Alexi Balian Animation Art & Design Academy

Alexi Balian was one of the first students to enroll in our Online MA in 3D animation at Bucks. He graduated last week, becoming one of the first-ever students anywhere in the world to receive his animation MA purely online.

Alexi has now made a career of teaching animation. In his capacity as Provincial and National Skills Canada Chair for 2D and 3D Character Animation, Alexi also runs workshops and seminars in Canada through his Animation Art & Design Academy.

David Thompson Explains How to Produce Movies

David Thompson at BAFTA

BAFTA recently held a series of lectures and masterclasses on film production, welcoming members of the public to hear industry professionals give lectures on all aspects of the business.  One of the best presentations was a talk by David Thompson, formerly head of films and single drama at BBC, and a producer with a clutch of BAFTAs and Golden Globes on his shelf. Most importantly, he has over 100 screen credits, including Billy Elliot and Mandela. Here at Bucks we recommend that all our students attend industry events like this whenever possible. You never know who you will meet, and what you will learn about the way the industry actually works.

What Do Sales Agents Do, Exactly?

Sola Media - Sales Agents with a focus on animation

Any animator with dreams to bring their own project to the big screen will eventually need to understand the business of making and financing animated films. This includes the question of who, exactly, is going to sell your film for you. Are you going to do it yourself? Or are you going to bring in experts who know the business? Probably, you will do the latter. As part of our series on the business of animation, we take a look at what exactly a sales agent is and what they do.

Akshay Ohari Wins YouTube Silver Plaque

Akshay Ohari

We're delighted to congratulate Bucks Student Akshay Ohari who has won his very own Silver Plaque from YouTube. These coveted awards are handed out to Channels at YouTube with more than 100,000 subscribers - a huge milestone.

Akshay started studying Animation & VFX with us at Bucks last year, but left to set up his one online business FutPacks, which has been growing rapidly.  Here at Bucks we encourage all our students to be entrepreneurs, taking on freelance work and growing their skills as digital artists and creators of original content.  Congratulations to Akshay on a great achievement.

Reminder - Producing Animation Workshop with Steve Burch on Tuesday 26 May!

Steve Burch

Don't forget! On Tuesday 26 May we welcome Steve Burch visit Bucks for a lecture and workshop on Producing Animation.  Steve has 26 years experience in the animation industry, having worked on around dozen animated features including Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant.  His roles have included Special Effects Supervisor for Dreamworks and Warner Bros Feature Animation. Steve has worked with three Oscar winning directors and has produced and directed many commercials and animated shorts. So, what can our students expect on Tuesday?

Steve Burch Brings Producing Animation Workshop to Bucks on Monday 26 May

Steve Burch

On Monday 26 May we again welcome Steve Burch visit Bucks for a lecture and workshop on Producing Animation.  Steve has 26 years experience in the industry, having worked on around dozen animated features in Hollywood and Europe, including Brad Bird’s modern classic The Iron Giant. His roles have included Special Effects Supervisor for Dreamworks and Warner Brothers feature films. Steve has worked with three Oscar winning directors and has produced and directed many commercials and animated shorts.

Akshay Ohari's Online Business - Futpacks

Futpacks.com by Akshay Ohari

Akshay Ohari is a student at Bucks who has launched his own online business, carving out an entrepreneurial niche for himself in the rapidly expanding world of online digital media.

Futpacks.com already has 45,000 subscribers, appealing to fans of the wildly popular FIFA video game, made by EA games.

We asked Akshay to talk about his new business career, and how he got started.

Five Rules for Handling Tricky Clients

How do you deal with a tricky client?  Difficult clients are so common that there are websites such as are clientsfromhell.net, dedicated entirely to horror stories written by freelancers about having to deal with hard-to-please clients. So, if you are starting off on your career, how do you handle a difficult client? Below are our five rules for success

Last Chance to Register for Cartoon Business!

Cartoon Business

Cartoon Business is the finance and business counterpart to Cartoon Movie and Cartoon Forum. If you are interested in the business side of producing animation, but don't know how to assemble, package and sell an animated TV series or feature film, then Cartoon Business is the place to learn. Supported by MEDIA, the EU fund for the creative industries, and backed by the French Government, Cartoon Business will walk you through all the steps needed to bring your ideas to the market. And you don't even need to speak French - the event is conducted in English, the international language of media and animation.

Should Freelance Animators Set Up a Limited Company?

A freelancer at work

Part of our job at Bucks is to teach our students to be working professionals, which includes not only the ability to do excellent work at a high level of professional skill,  but also the ability to run a small business and tackle freelance work. Almost all digital artists take on freelance work of one kind or another, and we help our students out by bringing in small commercial projects at our virtual online studio at nano-films.com, giving our students paid experience on live briefs. Being a freelancer involves learning a lot of new business skills, and one of the most common questions asked by students is: "Do I Need to Set Up a Company before I become a freelancer?" The short answer is "no", but it's not quite as simple as that - it all depends on your personal circumstances.

Enterprise at Bucks - animated by Anton Alfimenko

Enterprise at Bucks is the department of our University which is dedicated to helping students learn real-life skills.

Stuff like how to set up a business, how to invoice a client, and how to survive in the commercial world. Many of our students will launch their own freelance careers (even if they also have a day job) when they leave uni - and a good working knowledge of the realities of the marketplace is a vital tool for survival.

Bucks Lecturer Allen Stroud Explains How to Finance Your Project at Kickstarter

Kickstarter

Writer and film-maker Allen Stroud, author of Elite: Lave Revolution, and also head of Film and TV at Bucks explains how to get a Kickstarter project off the ground. The rules of raising finance for film projects is changing fast. If you have a good enough idea, there is no reason why you cannot crowd fund your project and get fans all across the globe to make your dreams come to life. Here is how it is done.

Who Invests in Independent Animated Feature Films?

Photo: Wikipedia

Who invests in independent feature films? And how does the aspiring film-maker find those investors? At the European film finance conference, Closing the Gap, Perrine Hamon of Media Deals, and Thierry Beaugard of Peaceful Fish explained what kind of investors are out there, and how to find them. Any animator who has a dream to make their own independent animated feature film needs to know just a little bit (and possibly more) about the nuts and bolts of movie finance.

Timo Vuorensola, director of Iron Sky, explains how to crowd fund your feature film

Timo Vuorensola, director of Iron Sky, gave a lecture at Closing The Gap, a European conference on film financing, explaining how to crowd fund an independent feature film. Iron Sky was initially funded through online sources, and later on secured more conventional funding on the back of the crowd-sourced contributions. Timo explained how he pulled off such an ambitious and successful project by starting an online fan base to help make his film.

Freelancing Workshop on Monday with Lydiah Igweh from Enterprise at Bucks

On Monday May 12th we welcome Lydiah Igweh, who runs the Enterprise at Bucks program, to introduce a freelancer's workshop for our Animation and Visual Effects Artists. As the long summer vacation approaches, we strongly encourage our students to take on small freelance jobs, do internships and work placements, and in general take advantage of the many opportunities to develop real-life work skills. Lydiah's workshop has been custom-designed for our digital artists, so this is a great opportunity to start thinking about how you might develop a freelance career.

How do you start a small animation business?

Our new animation collaboration at Bucks

One of the most common questions asked by prospective students at our university open days is "how many of your graduates find work in the industry?". After all, it's all very well to train animators and digital artists to do excellent work, it's quite another to turn that knowledge into a successful career.

In media production of any kind, jobs for life are nowadays almost non-existent. Even highly successful artists tend to be freelancers of one kind or another. But there is another way of dealing with the perpetual uncertainty of finding paid work in the arts - and that is to start your own business. So how, exactly, might you go about doing that?

Are Universities Failing the UK's Visual Effects Industry?

Pat Joseph, co-founder and chief creative officer of The Mill, certainly thinks so. In this post at the Televisual blog,  Joseph argues that higher education in the UK is not responding to the needs of the visual effects industry, and is not training students of the digital arts to a sufficiently high calibre. What can universities do to try harder?

2 Days left to back Allen Stroud's ELITE project at Kickstarter!

There are just two days left to back Bucks New University tutor Allen Stroud's ELITE project at Kickstarter.

Free Laptops!

We're giving away free laptops! Well...sort of. As part of the total annual Animation & VFX course fee of £8,000, we're hoping to build in a free laptop so that every student beginning our course gets their own personal workstation to do their animation, so they can work both at home and on campus.

The Animation Internet Revolution

The Animation Internet Revolution: There is a revolution taking place in media and content creation. Any animator with talent, a laptop and a story to tell can now take on ...