40 New Animation Jobs to be Created in Manchester

The new BA Animation course was officially launched to the industry at 'Manimation', the Manchester Animation Festival, held at Media City on 20th November.

Course Leader Andy Wyatt (pictured conducting an online interview with Craig Fletcher, CEO of Multiplay at Manimation) announced Manchester School of Art's exciting plans to start a long-awaited dedicated animation course in September 2015.

The event, which was supported by the School of Art was a day of presentations, panel discussions and networking events. Perhaps the highlight of the day was the key note address by our friends from Dublin, Brown Bag Films, whose CEO Cathal Gaffney announced the studio plans to expand their existing Dublin and Hollywood workforce of 160, by opening a studio in Manchester, creating 40 new jobs for animators. We will be working with Brown Bag to make sure that we create the sort of graduates that they would like to employ in the future.

Key creatives from some of the top animation, visual effects and games studios in the UK were at MediaCity to discuss the future of animation, including Cubic Motion, the Composer Works, Mackinnon and Saunders, CBeebies, Multiplay, Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick, Brown Bag Films, Adobe, British Film Institute, Mainframe, Rights TV, Next Gen Skills Academy, 422.TV, The Brothers McLeod, The Peel Group, Compact Media Group, Peachy, RealtimeUK, Fettle, EON Reality, ToonBoom, CITV plus many many more.

More information and the official event blog can be read here;

http://www.thechildrensmediaconference.com/events/manimation-2014/

For more information on the new animation course contact Andy Wyatt here

Design Your Future - London Excel Exhibition Centre

Nice to meet so many people at the UCAS 'Design your Future' event today at the Excel Exhibition Centre in London. If you missed us there, we will be at the Design your Future event in Manchester on 24th-25th November at the MCCC

The interest in the new animation course has been amazing.....and we've met some really talented folk.

Also we have an open day coming up on 29th November. Come along and say hello :-)

Manimation, the Manchester Animation Festival

Manimation Returns to BBC Salford


Thursday 20 November 2014
BBC Bridge House, Salford

Manimation Fusion will be a full day of sessions on all aspects of the animation industry including TV series, movies, commercials, VIS FX, apps and games – with the chance to meet key players in broadcasting, producing and funding.

PLUS the added bonus of Manimation Inspiration – an evening of creative conversation and networking, which is a FREE event in collaboration with the Next Generation Festival. Full details of speakers to follow soon. Book Now


Register now for the return of the popular Manchester-based workshop and networking event – Manimation.

Manimation 2014 is organised by CMC with support from MMU and supported by MIDAS.

60 Years since Animal Farm

It is now 60 years since the UK released it's first animated feature film 'Animal Farm' produced by the Halas and Batchelor studio in 1954.

Todays news on the BBC celebrates this, here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29845321

The UK animation industry has grown since then and now it employs 1000's of people across television, games, visual effects, film, new media and advertising.

Our animation programme leader Andy Wyatt was lucky enough to work for Halas and Batchelor in the early 1990's and remembers many of the original animation cells from Animal Farm in boxes, and at the time no-one knew what to do with them. Now fortunately, all the artwork has been archived and that part of our animation heritage is safe.

If you want to be part of the future of the animation industry, we are now open for applications to study animation on our BA Animation programme. Details on our new updated website here;

http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/animation/

A Great Film to Show Off our Amazing Facilities

The Animation course is based in the Art School, and the animation studios can boast all the equipment, computers and industry standard software you are ever going to need to create some great animation. However as an art student, you will have access to a huge number of workshops, studios and equipment if and when you need it. Our technical team have produced an amazing video that shows off some of the stuff we have on offer.

Our Amazing Building...Come and See for Yourself.

The Manchester School of Art may not have won the prestigious Stirling Award for Architecture, announced in an award ceremony last night (well done Everyman Theatre in Liverpool), but we can be proud that our building was nominated and shortlisted as one of the 'six of the best' in the UK. 

It's going to be fantastic to have our new BA Animation course based in one of the UKs most beautiful buildings, listed alongside buildings like The Shard in London.

You can see and read about the building from an architects perspective here.

To develop creativity, an inspirational environment and space is critical, and if you come along to one of our open days, I will guarantee you will be inspired too. The open day tomorrow opens at 10am and Programme Leader, Andy Wyatt will be doing a presentation about the new animation course at 1.15pm, and he will also be around all day to talk about the course, and animation in general.

School Visit for an Animation Workshop

Animation Programme Leader Andy Wyatt and a team from Manchester School of Art visited Priestnall School in Stockport this week to talk about a career in Animation and also run an animation workshop where students created their own animations in the style of OOglies, one of the TV series that Andy worked on.

The animation was created by using some stop motion software apps installed onto IPads.

We are always happy to visit schools or colleges to talk to students (year 9 and above) about a career in animation, run animation workshops, or talk about animation in after school clubs.

Contact Andy Wyatt for more info.  http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/animation/