Well I'm back from the festival in bristol! Which I didn't mention but anyway...

Boy did I see a lot of films! It was a great time, but I never knew how tiring sitting in the cinema all day could be. I had a mixed bag, some good and some bad, of films. There were even films in which my small brain could not understand the complexity of them!

I did a couple of drawings whilst at the place, some drawing people in the cinema whilst the lights were up.


And some were just random doodling, of course!

And one bad drawing of my mate Rob, honest he isn't that rough looking in real life.

So What did I like, because there are quite a few films but I shall just mention two.

The Eagleman Stag - Mikey Please

This was a stand out film, I have never ever seen anything like it before. The stop motion animation is just superb, almost to the point where I could not figure out how they did most of the animation. The muted colours and bleached palette were very striking almost giving a cold feeling when watching. I also loved the voice work of the main character, played by David Cann, as it really resonated with the images. I really enjoyed the story, in particular the aspect of this man's life is devoted to a species of stag beetle.

It was certainly one that I could never get bored of watching and with each minute I grew with delight.

My other personal favourite, Damned - Richard Phelan

This film was definitely the most coherent as well as one that focused more on story. The animation was very good, I don't get to see many well executed hand drawn films. Mostly due to cost and rarity of this format. I also liked the blockish designs of the woodland critters, they presented character in such simple shapes. I personally liked the beaver character, his goal was clear and his emotions were great to read. The only slight problem with it, and it is very minor, is that it felt a bit too mainstream. It looked professional and well done, which kept me thinking that this short SHOULD be put in front of the main feature at a multiplex cinema and maybe it would appeal so well to an animation festival crowd. However, I throughly enjoyed it and wish to watch again.

Now there were some films that I really could stand, or even understand. Now, I won't post lots about the ones I disliked as:

1. Some I would love to rant about and it is hard to rant typing
2. I just don't want to be to harsh on the film makers as I'm sure they spent a lot of hard work on their films

So let's start off with Chop Suey - Marco Hakenjos and Johannes Flick

Now this film was just bad, make no mistake it does't have much to credit for. For example the CGI animation was just poor, it's like they had never heard of graph editors before or even studied the movement of birds. And the crucial part which makes or breaks a film, the story was just rubbish. Not only did I not care about the main character, but when the ending comes I was confused and left uneasy. It didn't really shock me nor was the film's motivation to do this necessary. It just left me with a small piece of befuddlement.

And moving swiftly onto Let Me Come in - Paul Rice

This film had potential, but unfortunately it did not live up to it. The film's concern was to bring the Three little pigs fable into a gritty western genre. Now I think it was trying to mimic the recent 'True Grit' film, but instead it didn't have that beautiful touch the film had. Instead we get poorly designed characters and un called for violence. The main problem, I believe is that we just don't understand the pig character that well, so we don't care about him, nor the wolf. As soon we lose touch with the characters, we lose touch with the story. The sound design was also a bit hokey, sounded exactly like the stuff you find in a library of sound effects. But overall, didn't enjoy it and certainly didn't care for it.

Not only was the festival filled with films, but professionals too.

I saw some brilliant panels which included one for Cartoon Saloon, the studio which made the Oscar nominated Secret of Kells. The director, Tomm Moore, gave us a good look at production artwork as well as his next film Song of the Sea, which I cannot wait for to be finished!

Another great panel was for the animation studio AKA, which made the Lloyd's TSB commercials as well as the Lost and Found short film. I really enjoyed the talk that Phillip Hunt, head of AKA, gave. So much so I caught him as he was about to leave and gave my thoughts on his presentation, he gave me some good advice to go by and I shook his hand. A little bit of a proud moment for myself.

There were other industry pros circling around the place, John Kricfalsui famous for the Ren and Stimpy cartoons was producing caricatures which I would have wished for but did not have enough time. So instead, I decided to do a little drawing of him myself, which you can see below. And David Sproxton, co founder of Aardman animations was wandering around in and out of screenings. It was great seeing him there as he was in amongst the people, but I never went to talk to him because he was very busy.

To sum up, great festival, great films, great people, I'll be going next year!