Animation

FMX

Myself, Liam and Pete and the highlight of the week!!

What an interesting week! We arrived in Stuttgart last Monday night, sleepy having travelled all day and in to the night.

Tuesday
The festival began on Tuesday and we all made our way up to the venue (which was a beautiful huge old building in the centre of Stuttgart, otherwise known to us as "The house of witchcraft" haha) and tried to get in to Ed Hooks Acting for Animators workshop, which was full up. Instead of this we had a look around the building and then made our way to the recruiting hall where I chatted with a very friendly woman from Animal Logic (I think her name was PK) which was really informative and gave me an insight to attempting to get a job in the industry (i.e. work harder!!!!!) after that I wondered around a bit more and then went to my first talk which was the look development for the "owls of Ga'Hoole" This was really interesting and was done by two guys from Animal Logic. I wasn't so fond of the film before but after the talk I really wanted to see it - it was very inspiring seeing how much work they had put into the owls! After this I headed over to the Building, Lighting and Rendering of Rio. This is was somewhat more technical than I thought, but still interesting. After this talk I decided to go for a wonder around the centre of Stuttgart and explore what was there. At the same time as FMX there was another animation festival, Internationales Trickfilm Festival, which was going on in the main square in the centre...

After that wander, I went back to watch the talk about the special effects in Black Swan. This was really interesting and made me realise just how much VFX goes into one movie. It also made me want to start dancing again, and has inspired me to start taking Ballet classes again.
In the evening Georg managed to get us into the Animator Mentor party where the CEO of the company was wondering around, along with other important people. This was definitly not a time to be rooted to the spot in fear, but alas I was definitely really nervous. I didn't manage to talk to anyone which annoyed me... Now is the time to grow a pair!

Wednesday
Was and good day in terms of talks. I went to the talk about Rango, which was really good and then left that early to go to the making of Dobby in the second to last Harry Potter film. This was really interesting, Ben Lambert who was talking, spoke about how they used a real life model of Dobby in some of the shots which was so life like, it felt like a dead child. Nice. After this was a talk about a really strange kids TV program called Kaeloo. The concept reminded me of itchy and scratchy mixed with ren and stimpy. It looked very pretty though! After this was Shelley's Eye Candy which was Shelley Page's pick of all the yummy shorts she liked. There was some really inspiring pieces here like this by an bunch of Australian animators. There were some other ace animations such as The Eagleman Stagg and Babioles. But I can't find either of the full movies online. Wednesday evening was the first of the FMX parties. We went along to this and it turned out to be a laugh it was also Alans 21st birthday. Here is a picture of Olly and Liam being excited.

Also the party seemed to be in what could only be described as a industrial crack house filled with animators. I liked it.

Thursday
Thursday wasn't a great day. For starters I had a miniature hangover from the party the night before. The talks on Thursday were all very technical and didn't interest me much. We decided to go to at least one, which was Sea Rex 3D which was actually really interesting. After this we decided to stay in the room and watch the pipeline of Paul which was...less interesting. The warmth and darkness of the room didn't help and I ended up having a bit of a snooze...
Here is the first of many ice-creams I are through out the week...

Friday

Was AWESOME. This for me was the best day. I woke up early and went to the morning screening of ITFS meets FMX. This was good as it secured us seats for the next talk about Dobby and Kreacher. However, this talk was pretty much as the Dobby talk I had seen on Tuesday, so I left this early to get a good seat for the Studio AKA talk, which was the most inspiring, funny and awesomist talk of the week. I am now their biggest fans! I would to work for them one day. Following this were talks about The making of Despicable me, Cinematography at Pixar, Megamind - The Creative Process and Animating Tangled. These were all really interesting and very inspiring.
And that was that, the end of FMX.

I will do another post soon, as this is loads of writing. In the mean time here are some more pictures...