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.

Kick-starting graduate careers

Here at Bucks we like to practice what we preach, and this means helping our graduates find work in industry in the most active ways possible. We're encouraging companies to bring us their web projects, the kind of interesting, fun, but often low budget work that can sometimes slip through the cracks of commercial studios.

We don't want our talented graduates working for nothing - after all, everyone has to put bread on the table - but by charging very competitive rates we hope to attract interesting projects and help our students build a portfolio of professional work.

Should graduates work for free?

The bad guys always wear top hats and smoke cigars

This is a tough question. Lots of seasoned professionals in the entertainment industry feel strongly that graduates should never work for free - why provide cheap labour for greedy capitalists who just want to exploit young talent? The counter-argument is very simple: because it's worth it.

Money, tuition fees, and student loans - how the new system works

Start saving your pennies

As pretty much everyone now knows, higher education is getting much, more expensive. For good or ill, the present Government is gradually retreating from direct funding of university education, and the UK is moving towards a more market-based system.

Maybe things will change in a few years under the next government, maybe they won't. In the meantime, government funding for courses at Bucks and other universities does still exist, albeit in the form of loans rather than direct grants.

Here is how the new system works:

A few spots still available on our new course in September

High Wycombe wants you

We're still welcoming new applicants for the last few available spots on our new Animation and Visual Effects course at Bucks New University starting this September. We're looking for students with a real passion to do animation and visual effects work, a drive to become a digital artist and take advantage of the myriad opportunities for animation, games and online work in the new economy. Animation is now big business, and we want to give all our graduates the best possible head start.

Bucks Animation Showcase 2013

We're proud to showcase the best work from our students at Bucks over the past year. Included in this compilation video is work by Dave Berry, Monika Dzikowicz, Kristof Michalski, Allan de Leal, Mike Swan, Paula Gillin, Andre Spencer, and others.

Our talented graduates are now taking a well-earned summer break before starting their careers in the animation, games, visual effects and design visualisation industries. Anyone looking to hire one of our talented students should contact us at alex.williams@bucks.ac.uk or david.creighton@bucks.ac.uk

----Alex

Open Day at Bucks! Wednesday 12 June

Gateway to your new career

Wednesday 12th June is Open Day at Bucks. Open Days are a great way to meet the tutors (for Animation & VFX - that's me and Dave Creighton) here at Bucks, find out about our courses, and also explore our campus. We guarantee you'll be impressed by the state-of-the-art technical equipment we have in the brand new Gateway Building; the result of a £40m investment program completed just a couple of years ago.

How to find a job? The secret maps to success...

Where are the jobs?

Finding work isn't easy, especially getting that vital, elusive first job. Sometimes it seems like every vacancy is advertised for professionals with 2-3 years of experience, which means that finding your first gig can feel like a catch-22. You can't find a job without experience, you can get experience until you find a job. So what is the secret?

Tonight! The Bucks Animation Big Show!

Tonight is Bucks animation's big night - starting at 6pm you can take a look at the best work done by our very talented soon-to-be-graduates, showcasing their projects completed over the past year. You'll see great animation, character design, concept work, visual development, 3D modelling, texturing, lighting - a diverse and impressive array of digital and creative skills. Come and see the what the new generation of digital artists can accomplish.

BAFTA Scholarships - deadline 17th June

BAFTA is offering a number of scholarships for talented graduates who wish to continue their studies. You find out more about them here.

According to BAFTA:

"Our 2013 Scholarship Programme will award a minimum of six scholarships to UK students in need of financial assistance to take a post-graduate course related to a career in film, television or games. See the full list of eligible courses. Each scholarship will provide up to £10,000 to cover one year’s course fees, an industry mentor and free access to BAFTA events around the UK for a year."

You have until June 17th to apply.

---Alex

The Secret of Great Animation - it's all in the Planning

The secret of most successful enveavours lies in the planning - and animation is no exception. Open up a copy of Maya, the leading 3D software, and you just get a blank screen. With CG animation, you get nothing for free.

So how do you fill this blank space with creative, entertaining animation? The secret of good work is to thumbnail - that is to say, to plan out your work with sketches and scribbles which create a kind of road map of where you want to go.

How to Create a Great Demo Reel

What goes into a great demo reel? The answer is - only your very best work. Better a short reel with excellent work than a long one with mistakes which need fixing. Employers and clients will look for mistakes, errors, and unfinished work - these are red flags which suggest a digital artist who doesn't complete, or who might flounder under pressure.

Which brings us to the single most important rule of demo reels:

Bucks Animation Show - Private View on Friday 7th June 6.00 – 9.00 pm

Come and check out the work of our awesome graduating students on the Animation, Games and Interactive Media degree course. The show forms a part of the ‘Bucks Eyes’ Degree show, and will showcase the very best student work done over the past year. Come and see the next generation of digital artists strut their stuff.

How to Get a Job in the Animation, Games & VFX Industries

For all our graduates who will soon find themselves seeking work, here is a short video on finding a job - and keeping it - with a special focus on jobs in the Animation and VFX Industry. Remember the 5 key ingredients for finding work:

Student Showcase - Mike Swan's graduation year project

Bucks student Mike Swan has just completed an ambitious project for his final year - the modelling, texturing and lighting of an Aston Martin sports car. We asked him a few questions about his project and how he put it all together.

Everything You Need to Know About Annecy

Annecy is to animation as Cannes is to Film. Like Cannes, there is no particular reason why this small and rather attractive town on a lake in the French Alps should host the world's biggest animation festival - except for the fact that they have always done so. They got there first, and while many towns and cities now have animation festivals, Annecy is the first, the original, the biggest and still the best.