London Animation Club

While doing the internship for Matter&Co i got a chance to head to one of the London Animation Club meet ups and boy was it fun. After a day of work, often ending feeling incredibly drained it was so much fun to get together with a bunch of likeminded people to watch some old animation. It had the same atmosphere as MAF and was very much welcomed after a long day. We watched some of Bob Godfrey's work which spurred a return of Jez Stewart who had previously presented Bob Godfrey's Great at MAF 2015.

From the Website:

"Know Your Europeans was John Halas’ last film project: a feature film that celebrated European Union composed of short films, each about a different European country and made by a different animation team. In the end only Bob Godfrey’s film Know Your Europeans – UK was ever released and only Bob’s film, Christoph Simon’s film for Germany and the film trailer were ever completed – although several of the others exist in one form or another. This will be the first time all of those will be screened together.

The proposed films were:
Belgium (An Vrombaut)
Denmark (Jannik Hastrup)
Germany – (Christoph Simon)
Italy – (Bruno Bozzetto)
Spain (Bob Balser)
France (Michel Ocelot)
United Kingdom (Bob Godfrey)
Greece – (Jordan Ananiadis)
Ireland (Aiden Hickey)
Luxembourg (unknown)
Netherland (Petra Dolleman)
Portugal – (Alvaro Feijo)
LAC regulars Emma Calder and Ged Haney worked on the Germany film and our old friend Kevin Baldwin animated the UK film. John Halas’ daughter Vivien Halas and Jez Stewart of the BFI will introduce the evening."

One notable event for the evening was when Fiona asked a question on our behalf, she asked "What advice would you give to recent animation graduates?" and while the answer was the usual network and good showreel, the animators pressed Fiona for what her role was and when she said she was a producer she had a queue of people rushing to give her their card, including one of the animator who worked with Bob Godfrey. This made me feel a little bit uneasy, if these successful animators are asking recent graduates for work then the state of the entertainment animation industry might not be very good.

I thought i would get a good chance to network but i was exhausted and most people shot off afterwards, but i did make sure i met Martin Pickles, the animator who runs it, but he was quite anxious to leave as well. All in all was a very fun experience and would definitely want to meet with them again.