It has been a busy and exciting start of the year for Animation Skillnet, starting with The Animation Studio Lab, produced by Stephen Fagan and Directed by Sean Cunningham: over fifteen weeks, the 4 tutors brought 13 participants through the creation of their own original and hilarious short, Agony Ant, from Storyboarding to Compositing.
In February, Delphine Coudray joined Animation Skillnet as our new Courses & Events Coordinator, just in time to help out with our series of evening courses: Animating in Toon Boom Harmony 16 with Adam Oliver (Online Course), Texturing and Look Development for Production with Darko Mitev and Essence of the Pose – Gesture Drawing with Niall Laverty.
In March, the AS team were once again proud and delighted to join Animation Dingle, collaborating with Screen Skills Ireland, the BAI and Animation Ireland to bring four fascinating masterclasses to festival goers: Character Development with Wouter Tulp, The Camera Language of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with David Morehead, Imaginary Cities – Creating the worlds of Zootropolis and Ralph Breaks the Internet with Matthias Lechner and Cinematic Lighting for Animation with Mark Flanagan.
Fortunately, we managed to hold on to David Morehead a little bit longer for another day-long masterclass in Dublin, Camera Thinking: into the Spider-Verse and he also kindly took part in one of our discussion panels at Creative Technologies at Futurescope 2019. These panels, organised by Animation Skillnet and Screen Skills Ireland in collaboration with Animation Ireland, Eirmersive, VR Ireland and IMIRT, saw some of the biggest names in the Irish and International industry, such as Limina Immersive, Warducks, 9 Story Media, StoryToys/TouchPress, Artomatix, Pink Kong Studios, Black Shamrock Games, Vela Games, etc. discussing the topics of Commercialising IP, VR Storytelling and Games Development in Ireland. Limina Immersive curated a dedicated VR room where the audience could experience a range of shorts and documentaries throughout the day. Glen Southern offered live VR-painting demos in the Future Tech Arcade and also facilitated a one-day course for Animation Skillnet and Screen Skills Ireland: The Basics of ZBrush.
The AS team barely had time to blink and April was here, with a new range of evening courses: Creating backgrounds for 2D animation with Fran Johnston, Writing Comedy with John Dawson, Starting out in Storyboarding with Kayvon Darabi-Fard and An Introduction to Toon Boom Harmony – with a focus on rigging with Stephen O’Keeffe.
Animation Skillnet also had the pleasure to team up with Animation Ireland and Screen Skills Ireland once again to bring two exciting speakers to Dublin: Terrence Masson for a talk entitled From South Park to Star Wars and the Future of Animation and Aaron Blaise for a series of Masterclasses on Animal Drawing and Character Design.
Animation Skillnet are currently devising new courses and bootcamps for the summer, getting ready to meet new potential tutors and speakers at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June and, as always, looking forward to collaborate further with studios, freelancers and Animation, Games and VFX organisations to help our members to upskill, train and access professionals’ expertise from all over the world!