Pikcells - Architectural Visualisation

Last Friday we downed tools and ventured over to Bradford for the inaugural animation festival. A very informative event packed with inspirational talks from some of the industries big hitters. If you have yet to get to BAF it is well worth it and we highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the field of creating moving [And still] CG imagery. BAF verteran Jane provides a summary of the Friday.

We arrived slightly behind schedule and had to sneak quietly into the world of Mainframes production of Swagger Jagger by Cher Lloyd.  This presentation was great in terms of showing us the sheer amount of pre production that goes into this type of project as well as the methods which they used 3d and 2d.  It also warned us of the dangers of lack of saving work due to a horror story of 10 years worth of work being deleted. God forbid. There was however one major blow from this presentation being the fact it was on Swagger Jagger and a fair number of us have been suffering from the song stuck in our heads for a number of days, just writing this I’ve got it in my head again.. not good…

The second event of the day was Andy Schmidt from Pixar animation.  The main part of this was formed around the pipeline of Cars 2.  Something that was found particularly surprising was that last on the bill even after special effects, as well as the lighting and feel of the majority of scenes were based purely on an image painted via one individual which from the images to final renders were almost identical!

This was a great presentation in general showing how the team put together things, something I found disappointing was they don’t do storyboards the old fashioned way on a board anymore it’s all computerised.  As well as being a good all rounder it gave us all great inspiration, their water is amazing and the general details all round and passion they put into all aspects of their work shows through.

Our final event of the day involved an official selection of professional films.  These were all random films made presumably for festivals.  I loved Nullarbor, an animation about an australian driving in the outback for its humour, animation and style with another film The Maker coming in second for it’s nice twist at the end and stop motion finess.

The day was tied up [As usual] by going for a beer followed by a lovely curry, more beer and karaoke finale.

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/bradfordanimationfestival