The final day at the Bradford Animation Festival of 2008.  Finally, the epic week of sitting down in front of screens and having to watch your back in the streets of Bradford was almost at an end.

The morning was an emotional one, with the John Coates Retrospective. It featured interviews with various people he had worked with, including Joanna Quinn and Paul Wells. These were followed by John’s award winning films including the likes of Yellow Submarine (clip), Famous Fred and Granpa. I had not seen Granpa before and found it was quite emotional, but then I saw one of his films which I haven’t seen in 13 years – The Snowman. It was a strange feeling to see something which I enjoyed so much after such a long time. It gave me goosebumps when Howard Blake’s classic ‘Walking in the Air’ kicked in. It was a really enlightening morning and great to find out how much of a contribution John Coates has made to the animation industry for the last 6 decades.

Then the thing which really shocked me -  John Coates was actually called up to the stage to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. I didn’t know the man was still alive, but there he was, with his walking stick, heading up to the stage. My eyes almost welled up, his what felt like a ‘back from the dead’ speech really got a huge round of applause. I was really tempted to ask for a photo with him outside afterwards, but I think he was already getting quite fed up with posing for the photographer who was badgering him when he was trying to leave. So I left it, plus I was getting a grumbling stomach at this point. Sitting down for a week really is harder than it sounds.

In the early afternoon some of us went to watch Idiots and Angels. Had not read anything about the film before sitting down to watch it, so I had no idea what to expect.

Well I thought it was brilliant. The artistic quality to the animation is really impressive and so is the dark humour. When looking at stills from the film, they just look like deep sketchy drawings. Not like frames from a film. This is something I found really interesting because it is crazy how much time it must of taken to complete each frame. The plot to Idiots and Angels is given the short synopsis of `A dark comedy about a man’s battle for his soul`. You can read a more detailed synopsis about Idiots and Angels on the Official Website. Some of the people who I saw it with did not enjoy it as much as I, feeling that it dragged out too long. This I can maybe understand, because the pace is quite slow and is set mostly around the same few locations.

Below you can see a trailer of Idiots and Angels as well as an interview with Oscar-nominated animator, Bill Plympton.

Evening is upon us and the buffet is getting closer. After abusing the BAF 08 Awards Reception’s free wine, we all piled into the Pictureville Cinema (where all the main features are held). The Awards were hosted by one of the top stop motion professionals over the last 30 years, Barry Purves. When our Course Leader Andy Wyatt went up on stage to announce one of the awards, we at Falmouth University were proud to be addressed by Barry Purves as ‘the ones who were heckling me earlier’. Well whatever Barry had said pre-heckle, Pete the German and the rest of Cornwall were not amused by it (it was something about being more interesting than ‘tractor awards’).

The awards were given as follows:

Grand Prix (overall winner) – Varmints

Audience Award – Varmints

Special Jury Prize (highly commended) – Cat-Man-Do

Best Professional Film – Skhizein
Best Student Film – Shoe
Best Short Shorts – A-Z
Best Music Video – Susie Asado: Hello Antenna
Best Commercial – Sony Play-Doh
Best TV Series – Frankenstein’s Cat
Best Film for Children – The Tiny Fish (Rybka)

Films by Young Animators – Up, Up and Away

Click on the links above to see the nomination reel for each award.

That concludes my week at the Bradford Animation Festival of 2008.

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Read about the other days of the Bradford Animation Festival below:

Bradford Animation Festival 2008 – Wednesday
Bradford Animation Festival 2008 – Thursday
Bradford Animation Festival 2008 – Friday
Bradford Animation Festival 2008 – Saturday