Creative Industries Trafford
Puppet Masters Animation Conference 2024
EVENT INFORMATION
CIT and the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive present this annual conference for fans, students and practitioners of animation, puppetry and character design.
This event features a series of masterclass talks from creative visionaries who are responsible for a new generation of animated works, helping to keep both stop-motion and hand-drawn animation alive and showing how practitioners can develop meaningful careers in animation.
Our guests include:
Ellie Land
Ellie is a creative director working with animation who creates beautiful narrative driven content that challenges audiences to see the world differently. Her short film, Plunge, was produced by Tyke Films and supported by the BFI. Plunge is an animated documentary about Katie who found empowerment, friendship and healing from plunging into the frigid waters of the North Sea.
Emotionally engaging, breaking new ground, and approaching taboo and difficult subject matter, her work enables original voices to speak louder and be heard more clearly.
Creating content for film, TV and digital platforms, Ellie works across creative disciplines to deliver unique solutions, drawing from animation, documentary, immersive 360 and VR, illustration, and graphic novels.
Gerogia Madden
Georgia is a stop motion animator based in Liverpool. Her most recent short, Divination Dave was commissioned by BBC Arts as part of their New Creatives programme and has gone on to see festival success, winning ‘Best Animation’ at the BFI Future Film Awards 2022. Her next stop motion short Rubberleg is a coming-of-age, cosmic adventure currently in development, and will follow a boy’s journey through past lives to grow back a missing limb.
One 6th - Baz Sells & Ben Jackson
One6th is an award winning, Stop-Motion animation studio, founded in 2018.
Born from a love of filmmaking at a scale of 1:6, One6th is an ever evolving stop-motion studio, with an appetite for keeping it fresh. They’re committed to creating captivating animation, gravitating towards bold ideas and exploring new perspectives. At their studio in central Manchester, the company creates everything from props, sets and puppets all the way through to animation and principle photography.
Baz Sells
Baz is the director and co-founder of Manchester based, One6th Animation Studio - he works alongside producer and One6th co-founder, Ben Jackson to create emotive, character driven stop-motion animation.
He began his career as a runner within London's advertising and film industries. Later as producer, his credits include stop-motion work for Disney Junior. As Director, his stop-motion films include the recently BFI backed, Two Black Boys in Paradise, which received additional support from actor, Ian McKellen, as well as other commercial and short films such as Squib, which won a Kinsale Shark Award 2022, was nominated for SHOTS Young Director of The Year, as well as a Wild Card nomination at The British Animation Awards.
In addition to directing projects at One6th, Baz frequently turns his hand to Cinematography, Editing and Set Construction.
Ben Jackson
Ben is a producer and co-founder of One6th Animation Studio. He has a passion for bringing emotive and socially conscious stories to life through imaginative and cinematic stop-motion animation.
Ben studied Film and TV production at the Northern Film School in Leeds (UK) and prior to One6th completed work placements at the BBC on various shows. He turned his attention to stop-motion in his final year of film school, producing an 8 minute short directed by One6th co-founder, Baz Sells.
In 2018, Ben and Baz set up One6th during which time Ben has produced several short films and commercials, which mainly consist of narrative driven, puppet-based stop-motion. Ben thrives on being a hands on producer, with a passion for contributing towards the creative process and is one of the credited writers alongside Baz and Dean Atta in their latest BFI-backed short 'Two Black Boys in Paradise'.
Laura Tofarides
Laura is a stop-motion director, animator & puppet maker. She studied animation at UWE Bristol then completed the Certificate in Character Animation through NFTS and Aardman Academy.
She has been animating professionally since 2014 on features, shorts, commercials, TV specials & TV series with directors such as Nick Park and Wes Anderson. She also makes stop motion puppets, helps to organise and curate a number of animation festivals. Laura also gives talks & run animation workshops in-person & online.
Anastasia Papadopoulou
Anastasia is a stop motion creator from Greece, living the last 2 years in the UK. Her first personal short film “Elevator Alone”, has received 33 awards and has been selected in 160 festivals such as Leeds young Film Fest, Bolton Film Festival, Fantoche Animation Film Festival, Manchester Animation festival, LIAF, Kaboom etc. It’s a graduation stop motion film which she wrote, directed, animated and constructed the sets and puppets.
Her passion for model making led her working with stop motion studios on various projects such as adverts, short movies and music videos as a prop maker/set dresser and puppet maker. What she loves the most, is to find and add the small details in props that pop and bring sets to life.
Anastasia Papadopoulou website
Joseph Wallace
Joseph is a BAFTA Cymru nominated director, writer and producer. His work has won awards, received Vimeo Staff Picks and screened at festivals around the world.
His acclaimed music video for Sparks led Wallace to create sequences for Edgar Wright’s doc feature The Sparks Brothers which premiered at Sundance and Wallace’s segments were described as ‘dark wonders’ by Guardian’s Mark Kermode. His last short Salvation Has No Name won the Grand Prix at Animage in Brazil and Animario in Spain, was long-listed for both BIFA and BAFTA and received the Jury Special Mention at the Unifrance Prix du Court Metrage at Cannes 2023.
Instagram
The day will also feature rarely-seen video interviews with previous conference guests, including:
Phil Tippett
Legendary film director and visual effects supervisor and producer (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, RoboCop and many more).
Peter Firmin
Co-founder of Smallfilms, along with Oliver Postgate, and creator of many beloved animated shows, including Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and Clangers.
Georgina Hayns
Ex-Cosgrove Hall Films and former Creative Puppet Fabrication Supervisor at Laika for over 10 years, supervising the puppet builds on the Oscar-nominated films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and The Missing Link.
ANIMATION STUDENT BOOKINGS
Student tickets are available at £10 when booked as a student group. One free teacher ticket for every nine students booked.
Contact box office on 0161 912 5616 for more information or to make a booking.
RUNNING TIMES
10:30 - 16:30
MEDIA
#PuppetMastersAnimationConference
@WatersideArts
Instagram: @creative_industries_ | @cosgrovehallfilmsarchive
More Animation at Waterside
24 Oct 2024: Hugh Cornwell - An Animated Discussion + Mighty Joe Young film screening
CIT presents this special event featuring Hugh Cornwell, one of the UK’s leading musicians, a Ray Harryhausen aficionado and a keen supporter of animation.
26 Oct 2024 - 04 Jan 2025: The Lost Worlds of Ray Harryhausen Exhibition
Ray Harryhausen is known as the mastermind behind some of Hollywood’s most iconic cinematic special effects, this exhibition explores the origins of his creative career, with a detailed look at Ray’s experimental phases and groundbreaking techniques.
- Nov. 2, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
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