BIRTHDAY BOY won for Best Short Animation in the Animex Student Animation Awards announced Feb. 4, 2005, at Animex Talk! during the Animex International Festival of Animation, located in Middlesex, England. The festival, in its sixth year, is organized by the University of Teesside, attracting animators and experts from some of the biggest houses in the industry.
This years winners were the first to receive the new style trophy the Lemmy, which is based on the lead character from a short animated film, BRINK, created by University of Teesside Creative Visualization graduate Fraser Brown.
The competition received more than 450 entries from 28 different countries and was judged by Tom Martinek of Industrial Light & Magic, Rachelle Lewis of DreamWorks and Marc Craste of Studio AKA.
Another highlight of the festival was the world premiere screening of DREAM ON SILLY DREAMER, a documentary that chronicles the sad end of the hand-drawn art form at the Disney studios, which was the cornerstone of The Mouses classic animations. It tells of an infamous meeting with Thomas Shumacher, then president of Disney Feature Animation. The meeting, referred to by animators as the "Tom Meeting," occurred, on March 25, 2002, and resulted in more than 200 Disney artists at the legendary Feature Animation Department in Burbank being laid off. Nearly 1,300 skilled artists and craftsmen also lost their jobs at Disney studios in Paris, Tokyo and Florida. Also laid off director Dan Lund and first-time producer Tony West documented themselves, their co-workers and friends by recording interviews charged with raw emotion.
Animex organizers said The screening of DREAM ON sends a message of hope and hubris to the next generation of animators, which is one of the most important reasons to screen the film at the Animex Festival. We lived in a kind of fairy-tale land of animation, and didnt appreciate the magical nature of that experience, said Lund. The end of our time at Disney, was really about the end of an era at the studio
All the winners were screened at the BALTIC, International Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead on Feb. 5 & 6, 1:30-4:00 pm. Sponsors in this year's awards included Adobe, Alias, Apple, Character Animation Technologies, Chromacolour, Corel, Curious Labs, Discreet, Focal Press, Encad, Macromedia, Maxon, NVidia, Philips, Softimage, SUBtv, ToonBoom and Viglen.
The winners were:
BEST SHORT ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: BIRTHDAY BOY by Sejong Park, Megan Wedge, Chris McKeith, James Lee, Adrian Rostirolla, Andrew GregoryCollege: Australian Film, Television & Radio School, Australia
3D COMPUTER ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: OVERTIME by Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, Damien FerrieCollege: Supinfocom Valenciennes, France
2D COMPUTER ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: REX STEELE: NAZI SMASHER by Alexander Woo, Mike Brady, Ryan ShoreCollege: New York University, USA
EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: TRUGBILD by Agnieszka KruczekCollege: Fachhochschule Hannover, Germany
SOUND FOR ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: FALL STUDIES 2 by Gabriel Pielke, Andreas Kersting, Oliver Staubi, Sven BienCollege: Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
EDITING AWARDFirst Prize: OVERTIMEAwarded to: Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, Damien FerrieCollege: Supinfocom Valenciennes, France
3D CHARACTER ANIMATION AWARDFirst Prize: 9 by Shane Acker, Dave Stienwedel, Eric OlsonCollege: UCLA Animation, USA
VISUAL EFFECTS AWARDFirst Prize: TREIBGUT by Rudiger Kaltenhauser, J Wulfes, N Purzer, Trude Knorl, M LindenmeyerCollege: Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
WEBTOON AWARDFirst Prize: A RANDOM STICKMAN CARTOON by Philip AskinsCollege: Stokesley School, U.K.
3D COMPUTER ANIMATION FOR GAMES AWARDFirst Prize: EON CHAPTER ONE by Johan BorgstromCollege: Goteborg University, Sweden
ANIMATION STILLS AWARDFirst Prize: A SLEEP IN THE WILD by Quaik Choon SengCollege: Limkokwing University, Malaysia
NEWCOMER AWARDFirst Prize: GHOST STORY by Philip AskinsCollege: Stokesley School, U.K.
For a full listing of all the winners and runners up in this years Animex Awards please visit: www.animex.net/awards.
