Last night I went along to the Show Me The Animation, Animation Night with Peter Lord at The Cube Cinema. It was a 'behind the scenes' type presentation (always hugely fascinating) of Aardman's latest feature film, The Pirates, in which Pete discussed everything from the storytelling, script writing, character making, set designing, animating and CGI-ing.

Peter Lord explaining the mechanisms in Captain Pirate

Four out of hundreds of Captain Pirate's mouth shapes

Whilst there, I bumped into Joseph Wallace, who graduated from Newport the year after me, and we had a good old catch up. I have been waiting a year and a half to see Joe's graduation film, The Man Who Was Afraid of Falling and he finally released it online a few days ago. I always enjoy obviously handmade aesthetics and I come away from this film with a completely non-obtrusive, feel good interpretation.

Joe Wallace // Peter Lord

These kind of events always give me a good shake up and I come away buzzing and itching to animate. It's also a really easy way to meet other animators, swap stories and contact cards. I feel well an truly feel out of the loop right now, so I will be keeping an eager eye out for future events.

Dan Emmerson // Ben Mitchell // Joseph Wallace // Kat Michaelides