FLIP Festival 2011 review

The FLIP international animation festival 2011 was held over the past three days and this weeks (slightly delayed) blog is dedicated to our experience at the annual event.

We attended on the two main days of the festival where our ringmaster sting was used to open the very first open shorts screening. What followed on Friday was an amazing line up of industry heroes such as Bill Plympton and Barry Purves. We attended Bill plympton's master class which was fascinating, as we got an insight into the process behind his work as well as his view on animation.



The ringmaster open the festival on Friday 28th during
the first open shorts screening


He shared his views on the animation industry still not accepting adult oriented animations, especially in the US where he believes they still see it as an art form and medium for children. An outside view that we also hope fades away so that more and more adult animations are accepted in society such as the dark humour of Bill Plympton's films.

Saturday was just as good with a talk from Aardman, (the legendary) Corgrove Hall and Brothers Mcleod premiering their latest film, Isle of Spagg. Two animations from S5S were shown during Open shorts 5; Caged and Overtime, that had a great response. A panel discussion on the state of 2D animation was also held near the end of the day with animation figures Charlie MacRae (Hanna Barbera) and Tori Davis ( Blue Sky, Walt Disney, DreamWorks ).

This was an interesting discussion which was set up to raise concerns for the growing lack of 2D animations. However, over the course of the discussion the concern was flipped with the recent trend of bringing 2D feature films in 3D, such as The Lion King. It was a great pivotal moment that proved that 2D animation is here to stay. It was also interesting to see that the majority of the open shorts were also stop motion which was great considering the recent perception that its a dieing form of animation.



Caged becomes an award winning animation at FLIP 2011


The Festival ended with the festival short winners and we are proud to announce that S5S animator, Ravi Maheru, won an award for short film, Caged, making us an award winning studio!

We enjoyed the festival and are looking forward to FLIP festival 2012.