In this lightening presentation, Animation Duo Joanna Quinn and Les Mills will cram their 35-year animation journey into one intense hour – do not blink! They will share the trials, tribulations and joys of working together to create their award-winning animated films, highlighting their creative process, working methods and mutual love of character. There will be plenty of behind-the-scenes clips, lots of anecdotes and a delicious selection of original artwork to feast your eyes upon.
British animator Joanna Quinn discovered animation at Middlesex University London while studying Graphic Design. Her graduation film Girls Night Out, kick-started Joanna’s career by winning 3 awards at the Annecy Animation Festival in 1987. She is renowned internationally for her drawing skills, wonderful characterisations and her humour. Joanna’s films have won many awards including 4 BAFTA’s, 3 EMMY’s and 3 OSCAR® nominations. Joanna is a committed educator and has an Honorary Doctorate from 3 UK universities and is an Honorary Fellow at the Royal College of Art, London.
Writer & Producer Les Mills studied Fine Art in Cardiff, London and the USA but gradually became more interested in film, culminating in him becoming Director of the Film School at University of Wales, Newport. He first collaborated with Joanna on her graduation film Girls Night Out and in 1988 they formed their company Beryl Productions International. Les wrote & produced the next 3 award winning Beryl films and produced Wife of Bath for which he won a Bafta and an Emmy. In 2022 he received the British Animation Awards Writers Award and was nominated for an OSCAR® for Affairs of the Art.
‘Impossible Figures and other stories’ is a film triptych, which consists of three animated shorts. The three parts were created between 2014 and 2021. During the masterclass, Marta Pajek will share her creative process, starting from finding the concept, collecting ideas, inspirations and motifs, through the stage of writing, creating the storyboard and visuals to incorporating sound and music.
Marta Pajek is an award-winning Polish animation filmmaker. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, she studied at the Animated Film Studio headed by legendary animator Jerzy Kucia. Pajek later studied under the mentorship of Estonian animator Priit Pärn. She has directed several animated shorts, including ‘After Apples’ and the award-winning ‘Sleepincord’. Her latest project is the ‘Impossible Figures and other stories’ animated film triptych, which was produced by Animoon.
‘Impossible Figures and other stories’ is a film triptych, which consists of three animated shorts. The three parts were created between 2014 and 2021. During the masterclass, Marta Pajek will share her creative process, starting from finding the concept, collecting ideas, inspirations and motifs, through the stage of writing, creating the storyboard and visuals to incorporating sound and music.
Nik Phelps is an American musician, known for his versatility and ability to play wind instruments, particularly saxophone and clarinet. He developed a passion for music at an early age, leading him to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Phelps has made significant contributions to the world of cinema, especially animation, where his distinctive sound has enriched countless films and projects. He has collaborated with acclaimed artists and bands such as Tom Waits and Frank Zappa, and is a key member of the Club Foot Orchestra, known for its innovative live soundtracks for silent films and animations. As a respected composer and arranger, Phelps remains an important figure at the intersection of music and film, leaving a lasting impact on audiences worldwide.
In this masterclass, Filipa Gaspar will explore symbolisms in film and her process of making Home, a short-animated documentary. In cinema, everything matters and should play a part. This is why Filipa will analyse a few points on important matters when making a film such as color, framing and guiding the eye. These will help us be aware of key points to consider when making a film which will lead us to the second topic of the class. Filipa will talk in depth of the steps of making a short film and which approach makes more sense to her personally. She will not only talk about the whole of pre-production, production and post-production but also she will talk a little bit on what steps to take afterwards such as presenting it in festivals or getting funding.
Filipa is a freelance director, 2D artist and designer based in Valencia, Spain. She always has been attracted to graphic novels and animation but it was only at 22 that she picked up a brush and had a proper go at art. She graduated from Animation Ba at UWE in Bristol (UK) and this is where she developed her skills and worked on multiple student productions. She also worked on the US based short film Flutter by Adam Levy (Disney TD) as a background artist which made it to the Oscar’s long list. At the moment, she’s working on a couple of productions: an animated short film based in Vancouver as a lead concept artist and background artist and a live action short film which is a Dutch and Spanish coproduction as an art director.
Stop motion animation in advertising is usually a widely used resource, although due to the characteristics of the technique, it is sometimes difficult to adapt to the times and the demands of this medium. In this masterclass, we’ll see Coke Riobóo’s work over the last two years, a tour of the different techniques used in advertising and strategies for working efficiently. Of all the techniques analysed, special attention will be paid to the technique of plasticine on backlit glass. Coke Riobóo is one of the few artists in the world to use it, with a live demonstration at the end of the session.
Musician, composer and animator. He has directed and animated five shortfilms and a web series, composed the soundtrack of several shortfilms and three feature films, and has taught animation workshops around the world. Winner of a Goya Award for his 2006 shortfilm Said ́ s Journey (2006).
This masterclass aims to make people reflect on and understand the power and individuation of image and sound for audiovisual element construction, particularly in the animated field. Through case studies and quick perception exercises, the audience is led to understand how we absorb visual and auditory information when we watch an animation. Moreover, how it is crucial to understand this process to enlarge the possibilities of creation and awareness of what is created in terms of animated sound images.
Eliane Gordeeff is an animator, professor, and researcher at CIEBA in Portugal and LAAD in Brazil and holds a Ph.D. in Multimedia from Lisbon University in Portugal. She is a member of ASIFA, the Society For Animation Studies, and Casa da Animação. In 2018, she edited the book Aesthetic Interferences: The Stop Motion Technique in the Animation Narrative and became the Portugal, Spain, and Brazil correspondent for the online animation journal Zippy Frames. Gordeeff has published more than 70 academic and non-academic texts, most of which are available online on Research Gate (with more than 13,000 readers.). Besides, she also coordinates a Portuguese language “index” named Acadêmicos da Animação, with academic texts edited and published in Brazil.
‘COLA Animation was established in 2015 with the initial goal of advancing and promoting animation in Portugal. Composed of artists, creatives, and more technical elements, united to develop and produce the most varied projects. In 2024, we continued to grow as a cooperative, as did our interest in the most varied areas of film and audiovisual production. On this incredible journey, we have been lucky enough to meet new colleagues and friends, to receive awards and distinctions, and all while sharing what we do with enthusiasm and passion.’
A self-taught animator and builder, he later trained at the Centre for Research and Studies in Multimedia at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon, continuing his specialisation in the technique of stop-motion animation. Although he has a strong preference for this technique, his professional career has led him to take part in various projects using a wide variety of animation and real image techniques. He currently works as a producer, director, and animator at COLA, Colectivo Audiovisual, where he is a founding member and director.
Piet Kroon presents a masterclass on Storyboarding for feature animation. Tracking the evolution of a sequences he developed for well-known animated features, like Iron Giant, Shrek2, Despicable Me, Rio2 and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, he will discuss his strategies and techniques, offering an insight into his process. Storyboarding is a crucial creative step in the production process: the first visual translation from script to screen. It gives the story a work out, exploring ideas, beats, scenes, character, acting, action, comedy and staging. It helps to pull everything into focus and make any film rise above itself. This is an inside look into the messy kitchen of animation. There is always more than one way to skin a cat.
At 6’7” Piet Kroon stands as one of the tallest internationally acclaimed filmmakers working in animation today: always pushing for new heights, never talking down to an audience. He spearheaded the development and directed the animation of
Warner Bros.’ irreverent cult comedy Osmosis Jones, about a cool white blood cell (Chris Rock) and a stuck up cold pill (David Hyde Pierce) that fight a nasty cold (Laurence Fishburne) inside Bill Murray’s rundown body. Kroon developed, wrote and directed HEINZ (2019), an animated comedy feature for young adults, based on a pleasantly deranged newspaper comic about a surly Amsterdam cat. As writer/director, story artist and story consultant Kroon brought his unique visual imagination to scores of animated features, ranging from Brad Bird’s fantastic Iron Giant (1997), Shrek2 (2004) (contributing Pinocchio’s fetish for girlie-underwear) to the gorgeous idiosyncratic Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022).
An insight into the creative process. Animation and experimental films consider what is between the frame, shifting time. An exploration of materials and techniques, from a red crayola to pioneering motion capture, and AI. Sesame Street to museums.
President of ASIFA International, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars), Deanna is in numerous books on experimental animation, spotlighted as one of four “Women in the Limelight” in Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History. She lives in Southern Oregon, USA on a lane with goats, chickens, a cat, and family.
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