Uncanny Valley Animation Festival 2013

Phew! It has been a long haul, and we’ve had to make some tough decisions – but we have agreed the final selection of shorts for the Hebden Bridge Picture House screening on Tuesday 25th June. Doors open at 4pm, programme starts at 4.30pm.

Uncanny Valley Animation Festival, 2013

Special screening (not in competition)

The Bossy Books

by Working Class Films & Year 2, Central Street School, Hebden Bridge (6.20)

A mix of live action and animation created by local children working in association with Hafsah Naib of Working Class Films.

Films in competition

 Spin, Span, Spun

by Emily & Anne (UK) (4.32)

An eccentric, animated journey through the history of Bolton’s cotton industry.

 Fat Cat

by Mole Hill (UK) (0.55)

Animated commentary on the desire to make excessive amounts of money.

 Home

by Jessica Harris (Australia) (5.22)

A young boy is separated from his mother. he befriends a homeless man and together they wander the back alleys of a changing city.

Horse Drawing

by Bill Hazzard (Ireland) (1.06)

Stop motion animation featuring a horse and his view on art.

Old Coal Town: Victorian Dad

by Genozo Graphic Films & Peter & The Wolf (UK) (4.26)

Animated music video. An old man, cobbled streets and some cracking steam train action.

Out Like a Light

by Vincent James (UK) (2.03)

Looped animation – silent.

Calories

by Antje Gleissberg (Germany) (3.00)

A candy loving monster likes his sweet treats too much.

The Rose of Turaida

by Ryan Grobins (Australia (6.15)

Narrated animation with stunning visuals. Based on a 17th century Latvian story.

Static 

by Alice Bradshaw (UK) (1.00)

The remains of a hole punched text ‘The Rocks Remain’ – in constant motion.

 A Film about Poo

by Emily & Anne (UK) (1.30)

A sing-a-long 90 second epic on the importance of washing your hands after the toilet.

 Saoirse & Daralis

by Yifan Chiu (Taiwan) (2.04)

Saoirse is a home cat who lives a carefree life. In a cold winter night her owner brings home Daralis, a dirty cat from the streets.

 Wolken Proeven

by Christophe Davids (Belgium) (5.31)

Hand drawn animated flights of fantasy.

 First Fish

by Veronika Gottichova (Czech Republic) (13.35)

Puppet animation about a young girls dreams and memories.

 Gumbley’s News 

by Louise Lockhart (UK) (4.38)

Stop motion take on the Frankenstein myth. A lonely newsagent finds a solution to his problem…

 LSD ABC

by Laura Sicouri & Kadavre Exquis (France) (3.57)

                                         Visually stunning and very stylish journey through the alphabet.

 Point in Time

by Shizuko Tabata (Japan) (5.47)

Beautifully crafted animation using photographs.

  Tea: Jim Noir

by Nye Best (UK) (2.57)

Puppets and beautiful sets in this music video for Jim Noir.

We only have a limited amount of time at The Picture House, and we aimed to provide a good mix of animation styles and a good geographical spread of the entries we received.

Uncanny Valley would like to thank all the filmmakers who submitted their work for consideration. We will be in contact with individual filmmakers as we hope to screen some of the entries as part of our ongoing programme of screenings at Magpie Cinema events throughout the year.

Thanks again for your submissions and your patience!

Uncanny Valley team. x

   Uncanny Valley 2013 is still accepting submissions.

      Check out the submitting films page and send us your shorts.

We’ve got a fantastic panel of judges and the programme of screenings, workshops and events is coming

together. Festival takes place at the end of June. Get your films in NOW!

Uncanny Valley is organised by Magpie Cinema – check out the beautiful illustration by Chris Browning.

Uncanny Valley 2013

We aim to provide expertise and experience aplenty in our judging panel.

Here’s a preview of some of the judges on board already.

 

Dave Cullinane       

Account Director for Video Games

Realtime UK

RealtimeUK produce Cinematics, Animation and Marketing Imagery for a roster of Global clients in the Video Games Industry.
We work with some of the world’s leading publishers and developers on a wide range of projects including CGI Marketing trailers, in-game animation and cut-scenes, benchmark development movies and Press & Marketing Imagery.

 

 

 

Kaye Elling

Kaye is the Lecturer in Computer Games at the University of Bradford and is the Course Leader for their BA and BSc games courses, where she teaches observational drawing among many other graphical subjects. Kaye’s background is in game development where she spent some 13 years working as a Character Artist and Art Manager for companies including Infogrames, Sony and Blitz Games Studios. She has created 3D graphics, and lead teams of artists and animators, on titles including the Premier Manager series, the Bratz series and most recently the Encleverment Experiment on XBLA among many more.  A proud Girl Geek, Kaye is passionately committed to raising awareness of game development as a viable, creative career for everyone.

Hafsah Naib                             

Independent artist/filmmaker, based in Manchester.

Hafsah’s first short, funded by Creative England, film was a sci-fi short shot entirely in the center of Manchester, based upon a future where ubiquitous computing is blurring the lines between realities. She is currently working on a scientific visual odyssey based upon cellular narratives.

There’s gonna be some zine action at Uncanny Valley 2013.

Zines is a broad term to describe a vibrant, flourishing and richly creative print culture characterised by independent, DIY, small press and artist books. These beautiful, unique and often bizarre creations cover all of human life and beyond. Zines are ephemeral and marginal. Printing and self-publishing at the margins of culture has a long and lustrous history; from the 18th century political pamphleteers, through to science fiction/fantasy fandom in the 1930s, art/illustration assemblages, punk zines and feminist zines in the 70s and 80s. 

The vibrancy of the contemporary zine scene can be explored in zine fests and specialist websites

Why Zines?

The development of animation has an obvious debt to print culture, especially comics – the principle sequential format. Comics, and comic strips developed in the second-half of the 19th century, the same time that zoetropes flourished and created the illusion of motion by spinning a strip of still images inside a cylinder.

The Zine scene, like animation is a practice explored by artists, illustrators and designers who bring world’s into being and constantly challenge preconceptions. Techniques such as collage, montage and bricolage are used in zines and animation film. Both practices have a DIY impetus about them – animations can be made with the simplest of resources, cut paper, plasticine, scratching or making marks on found film.

Some beautiful zines and artist books can be seen at Leeds Artist Book Collective.

           

Image from ABC blog.                                   Julie Barrat & Jennifer Henderson

For Uncanny Valley, we’re planning to bring an established pop-up zine library to Hebden.

Finally, here’s a little animation, celebrating zines: YAKK mini animation (we are zinester)

We still want your shorts – get your films to us before 10th May.

          Uncanny Valley celebrates ‘the illusion of motion’, an ancient and endlessly ingenious quest to       fiddle with the space twix brain and eye.

Zoetropes, popularized in the mid-19th century were a device crafted to beguile, entertain and delight. A sequence of still images, spun on a wheel or within a drum, create the illusion of motion when viewed through a series of slots. By the 1860s projected moving images were displayed using a magic lantern zoetrope.

Zoetropes still have the power to amaze and confound onlookers, and this is especially true in the case of 3D zoetropes.

Artist Peter Hudson created a large scale, 3D zoetrope that uses a strobe light to animate human figures swimming on a large rotating disk. This stroboscopic human powered zoetrope ‘Sisyphish’ was originally unveiled at Burning Man in Navada 2002. This was followed with a series of 3D zoetropes exploring the cyclical, mythic qualities of ‘The Wheel of Life’.

It just so happens that Peter Hudson and his team are crowdfunding for this years 3D zoetrope at Burning Man – it’s called The Eternal Return – check out all Peter’s 3D zoetropes below and visit indiegogo – donate before 10th May! Peter Hudson 3D Zoetropes

 

 

 

 

Entries for Uncanny Valley are coming in ‘thick and fast’. If you haven’t had a notification of your entry yet – don’t worry, it’s in process!

Please check-out our newly invigorated ‘Submitting films’ page – which now has detailed instructions on electronic submissions, and a lovely submissions form for you to print out.

Magpie x

 

 

The web address seems to have disappeared from this jpg!! Thankfully it is on the poster.  Lovely people already sending in their short films, from Salford, Leeds, Preston and of course, the Calder Valley. Keep ’em coming….Uncannyvalleyfestival@gmail.com

Uncanny Valley is a festival of animation in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. It takes place at the end of June as part of Hebden Bridge Arts Festival 2013.

Organised by Magpie Cinema, we welcome submissions from across the range of animation styles and techniques: drawn, cut paper, stop motion, CG and mixed media. Go to the submissions page above for details on sending your work.

Why Uncanny Valley?

The term originated in robotics to capture the sense of unease generated by creations (robots) that are very human-like but NOT human. It surfaced again with developments in CGI and gaming. The idea and the existence of the uncanny valley, as a human response, has attracted a lot of debate. We like to think of it as a problem of empathy. Many people found it difficult to ‘like’ the hyper-real characters developed in films like  Pixars short animation Tin Toy, and the live motion capture of Warner Bros  The Polar Express.  Animation is a field of practice where the simplest techniques can literally breath life into mundane objects, creating a depth of connection with audiences that stems from the way these creations behave. To us, animation at its best is not about replicating a human – it’s about creation.  Or, as Reggae singer Winston Rodney puts it “It takes behaviour, to get along”.

The Uncanny Valley Festival takes place in Hebden Bridge, in the heart of the Calder Valley. Valley life can sometimes feel a little ‘uncanny’, familiar and foreign at the same time.