Bradford Animation Festival

Back in November last year we were taken to the Bradford Animation Festival (BAF)for a day. We attended Day 2: Indie Gaming, and spent the day listening to talks given by professionals in the industry such as Stuart Varrall from Fluid Pixel Studio, Charles Cecil, and Sean Murray, Managing Director of Hello Games.
The talks were given on the Great Hall stage in Bradford university.

The first to speak was Stuart Varrall of Fluid Pixel Studio. Fluid Pixel is based in Middlesbrough, and they specialise in in creating games for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. He spoke about some of their most recent successes, one of which was Kami Crazy, which was downloaded more than half a million times in the first three weeks after it's release. Stuart then went on to talk about one of their newest projects, Animentals, which is a cyber pet simulator for mobile phones.

Having just played the demo that is available on their website, I have to say that it looks nicely done, very simple, with some interesting "Animental" designs. I can imagine that it would hold the players attention well, and would draw them back to play more.

Charles Cecil, who is hailed as a visionary games director, was the next to give a talk. He spoke about relaunching classic games such as "Broken Sword" on the Nintendo Wii and DS, and "Beneath a Steel Sky" for the iPhone, as both games had proven very popular when originally released, and so had good potential to be remade with the more advanced technology on offer today.

What really interested me in this talk was Charles Cecil then introduced two young animators, Ravi Govind and Aron Durkin, who had both just graduated from Bradford animation when they worked on these games. They have since used this experience to gain footholds into the game and animation industry. It was really encouraging to see students being able to go straight into the industry, and that it is possible to gain fantastic experience early on.
Ravi Govind then gave a talk on how character development and creation is accomplished, from initial design to final model and rigging.

After lunch David Surman gave a speech about the future of games, how they will develop and the role that they play along side other media. He then interviewed Erik Svedang, a young games developer who had created his game Blueberry Garden.

"Blueberry Garden is a short experimental game about curiosity and exploration. You take on the role of a creature investigating a mysterious world to find out what is going on there. It’s probably not very much like anything you’ve played before but I hope you will find it enjoyable!"

About Blueberry garden, Erik Svedang: http://eriksvedang.com/blueberrygarden/

He also spoke about his views on the gaming industry, and how he didn't really like mainstream games and therefore had set about to create a new, unique and imaginative game that stands out. He did speak about how Shadow of Colossus was a big inspiration and influence on Blueberry Garden.
Although this type of game isn't visually attractive to me, I did find that the atmosphere created and the beautiful music in the game was attractive.

Sean Murray from Hello Games was the next to give a speech about the development and creation of their game "Joe Danger". Of all the games featured, "Joe Danger" (click the link for the trailer) was the one which stood out the most and was the most appealing to me. It combined a fantastic visual environment with humour and fun, and I just thought that it was an incredibly professional looking game.
Sean Murray then went on to demonstrate the fantastic level editor feature within the game that allows the player to create their own courses.

Finally, Alex Wiltshire the online editor for Edge magazine, chaired a panel discussion where the audience had the opportunity to ask questions to the various professionals. Alex Wiltshire was joined by Sean Murray, Stuart Varrall, Simon Barratt (from Four Door Lemon) and Pete McClory (from Panoetic) who all gave more advice to aspiring artists, animators and game designers.

Although I enjoyed the day at BAF, and feel that I learnt a lot from listening to the various speeches, I do how ever wonder if we might have gained more from attending the day before the one we went to, as there were several large and impressive figures attending such as Sony, Claire Jennings (Coraline Producer and Laika Inc’s President of Entertainment) and Brian Van’t Hul (Laika Inc’s Visual Effects Supervisor).
I do think how ever that it was a really positive experience, and I look forward to attending BAF next year again, as I hope to.