Today I attended the Manchester Animation Festival for the first time, at the Home cinema in Manchester. The screenings that I watched were called 'Short Films 2', 'Student Films 2' and 'Tito and the Birds'. I finally attended a talk called '40 Years of Barry Purves' who is a professional Stop Motion animator, celebrating 40 years of being an animator.
I really enjoyed watching the different films and seeing some of the work of other Animation Students. I think that I particularly enjoyed 'Tito and the Birds' as it surpassed my expectations and it had a deep meaningful lesson, that we should never let our fears take control of our lives, however we shouldn't aim to get rid of them completely as our fears help us to survive and give us key instincts that we may sometimes take for granted.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the Festival and I can't wait until the next one. I have to say that it was great to listen to the life of Barry Purves and learn about his career as well as some of his most favoured experiences. A key quote he said is that "A puppet is like having a good piano, you can’t play
anything without a good piano!” and my favourite quote from the event was that “Bringing a puppet to life in your hands is
fantastic!” as i think that this is so true. It is also one of the main things that I really like about stop motion animation.