Rachelle Lewis (left), of Digital Domain, discussed the studio’s vfx work on I, Robot and Stealth. Fantasy artist Roger Dean talked about developing his imagery into an upcoming animated feature, Floating Islands.

Moving to visual effects, Rachelle Lewis, of Digital Domain, took us through the studio’s work on films like I, Robot and Stealth (though she made no bones about hating “videogame” movies like the latter). Tony Prosser of Realtime UK gave his perspective on photoreal CGI from the British side, discussing his company’s moves into cartoony character animation with a promo for Sony’s Buzz: The Music Quiz. From Bristol we heard from Lightworx’s Pete Draper, who’s been part of a two-man team grinding out incredible effects for a TV sci-fi comedy, Starhyke. Draper presented a hard-hitting talk, aimed at partying students who might be tempted to cut lectures. “You have to love this job,” he warned forbiddingly. Draper joined Lewis and DreamWorks’ Shelley Page for an always-relevant session on how not to send showreels to studios.

Aardman’s Dave Sproxton screened glimpses of the upcoming CGI feature Flushed Away and a new TV series based on Shaun the Sheep, the woolly hero of A Close Shave.

Fantasy artist Roger Dean, known worldwide for his trippy “Yes” album covers, talked about developing his imagery into upcoming animated features, the first to be called Floating Islands. Late on Friday afternoon, two more revered veterans, Philip Hunt and Dave Sproxton, took us through the recent dealings of their studios, Studio AKA and Aardman. Hunt’s talk effectively backed up Mark Simon, focusing on the challenges that AKA faces in pitching commercials and looking at the projects that inevitably come to nothing. “I’m showing you a lot of failures,” Hunt acknowledged, “to show it doesn’t all go swimmingly.” Sproxton screened some upcoming Aardman work, including glimpses of the DreamWorks-animated CGI feature Flushed Away. There was more traditional material on show, though, like a new TV series based round Shaun the Sheep, the woolly hero of A Close Shave.

All the talks were good, but unfortunately there were annoying technical problems throughout the event. Numerous DVDs proved unplayable and there were tiresome problems accessing images on the projector. Even worse, during the Student Animation Awards ceremony (below), the picture temporarily “dropped out” for several seconds whenever a winning entry was screened, which was enormously irritating. I don’t know if there were similar problems at earlier events, but it’s definitely something to iron out before Animex 2007.

I didn’t have any time to have more than a quick look at the screenings going on elsewhere in the building, but there were five programs of student films running through the week, plus retrospectives of Britain’s “BAA” animation awards and screenings of this year’s entries. One could also catch the lucky winners of the Animate! scheme, which supports personal projects for television and is funded by Channel 4 and Arts Council England.

Meanwhile, a cinema in the next town (Stockton-on-Tees) was previewing the live-action/animated MirrorMask, co-created by comics stars Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman, and the The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, the second feature by the avant-garde Brothers Quay. Neither film appealed to me much when I saw them at previous screenings. From a technical viewpoint, though, their extravagant uses of colour and composition in creating off-key, defiantly personal fantasias must have made them fascinating for anyone looking to out-weird Terry Gilliam.

Friday afternoon saw the presentation of Animex’s Student Animation Awards, chosen by a jury including Sproxton, Hunt and Page. The 3D Animation prize went to the witty and imaginative Klik Klak, from the Supinfocom Arles college in France. A different French college, Supinfocom Valenciennes, produced the gruelling but powerful Experimental Animation winner 90 Degrees, a film that caused a judge to say, “My head is bleeding.” The vfx winner was Fabel from the German Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, a singular tale about a man with a goldfish bowl (plus fish) for his head. Last, the sensitive Kamiya’s Correspondence by Sumito Sakakibara won the 2D Computer Animation section. Created by the Japan-born Sakakibara at London’s Royal College of Art, the film was praised as a “beautiful and disarming story.” It also reminded me of Isao Takahata’s 1991 anime feature Only Yesterday.

Andrew Osmond is a freelance writer specializing in fantasy media and animation.