny, i found myself laughing and enjoying the animations that they showed.
The main event of the festival was the Fellowship Award which awarded Brian Cosgrove for his contribution to animation over the past 25 years, the evolution of his animation work and the future of his work. The talk was wide spread covering almost every aspect of his work which i found to be very detaching as it started to feel like more of a list, merely going through his achievements. I was happy to have realised where some of the animations o grew up on came from which was interesting, especially in the case of the BFG.
Over all i enjoyed the first day, i was nervous and unsure as to what would come of it but it did start to open up my view on the animation industry however i also found i want to make a graduation film in three years time that doesn't work towards a depressing plot point, as i find while they get emotional responses a positive emotion, causing a person to smile or laugh were very few and left a much better feeling in people. (i don't disagree with negative films as sometimes it is to get a message across and it isn't always a positive message so seriousness is needed.)
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