Calling all Bucks Graduates - Animate & Create Studios is looking for fresh talent

Calling all Bucks graduates! Animate & Create Studios is on the look out for fresh talent.  Animate & Create describe themselves as a "young, up-and-coming animation studio, presently looking for recent graduates or placement year students to volunteer to join our team for a 3 month placement in our studio in Whitstable in Kent".

What's the point of an animation degree?

What price a piece of paper?

What should universities teach on their animation courses? Academic theory, art skills, or tech skills? Or a combination of all three? The answer isn't as obvious as you might think. Yesterday, in a piece titled "Degrees of Talent", Steve Moore, co-author of the animation blog FLIP (and an Oscar-nominated director), kicked off a lively debate by criticising the many animation schools which fail to prepare their graduates adequately for the job market.

Recording voice talent - a dummy's guide

Frank Gladstone directs actors in the sound booth

Every animator will eventually, at some point, find him or herself directing voice talent for a film project. Whether it’s a short film, a personal project, or a piece of animation for a client, you will eventually need your characters to speak. And for this, unless someone else does it for you, you will need actors.

So how does an animator or director go about recording voices? And how do you get a decent performance from an actor? Especially if you’ve never ever done it before? Follow the steps below - and you won’t go wrong.

Anifest Animation Festival - now looking for student films

Canterbury Anifest is welcoming student short films. Deadline: 30 August 2013

The Canterbury Anifest 2013 competition is now open to entries from student film-makers.  Canterbury Anifest is looking to uncover new talent, and to "give students a platform from which to launch themselves into the industry". Their competition category, “Best Up and Coming Talent” aims to "celebrate the high quality creativity emerging from Britain’s Universities".

How to Get a Job at Pixar

Here is a link to a short film explaining how to get job at Pixar. It’s a barely-disguised publicity piece for Monsters U but that’s a small price to pay for what is a genuinely helpful interview with Dan Scanlon, and Kori Rae, respectively the Director and Producer of Monsters U.

Storyboarding in Toonboom, or: What Do Academics Do All Summer?

The Academic Life?

How do academics spend their summers? Lounging by the pool in Tuscany drinking chianti? Well, maybe some do. Sadly, not in my case. For the month of July, I am polishing my storyboarding skills courtesy of Creative Skillset, who have generously paid for fifteen aspiring board artists to learn Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, mentored as it turns out by my old friend and kumrad Frank Gladstone who has flown all the way from Los Angeles to get us Brits on track.