BAF Saturday 12th November 2011

Lifetime Achievement Award: Geoff Dunbar

"Illustrator and author Geoff Dunbar received the BAF Lifetime Achievement Award."

We were given a retrospective of Geoff's award winning work, with a short documentary giving an insight into his career. 

I really enjoyed the documentary, I found it very interesting and informative. I had no idea who Geoff Dunbar was until I attended this and I'm glad I did. He is a very inspirational man. 

Beyond Anime: CALF Animation

"The new CALF label aims to redifine our notions of what we understand by the terms "Japanese animation" by giving a stage to some of the country's most innovative and exciting practitioners in the field. This programme showcases the works of four such talents, balancing the hypnotic, hand drawn visual symphonics of Mirai Mizue and the dazzling light shows of the TOCHKA collective with the more orthodox let no less idiosyncratic line drawing animations of Atusushi Wada and the unique photo collages of Kei Oyama, including the unforgettable Hand Soap, which has won prizes at a number of festivals including the Yokohama International Festival for Arts and Media and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen."

I didn't enjoy this screening at all, and neither did the two people sitting next to me - they were asleep! The films shown were called "In a Pigs Eye", "JAM", "Consultation Room", "PiKA PiKA 2007", "Usual Sunday", "The Mechanism of Spring", "MODERN", PiKA PiKA @ Reel Asian Film Festival", "TOCHKA", "Day of Nose", "Gentle Whistle, Bird and Stone", "METROPOLIS", "PiKA PiKA @ Media Seven" and "HAND SOAP". There were a variety of animations using different techniques. The ones that I enjoyed more were the "PiKA PiKA" films, these were animations made but using long exposure whilst people made shapes and images with lights at night. I thought it was quite clever, different and visually very interesting. You can tell that they had fun making them too. Personally I would prefer watching Anime any day compared to most of these films!

The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout

"Legendary animation layout artists Roy Naisbitt ("The Thief and the Cobbler", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit") and Scott Caple ("The Incredibles", "Mulan") join author and industry veteran, Fraser MacLean for a unique presentation to mark the publication by Chronicle Books of "Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout"."

I loved this talk, I found it very interesting as I had never heard of the 'layout artist' before! We were shown some of the tricks and subtleties in the background/layout that as an audience would never see but makes all the difference. We were shown the opening of Pinocchio and were asked to count how many different layers of background there were...I lost count! And then were asked why we think the step on the front door was rounded, which was to do with the movement of characters in the scene. I was amazed with how much the layout was thought about so that the animators could get the most out of whatever is happening in the scene. I will certainly think more about this when creating animations in the future. As for Roy Naisbitt's work in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in the Kitchen scene where Roger Rabbit is flying about, that is just amazing and I would love to know how he did it! We were shown the scene of it flat so we could see what he had to work with to create it, it was hard to work out which bit was what! The last thing we were shown was a film called "The Last Belle"...

The Last Belle

Dir. Neil Boyle / UK / 2011

"The Last Belle is an aimated short featuring two characters journeying towards a blind date: WALLY, who suffers a nightmarishly drunken trip through London as he races against the clock to rendezvous: and ROSIE, who waits in a bar dreaming of how wonderful her date is going to be... if he ever shows up."

This was very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Roy Naisbitts part where Wally is drunk and making his way through the underground is very effective and brilliant! This worked very well gave the effect of Wally been drunk and off his head very well. I felt very sorry for Rosie but also didn't want Wally to shown up as he wasn't as she was dreaming and I was very glad that she ended up with the barman. The ending of the film was excellent and it had very good execution throughout!