Flip Festival 2010

Since I evacuated from University I have been applying myself to many areas of the UK that provide animators more opportunities, such as Bring Your Own Animation (BYOA) in London and Flip Festival in Birmingham (and sometimes Wolverhampton). The latter is where I went to last week and here's the lowdown...



There were two events at Flip Fest that I went to with my pal Kane. The first was a writing workshop run by Myles Mcleod called 'Writing an Animated Comedy'. This was a very stimulating and inspiring talk which began by covering the four types of laugh: Visceral, Recognition, Suprise and Bizzare. These were taken from the book Why Is That So Funny? by John Wright.

We then delved into the mystery of comedy characters. How would you describe them to your friends? Characters, such as: David Brent, Edmund Blackadder, Homer Simpson, Bernard Black.
And what do they have in common? They always solve the problem at the end (this is more to do with the 3 act structure) and more importantly, they are ALL losers (with permission to win)!
You can find almost all character archetypes in the Commedia dell' Arte. They are loosely based on animals.

Great advice from Myles was to always keep a small notebook on your person, to note down all the funny things you hear or think of, or things that irritate you. Because the truth is funny. And we are all flawed!

We then talked about the structure of gag. The Simpsons Evolution clip cleverly shows visually what tells the story. Pick something that makes you laugh and break it apart to find out why. It's a good exercise. Use the does it get better or worse exercise. And ended on Tarvuism by Robert Popper which is completely genius in my opinion!


Then we get on the road to Birmingham to attend Animating The West Midlands. There was some really great animation shown at the event, and also some bad ones. Then the Viral Kitchen group gave a quick Q&A before it hurriedly (like last year) as we ran out of time. Now began the drinking and networking.

I met up with Dave Cox, someone who i've been following on Twitter. Also there were Mark and Andy from the Character Shop.

So all in all it was a very good day and I enjoyed mixing with fellow animators. It would be even better if they could just call it Animating the Midlands, I don't really get the whole West Midlands thing... if East Midlands decided to start up would they be rivals??

Anyway, that was my second time at Flip, so until next year! Hopefully when I go back again i'll be in full time work or at least be working on a big paid project =).


Soundtrack: Johnny Clegg & Savuka - The Waiting