The Plaza Cinema manager Mike McKenny (@DestroyApathy) previews the upcoming Bradford Animation Festival (November 12 – 17). Image taken from Amanita Design’s game Botanicula.
One of the jewels in the crown of Bradford’s City of Film status is the Bradford Animation Festival and is easily my favourite festival to be around in terms of excitement and festival atmosphere. Between Tuesday 13th and Saturday 17th November, students, animation enthusiasts and film lovers descend on Bradford from all over the country to feast on the best animation of all kinds.
The UK’s largest animation festival offers a plethora of film screenings, talks, workshops, socials and extra events in a packed week of animation action. Headline guests include Will Becher of Aardman Studios, who has worked on Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts and served as Lead Character Animator on The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists, along with comparative new kids on the block LAIKA Studios, who will be represented by Mark Shapiro giving a behind the scenes insight to their recent box office smash Paranorman, (image left) which plays at the festival on Friday 16th.
The majority of the films screened come in the form of shorts and are packaged together in various competitions and specially crafted collections. There will be the usual BAF Awards for Professional Films, Student Films, Music Videos and others. All films in competition are screened numerous times throughout the day. In addition to those in competition there are various panoramas.
One of the most original features of the Bradford Animation Festival is its infusion of videogame activity. With games comprising such a sophisticated level of animation it stands to reason that this be a part of an animation festival, and can serve to give insight to animators that hadn’t necessarily considered gaming as a clear career avenue, as well as welcoming coders and programmers to consider the animation that brings the science to life. There are several powerhouse names in gaming represented at the festival including Valve, the studio behind Half-Life, which helped to redefine videogame storytelling, as well as the wildly innovative first person puzzle game Portal. Valve’s animator Christine Phelan will be speaking about her animation work in gaming and TV, along with how the two relate and compare.
In addition to such powerhouses, independents will be represented, giving a clearer picture to those in attendance of how they can get stuck into the industry immediately. Chief amongst these is the wonderful Czech studio Amanita Design, who I was fortunate enough to see at BAF 2009 when they gave a talk on creating what is in my opinion one of the most joyful point and click adventure games I’ve played, Machinarium (play a demo for free here). This time around, they’ll be talking about their new game Botanicula (image above and at top of post), another touching little adventure game about a group of tree-sprite friends that must save their tree’s last seed, which has been infected by evil spirits. The way Amanita combine gameplay with music is inventive, immersive and spellbinding; it combines this with gameplay elements like there being very little direct instruction, leaving instead an intuitive and immersive world built with sublime animation. Beautiful, whistful, enchanting and ultimately addictive – check it out here.
Every evening the Media Museum buzzes with life in the BAFter Hours events, which vary from general drinking and networking, to quizzes, to events such as GameCityNights on Tuesday 12th, an evening of videogame festivities hosted by Nottingham’s GameCity Festival, where there will be one of the highlights of the festival for me, the preview of the new Metal Gear Solid game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Considering I wrote my BA dissertation on Metal Gear Solid 2 (if you want to read it, you can email me for a copy on mike.mckenny1983@gmail.com), I will be sure to get down there to check out Hideo Kojima’s latest, sure-to-be masterpiece.
For more on BAF, check out the website
Mike can be found on Twitter at @DestroyApathy. He is currently overseeing the restoration project at The Plaza Cinema (@ThePlaza_BD7) in Bradford and sits on the Enjoy strand of Bradford City of Film. He is also treasurer and committee member of Award Winning Leeds based film society Minicine (@MinicineYorks)