Local animators small films hit the big screen

A trio of animation students from the University of Newcastle (UON) have been hand-selected to feature at the Melbourne International Animation Festival.

Three UON students were selected from a competitive national field to screen at the festival:

• Andrew White with Sand
• Renee McIntosh with Carthona
• Zoe Lawrence with A Brand New Toothbrush.

Renee and Zoe’s shorts have been selected to screen in the Australian Panorama, while Andrew’s work is set to screen in the competitive Student Showcase.

These local student animators join around 450 animated films screening at three cinemas over a massive eight days from June 19 - 26.

Animation at UON is on an upward trajectory thanks to renowned animator Jane Shadbolt, a lecturer in Visual Communication at the School of Design, Communications and IT at UON.

“Our students’ work will stand proudly alongside international animators at the festival.” Ms Shadbolt said. “I’m so proud of their achievements - their work is of an extremely high standard.”

“It’s such a great opportunity for them to have their work screened with animators from around Australia and the globe,” said Ms Shadbolt.

Last year Jane set 49 students the task of hand-animating a Taylor Swift film clip – with the resulting video for Shake It Off going viral on YouTube with over one million views of the four minutes of 2767 hand-drawn frames.

Following on from this success, students from UON were also called upon with the wider animation community to rotoscope a clip for Daniel Johns.

Going On 16 was filmed, animated and edited in Newcastle and featured on JJJ and Rage as Johns’ official clip.

This year’s challenge was to animate Aussie band Peking Duk’s video for Say My Name, which had over 4300 views in its first week on YouTube.

Newcastle will host the Newcastle International Animation Festival on August 26 and 27 at the Tower Cinemas featuring a special q+a with the students.