Ok,
Aniscape is over. I’ve spent a few days getting used to that fact, and now I’m ready to blog about it.
Aniscape took roughly about 6 months to plan and organise, with most of it being done single handedly in my spare time, so I’d grown very attached to it. I’ve loved and hated it in equal measure, so the day itself was fairly emotional for me.
So I got to phoenix for 8am, and didn’t really stop running about until the end, but it was great. We got the market place set up, arranging the tables as we wanted them, John Coster from Citizens Eye took charge of this area and created a really good atmosphere.
From Dusk 2 Dawn were great, talking to lots of people and having one of their artists (Mair Perkins, who I annoyingly didn’t get chance to talk to!) doing cartoon style caricatures of people. 
Dean the art Wizard brought his amazing metal dog, and showed some of what we had been doing on Aniscapes education day, along with explaining what exactly it is that he does. If anyone is planning an event, i really would recommend getting Dean involved. Everyone can get involved and create something really unique.
We also had Amy Jennings, who creates stop motion puppets, this is her, doing an interview!
follow her on twitter here!
Illustrator Rachael Smith was creating various illustrations all day, selling her wares and generally doing great things all day.
In her own style, she documented it on her blog, in the form of an illustration:
Such a good blog, read it, follow it, buy the book! http://rachaelsonegoodthing.blogspot.co.uk/
We also had Jason Boomer promoting his Red vs Blue UK machinima festival thats happening next week @Phoenixsquare
The Talks
While I spent a lot of time running around, I did manage to see some of every talk. The Phoenix was a great space to use for this, and I can only apologise for the lameness of my introductions ( I was very very tired, sorry.)
First up was NSC Creative, based at the National Space Centre. Paul Mowbray gave us an overview of what they do, including some of the challenges they face working in a full dome, and then Austin Durose gave us a case study of a project recently completed for the Space Centres ‘Weather Pod.’ It was a great presentation with some really amazing visuals.
Then we had Leo Bridle, who came up from London for the day to give a presentation about his film ‘Train of Thought’ - which if you would like to watch again, here it is!
He gave some great insights into the inspirations behind various aspects of the film, and the process behind creating it.
After lunch (where many people got to look at the marketplace, and visit the cube to watch the animation showcase) it was back to the talks, this time with Stuart Owen and Brad Auty from Jagex Game Studio They showed us how a big shift in art direction is affecting they way they animate their game characters, as well as creating animation that needs to sit alongside the huge amount of content that has been developed over 10 years. A huge amount of work clearly goes into this game! IF you want to play it, get on over to http://www.runescape.com/
Last but not least, the final speaker of the day was Mohan Subra who talked about what it takes to get an animated TV show from concept, to a final product that you can sell internationally. He gave us many insights into why certain key choices make something more attractive to worldwide markets, and what it takes to get noticed by the right people. He really did pack a lot of information into a short space of time, and I felt really bad having to cut him off! would have loved some time for Q&A with him, but it was unfortunately not possible.
The talks were really fantastic, and I really liked how diverse the talks were, covering many techniques and different aspects of animation.
The movies
After the talks, we showed both The Iron Giant and The Illusionist which are both fantastic films. I literally cannot watch The Iron Giant without crying my eyes out. Fortunatly I was helping back up the marketplace I got to skip that embarrassment (mostly, I still caught the end and blubbered a bit.) Then James introduced the illusionist (his intros are much better than mine) and then it was all over!
Thank you to everyone at phoenix, all my speakers and marketplace people, John Coster and the citizens eye team, my volunteers and everyone who sent films in for the showcase, it really validated the festival having amazing work on display all the time.
And thank you of course to everyone who bought a ticket. I hope you enjoyed the day. I’d love to hear what you thought of it.
The big question… will it happen again? Well, right now I’m really not sure. It depends if people want it to happen. There was a few people who specifically didn’t want this to be a success, but I think we managed to ignore them and have a good, productive festival. I know what I would do differently if it does happen again, but I want to know what you want. More films? No films? More talks? different pricing structure? Please, let me know and we’ll see what happens.
Thank you to everyone, I hope we inspired you, or in some way helped you on your journey to achieve your dreams.
yours,
Andrew Leeke
