Canterbury Anifest 2012: Day 2
Excitement, anticipation and the smell of plasticine was in the air today as representatives from the top animation studios were in town for Anifest 2012.
Visitors waited patiently around the stalls of books, armatures, cartoon software and all those things that will inevitably leave an animator’s wallet empty.
First up was “Dreamworks – Meet The Lion Tamer”. A fascinating talk from Cassidy Curtis, Dreamworks’ Supervising Animator. He gave an enthusiastic presentation about his work on such films as Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, and the Madagascar series. The talk focused on how CGI tools have evolved over the past 20 years, exploring the importance of rigging and character development. Curtis’ passion for animation made for a highly entertaining presentation, plus he stuck around for the rest of the day with us fellow animation groupies.
Next to sail the stage was “Aardman – How To Talk Pirate”. Model maker Jim Parkyn (sporting a pirate sized beard) and animator Will Becher formed an extremely amusing double act and discussed pirates, dodos, tea, toast and much more. Their presentation explained the importance or Aardman’s new rapid mouth technique and the use of 3D printing on The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Accompany them on their voyage were models of the Pirate Captain and Charles Darwin who enabled Will to give a live demonstration of how to animate frame by frame in stop motion.
Aardmans Will Beecher and Jim Parkyn
The afternoon session offering was “Double Negative – Making Monsters”. Eamonn Butler from London based visual effects studio Double Negative was on hand to explain some of the techniques he has used on Hollywood blockbuster John Carter. He explained the importance of giving characters realistic behaviour using intricate rigging and intensive studying of human anatomy. Eamonn also spent 10 years at Disney and so had a wealth of animation nuggets to share with us.
The final play date of the day was “Pixar – Inside The Toy Box”. Pixar’s technical director Dan McCoy took part in an intimate conversation with Dr Chris Pallant who has written a book on the works of Disney. Dan discussed his role at Pixar over the last twenty years, showing clips from the films that he worked on and sharing anecdotes from the film production. These including Toy Story 2 & 3, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and many more. He has held various positions within the company ranging from shading supervisor to rendering software engineer. One fun fact he shared was due to time constraints he use the same model of ant island from A Bug’s Life and simply rescaled and recoloured it to create the moon planet at the opening of Toy Story 2.
So after 2 days of animated heaven Anifest 2012 drew to close. It was clear to see a lot of hard work went into organising the South East’s only animation festival and all that would not have been possible without the hard working team of volunteers who gave up their time for this event. What more can I say but roll on Anifest 2013!