Animafest, Zagreb JUNE 2017

In June 2017, I lead a group of 4 other students to Animafest, held in Zagreb, Croatia. I had to research hostels, travel and the festival itself, and then pitch to the University why my group should be considered to receive funding for the trip. My 2nd Year lecturer at the time was writing a paper about the psychology of character design, making reference to some 2nd Year films including my own film 'Fluff and Beads'.

My pitch was accepted and during the psychology talk, the group had the pleasure of watching our own films in the company of a large audience. We received very helpful and specialist feedback from the academics there. On the other 5 days, we visited as many film screenings as possible - any time spent away from film-screenings, we were spending amongst other animators from across the world and getting to learn more about them.

Whilst in Zagreb, we visited the University of Zagreb, School of Animation and New Media and learnt more about the structure of their course in comparison to ours at UEL, as well as differences in available resources. We also visited the Plitvice Lakes to view some Croatian nature and give our eyes a break from a week of pixels.

I directed, edited and co-animated a documentary to show our experiences of our time there.