And More from BAF

Okay so my last post was just about the winner of various award and the animations I loved from the categories, If you haven't looked at it yet, its stuffed full o links for you to look at :] I thought I would talk about some of the highlights of the week, though just because I haven't mentioned it doesn't mean it was bad, I just may not have my notes on it right now.

This is where the festival was held: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/

One cool thing, is we got to watch Studio Ghibli's new film, Arietty on the big screen. Its an Anime adaptation of the Borrowers, and it was rather good, especially the beautiful hand painted backdrops. http://www.arriettymovie.co.uk/

My favourite talk was defiantly the one given by Andy Schmitt from Pixar. he spoke the the Pixar Pipeline (the order in which the animation is put together) and the way they make films, showing loads of examples from their latest film, Cars 2. Although I haven't seen Cars 2 This was really inter sting, and it showed how the film was developed, where the researched for it, what inspired them, etc. This was a really inspiring talk, and he spoke all about the atmosphere at Pixar andall the different areas that go into a film, and then there was a brief Q & A. I'm sorry to say that he said nothing of an Incredibles 2, but we can keep hoping people....

There was also a very interesting talk on 3D scanning, which was more aimed at the Gaming area, but obviously, that involves Animation. The speaker (who's name eludes me) was from a company called Ten24, and he talked about the different kinds of 3D scanner and showed us an example of one, talking about the pros and cons of using them. we even got a glimpse of 4D scanning which is effectively video scanning which was truly amazing.

BAF is Ended

So we returned  home from Bradford Animation Festival yesterday after a week packed with fun and awesome animations, games and people. I wont be able to talk about everything that I saw, as there was so much, but I shall mention my favourite parts
here is the BAF Website if you want more: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/BradfordAnimationFestival.aspx
To show you how much there was to do, here are all my used tickets:

I will start at the end, the Award ceremony. There were different categories of animation, full of work submitted from around the globe, with many truly stunning pieces. the categories were: Professional Film (from those who make a living out of animation), Student Films, Commercials, Music Videos and Films for Children. I shall put links to the winners films, or failing that trailers for them and will then throw in some of my favourites.
Professional:  A Morning Stroll, by Grant Orchard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEqbr5stBE4&feature=player_embedded
Student: 366 Days (366 Tage), by Johannes Schiehsl http://vimeo.com/24329270
Commercial: The Girl effect, by Mighty Nice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg
Music Video: Miss daisy Cutter, by Laen Sanches  http://vimeo.com/13492236
Films for Children: Tiger, by Janis Cimermanis http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/sprockets/2011/201102260043020
and The Itch of the Golden Nit. by Sarah Cox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIFJtm7mDUA
and The Grand Prix Winner: Nullabor, by Alister Lockhart and Patrick Sarell (Cant find a trailer)

Other ones I personally loved were The Monster of Nix (http://www.monsterofnix.com/), The Backwater Gospel (http://backwatergospel.blogspot.com/) and The Lost Town of Switez (http://www.switez.com/)

Bradford Day One

So we rolled up in the coach on Monday after all day on the road and then we just chilled in the hotel. But today, Tuesday morning, we went straight to the Bradford Media Museum to where the festival was being held. we had tickets to a bunch of lectures and the first day is all about Gaming, Games design and other similar things. The after we acquired our passes we got to play around on all sorts of old consoles ranging from the NES (Nintendo entertainment System) to the Comodore.
Soon we were off to talk number one, all about The Image_Metrics Faceware software. It plugs straight into most big animation software and so you don't have to learn new software. What it does is take normal video footage and without any markers (as you would need with motion capture) and uses it as reference for your model to base its movement on. From there its takes a bit of work, but it is much quicker than the alternative manual work.
This software was used in all sorts of hits like Crysis 2 and Red dead redemption. Its free to download though if you want to convert video footage into the format faceware can use then you need to play.
That was my favourite talk as it was very animation based. the others of the day were interesting, but not all that relevent to animation. There was one on game story-lines, one on Independent design companies,one on a software called unity, one speaking all about creating Kinectimals and Disneyland Adventure Kinect(which was cool) and the final one on learning in gaming. We also watched an experimental film called Vlogger which was interesting but not all that good, and it broke down before the end so it never finished.
I may update this post at a later date, using my notes, when I`m not using someone else's laptop in the early hours of the morning before another day of festival fun.