As a special treat this Christmas why not try to enjoy this imported seasonal rarity from the Farnham Animation yuletide celebration harmony team. Here's wishing widespread peace upon your particular planet.
Massive congrats to our alumnus chum Marcus Armitage who has just won Best British Film at the London International Film Festival for his RCA film My Dad. It will also feature at the London Short Film Festival in January Go here for more info http://www.liaf.org.uk/2014/11/liaf-2014-and-the-winner-is/
More congratulations go to alumnus and friend of the course Bexie Bush whose NFTS grad film just keeps winning stuff from Palm Springs to Puchon and now to Croydon.
Andy Joule of this parish continues to collect silverware for his big cupboard as he has now received a Jury 2nd Prize at the Without Words Film Festival in France for his experimental short film 'four & five’.
We’ve been seeing some fantastic life drawing from our students under the excellent tuition of the man in the blue jacket, Martin Morris. Once again, people that thought they couldn’t really draw producing some memorably gorgeous work.
We had the absolute privilege of hosting stop motion bona fide legend Barry Purves for this month’s lecture and it was packed with solid gold goodness. Inspirational passion and deep knowledge of the subject expertly spun together into a lecture that was over too soon.
Exciting times afoot for current 3rd year student Dann Parry who’s 2nd year film A Boy and his Monster has been sought out to feature in the Freakatorium event at the 2014 Greenhorn Short Film Festival taking place in London this month.
Congratulations to 2012 graduate Joanna Brooks who is now off to Bristol for 3 months as she has gained a coveted place on Aardman/NFTS’s excellent Character Animation course.
Further congrats to another 2012er Matt Brooks who’s film SPD&Me will play at this year's Young Cuts Film Festival in Montreal, Canada.
Remus Buznea and Kiki Kyriakou’s outstanding 2nd year film Dateless continues to garner praise and festival action this time in LA with the return of Animation Libation’s International Short Film Festival and also at the regular Cinefamily Animation Breakdown event. http://www.cinefamily.org/films/animation-breakdown/
And with a salty tear in our collective eye we bid a fond farewell for now to the mighty Will Bishop-Stevens, stop-motion glowing angel(pictured) and actual filmmaker type tutor tech who has himself a properly big job in London to get a grip of. Good luck to you sir!
We had an absolutely superb talk from recent NFTS graduates and Farnham alumni Bexie Bush and Rebecca Archer last month and we just found the photos lurking in a camera! Great visit. Great people.
Now is the time to come and visit our course here at UCA Farnham. Follow the link below and and book your place on one of our Autumn Open Days. These are informal events where you can find out everything you need to know about studying with us or any course at UCA. Our Open Days run on the following dates:
Wednesday 29 October 2014
Saturday 15 November 2014
Wednesday 3 December 2014
Click here to book your visit http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/opendays See you soon! #UCAopendays
We are absurdly excited to be hosting stop-motion animation legend Barry Purves for our next Animation Keynote Lecture. Barry has won over sixty major international awards, including Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Film, and OSCAR and BAFTA nominations.
Sessional lecturer Robert Bradbrook has his gorgeous new film Dead Air premier at the London Film Festival this month. All the music for the film was composed by our very own Stuart Hilton, senior lecturer of this parish - this time with his music hat on. And trousers.
We had the distinct pleasure of hosting award winning NFTS and Farnham alumni Rebecca Archer and Bexie Bush as our first animation keynote lecturers of the season. Their funny and illuminating tales of directing and animating both together and individually were a joyous and invaluable insight.
Big congratulations to Bexie Bush on winning a Silver Medal at Manhattan Short 2014 - add to the growing list of world-wide awards and nominations for her utterly beautiful and moving NFTS film Mend and Make Do.
Excellent to learn that Laughing Policeman by Marcus Armitage has been bought by the BFI on behalf of the nation! Marcus graduated from UCA Farnham with this film in 2012 and then went on to study at the RCA.
One of the course team’s big favourite films of recent years is Scatterbrain from the maverick talent that is Chris MacFarlane. It’s a rarely screened gem but it is showing at Witney Film Festival this month. If you’re going there it’s very near a place called Ducklington. It’ll be worth the trip.
Katie Lenton who graduated last year with her excellent mixed media film Man Up is keeping busy making short films of her own whilst becoming an invaluable all round animator, puppeteer and set builder on one of this years NFTS productions. She’s in there waving from an unusually tiny room.
And in a regular item catching up with how our recent graduates are faring out there it's good to hear that 2014 graduate Laurence Vincent is making his way as an After Effects animator and compositor in London whilst over in Bristol, Aardman have taken on 2012 graduate Joanna Brooks who got a place on their Aardman/NFTS Character Animation course.
Also good to hear that Jennifer Haugan’s film Orpheus continues to travel the world having recently been to 12th Mumia Festival in Brazil, Conway Film Fest in Arkansas, USA and shortly back home to Underwire Film Festival.
Congratulations to our 2014 graduates Henry Dunbar, Will Davies(film still above), Billy Lubach, Katie Lenton and Harry Peters, Ollie Cole and Luke Howell all of whom have work featuring in the Make Believe exhibition at the James Hockey Gallery right here in Farnham. The exhibition showcases the excellent work produced by our graduates in 2014 and runs from 15th Sept - 17th Oct.
Let's raise a glass to Mitchel Crawford who's excellent and frankly woozy film Club Drunk will participate in the international student competition of the 9th ANI'MEST International Animation Film Festival in Bucharest, Romania in October. Go here for more info on that. www.animest.ro.
With a coveted Vimeo 'Staff Pick' under their collective belt already Remus Buznea and Kiki Kyriakou's 2nd year film Dateless is now up on CartoonBrew TV and there's a nice article about them here: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/dateless-102668.html
Remus and Kiki's outstanding 2nd year film Dateless continues to do well and can be seen in competition for the audience award at this year's Anim'est International Animation Festival in Bucharest, Romania this October.
A fluffy Farnham hug goes to Dan Parry who's 2nd year film The Boy and his Monster will feature in the 'Fear and Loathing' screening at the 20th Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival in Bristol. God Sent Bees... by Simon Davies and Dinner is Served by Shelley Nichols will also play in the 'Pleasure and Pain' screening. Ointments, condiments, gravy, liniments and balms are optional.
It's nice to hear from one of our Maltese friends, Joseph Caruana who graduated in 2011 with his excellent short film The New and The Other and is now main Visual Creative at Stickee, a European digital creative agency with it's HQ now in Malta.
Our very own Andy Joule continues to produce work that is very busy on the festival circuit - His experimental film work continues to travel the world stopping off in film festivals from Hungary, Greece and Russia to Mexico and Argentina. His music video for 'Me Fish Bring' by William D. Drake has been selected for screening at the Festival Internacional Del Cortometraje FIC 2014 in Buenos Aires this September and features the fine animated work of two UCA Farnham graduates Rebecca Barbuscia and Nikki Valid. The video features the pixillated faces of the band as well as a timelapsed still-life of decomposing mackerel - a shot that took 10 days to film - in the height of summer. Challenging pungency. Andy is almost completely recovered but the set is still aflame to this day.
And just look at this feast of lovely graduates! Our deeply splendid 3rd years pictured at the Royal Festival Hall saying farewell to their student years and hello to being people with an actual BA(Hons) after their names. Nick Ives pictured bottom right has NEVER looked like this before. Fascinating. Yey!
Brilliantly, Dateless, the excellent 2nd year film by Remus Buznea and Kiki Kyriakou has been selected for the CartoonBrew 5th Student Animation Festival showing this July. Well done to them as this is a very difficult festival to be selected for and the standard is very high indeed as you can see right here: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/student/official-selections-for-our-5th-stude...
Pollock by Henry Dunbar, Dateless by Remus Buznea and Kiki Kyriakou, Moth Trouble(pictured) by Billy Lubach and Man Up by Katie Lenton will all feature at Fresh from Farnham at the Guildford Fringe festival in July. Well done to these students who also feature on this years DVD of selected work from Farnham Animation.
We do like to keep up to date with our students’ developing careers and we’re happy to see that Joel Air, graduate from 2011 has recently completed his Masters degree in character animation and now works at Framestore in London.
More good news of recent graduates as Erika Moutinho - after 3 months work experience as an assistant editor on the BBC's Musketeers series she is now working at a post-production house called Molinare in Soho as a trainee edit assistant on a new HBO show called Strike Back.
Jazzy Ive got into the top ten with her entry for the Global Animation Contest with Animation Libation Studios. The sting she made can be seen here.
http://www.animationlibationstudios.com/#!showcase/c1b6f
Our Animation BA Degree Show looks really amazing this year and it has a great sense of what this course is really about. There's still time to come and sample the showreels, see the films and get a glimpse of even more beautiful, funny and fascinating behind the scenes material in their static show.
Glittering prizes and much merriment was again evident at our annual, dazzlingly ultra-slick USCARS(sic) ceremony on private view night where students are awarded the coveted golden effect gongs for skills displayed in a range of categories. Congratulations to all our frankly lovely and talented graduates this year! We wish them the very best of luck in their future endevours.
Congratulations and celebrations are close now as the 3rd years prepare to graduate. The students have spilled sweat, tears, blood and paint to put up their stunning looking degree show this week. It's a fine thing to behold and features a typically exciting range of diverse approaches to this lovable medium. Come one and all and feast upon the many flavoured beast that is Farnham Animation!
As a little teaser before the show here is a link to the 2014 Graduate Showreel. http://farnhamanimation.com/page/showreels/2014graduateshowreel Well done to all this years graduates!
You can also see a selection of work from our 2nd years here: http://farnhamanimation.com/page/showreels/2014-2ndyear-showreel
The legendary Animafest Festival in Zagreb this year features a retrospective of key animation works from the Royal College of Art including Pendulum, a hypnotic cameraless mantra film made by Senior Lecturer Stuart Hilton of this parish.
Also of this parish, Andy Joule has his recent film showing at the 10th Festival Miden, Kalamata in Greece July 2014.
Morgan Twiston-Davies' second year film Mop Loves Bucket will be showing in Les Nuits Coquines competition at Cinema le Festival in Bègles, France. Thrillingly described as a Sexy Animated Film Festival, Morgan's dirty little film should slip in nicely etc...
A little something we missed - Film Club director and Farnham alumni Yui Hamagashira was part of the team that won the Best Commercial at this year's BAA's. Yui brought her bold and distinctive style to the design of the ad for the charity Mindful.org
Will Bishop-Stephens' new film Two Films About Loneliness is starting to get busy at festivals and has earned him special mention at the excellent Oberhausen Short Film Festival this month. Will lives in the very core of the stop-motion studios here at Farnham just along from the sound studios where our own Joe Sudlow produced the sound.
Well done to current 2nd year students Victoria Vaughan and Yasemin Wilson who have had their films selected for the Anca in Wonderland section of the 7th International Animation Festival, Žilina, Slovakia in June. Yasemin's film How To Cut An Avocado (pictured) is a helpful instructional film about strategies for guarding against the all too common occurrence of kitchen bloodbaths.
DOTYK (pictured) by Rebecca Barbuscia, Nicky Valid, Kamil Kopys and Subaru Yamazaki continues do well in festivals receiving Special Mention at Animfest, Athens. Amazingly, in 2014 alone, 37 of our students from both 2nd and 3rd year have had films selected for screening at eight film Festivals including Animafest Athens, Melbourne International Animation Festival. Holland Animation Festival and London Short Film Festival. Well done to all!!
Cells Happen (pictured) by Shelley Nicholls and Shaker by Billy Lubach, both current third years have had their excellent 2nd year films included in competition at the Melbourne International Animation Festival. Outstanding work by both! Recent graduate Lukas Hawes also has his excellent film Tion showing too.
More festival madness as recent graduate Matt Brookes has his film SPD and Me included in the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2014! His film has no mountains or even mountaineering equipment in it but that's not held it back in this instance.
Beloved animation team member Will Bishop-Stephens has just released his new film Two Films About Loneliness co-directed with Christopher Eales. Will has created a stop motion split screen film about the search for companionship and acceptance in the age of the wonderful Internet. Excellent comic Tim Key voices one of the characters.
Fab news for current first year Andrew Whittle as he was selected by producers at ITV's This Morning to work his animation magic on a segment of the show called Movie Mansions. They've come back for even more pixie dust from tv's own Mr. Whittle. Stay tuned.
Veselina Dashinova, alumnus and visiting lecturer has been busy working on a film for a Belgian theatre company 4hoog. It's a stop motion film for kids shot on location in Ghent and uses gorgeous analogue effects with lighting and dry ice.
Most excellent to hear that current 3rd year student Craig Dolan has managed to win himself a proper, paid internship at MTV Europe for a whole year! Competition was intense for this post and there are those that say he had to beat off stiff competition to get there - we think it more likely they just found his brand of maverick inventiveness and willingness to learn nigh on irresistible.
A large and special well done goes to Luke Howell, currently still in his 3rd Year, who has already secured a job with Ikinema, specialists in developing cutting edge software for Maya users.
We are sending our most fabulous congratulations of all to Farnham alumni Bexie Bush and Rebecca Archer who both graduated from The NFTS last week with 2 superb and beautiful films. We are so proud of these two excellent and superb women who will surely go on to great things. Pop! Pop! Fizzzzz.....
Extra congratulations go to Bexie on her very special award for Best Student at the NFTS. Here she is receiving her reportedly substantial award stood alongside the extraordinary legend that is Ken Loach!!!! That's KEN LOACH people! And BEXIE BUSH! Remember those names...
Nice to see alumnus Grace Suarez up on stage at the NFT as part of the crew of the beautifully crafted NFTS graduation film Port Nasty by Robert Zywietz.
As the relative warmth of March tenderly squeezes more joy into our brains we celebrate alumnus success at the 2014 BAA's as Tony 'No beard' Farquhar-Smith wins the professional Sting award. We also note with pride that one of the awards this year has been created by our very own alumnus and visiting tutor Rebecca Manley.
Undergraduates Jwala Adhikari and Jazzy Ive have both had films included in the Official Selection at the Holland Animation Film Festival 2014: competition for European student films. Jwala is currently in 2nd year and Jazzy in her final year of study and the films are Mobile and Dead Meat (pictured above) respectively.
A still from Jwala Adhikari's 2nd year film Mobile which has been selected for the Holland Animation Film Festival 2014.
Big congratulations to recent student David Woof as his bi-eponymous 2nd year film Woof Woof was screened at the Très Court International Film Festival in France, the film was then bought by the festival with the aim of showing it in schools throughout France!
In more French news recent graduate Liam Harris who is now studying at the NFTS was invited to the 31st Annual Environmental Film Festival in France along with his 2nd year film Fourth Assessment Report (pictured). Yep, it's Harris in Paris! http://fife-english.iledefrance.fr/all-selection/fourth-assessment-report
As promised, super hot internet sensation Cyriak Harris was prized from the very deep countryside of a cab ride away to the slightly less deep countryside of the big lecture theatre to illustrate in very hilarious diagram form the inside of his mind in relation to the outside of it and showed us some of the miraculous animated constructions he's produced whilst using that very same mind. Also fingers. And cows.
This month as part of our keynote animation lecture series we have had some truly superb visitors who have shared with us some priceless insights and experiences from the strange world of animating things. Darren Walsh frightened and amused with his Angry Kid masks, blue rabbits, meerkats and a big sausage. Spicy.
February was very special as we were once again host to a series of 3 screenings of the 2014 British Animation Awards. An amazing range of excellent and innovative work was seen in the packed theatre and audiences had the opportunity to vote for their favourite work using the power of people with paper and pencils.
The students LOVE cartoons...
It's hard enough getting films into festivals when you're a graduate but current students Shelley Nichols from 3rd year and Remus Buznea and Naomi Cant from 2nd year are already in competition at the St.Albans Film Festival alongside recent graduates Jonathan Dean, John Goodhead and Jennifer Haugan. Well done to all and good luck with that cash prize!!
Naomi Cant's film Karoline (pictured above) is one of 6 from our current and recent students featuring at the St.Albans Film Festival next month. A big shiny well done to all!
This week we welcome back the mighty Darren Walsh who returns to give a lecture about his many and various hugely successful animated productions over the years. He's the inventor of the hilarious Angry Kid series that used his innovative stop-motion techniques and he is also the head Meercat wrangler that brought us those now legendary commercials - seemples!
This month we were treated to a fascinating lecture from animation treasure Caroline Leaf. Caroline spoke about her creative process and about making films and creating memorable images. She brought along several remarkable items from her studio including a selection of strips of the original Imax 70mm film from her seminal 'cameraless' work Two Sisters. Each frame of the film was scratched into the layers of emulsion on the surface to elicit the rich green, yellow, white and black imagery (pictured). A proper treat for all. There's a great article about Caroline's visit here: http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/Iconic-filmmaker-gives-guest-lecture-to-UCA-a...
A nice UCA article here about Farnham Animation students strong showing at the London Short Film Festival this year. The article highlights the work of Jonathan Dean, Billy Lubach and the team that brought us DOTYK. You can read the article here: http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/news/2014/january/London-Short-Film-Festival-...
Skwigly online animation magazine features a great piece about acting for animation written by our very own in house treasure Andy Joule: Read his piece here: http://www.skwigly.co.uk/acting-for-animation-character-performance/
More good news this time for current 3rd year student Katie Lenton who's excellent 2nd year stop-motion film Our Hamartia is off on a 2 year tour of Europe, the U.S and Asia as part of a new screening programme called STOP and GO: Made From Scratch. Katie's work gets a special feature here: http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/news/2014/january/Global-tour-for-Farnhams-Li...
Excitingly, Lukas Hawes' distinctive and darkly comic graduation film Interval has made it to the final shortlist of 8 for the Animation Award at this years' Watersprite: The Cambridge International Student Film Festival.
Marcus Armitage continues to gain deserved recognition for his graduate film The Laughing Policeman which has been selected as a finalist for the Student Excellence Award at the British Animation Awards. The BAA awards night is 7th March so pop it in your modern filofax. http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/UCA-Alumnus-Nominated-for-British-Animation-A...
Marcus also features in a nice little article in Cartoon Brew this month: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew-pick/the-laughing-policeman-by-marcus-armitage-95264.html
2014 gets off to a blistering start with 3 films included in the London Short Film Festival. Pictured above is Billy Lubach's second year film Shaker which not only features distinctive drawn animation but also a rather fine musical composition by Billy himself - not sure if dancing will be permitted in the aisles but we'll look into it before the show.
We're all very happy to hear that the collaborative graduation film DOTYK (pictured) by international directing team Rebecca Barbuscia, Nicky Valid, Kamil Kopys and Subaru Yamazaki is included in this years London Short Film Festival as is Jonathan Dean's graduation film Wombmates which continues to stay busy on the festival circuit.
Congratulations to graduate John Goodhead who's film Manhood (pictured above) must surely have helped to prize open the door on his new position as Junior Designer at Clay Interactive located in London's fearsomely hip and hairy Hoxton. Get ready to grow that tash John! Also bring pants.
A selection of Farnham films will be screened at The Big Art Show www.thebigartshow.co.uk which is taking place in July 2014 in leafy Shrewsbury, Shropshire - storms permitting.