After last years triumphant effort we agreed to offer another helping hand to this years global event – Twestival Local. Given that ‘local’ has connotations of collaboration, we decided that 30-second stop-frame animation sting would be the perfect medium. Stop-frame is my first passion, as some of you will know, as I spent the first 5 years of my professional career animating on children’s series for TV.

Working with Amanda, Crystal and Leynete is always such a joy, this year we had the added spin of having to find someone who could make us an original origami ‘Twestival’ bird and Sam Tsang kindly stepped in to help us, (his website is here). First of all he went off and fine tuned the type of bird we were looking for and then he helped us understand the process on how it is made.

Because of our client commitments at Sliced Bread, it was very hard for us to give as much time as stop-frame needs. We provided the equipment/ materials and enlisted the help of some current students and graduates, to get the production done. Georgie, Charlie, Hannah and David all kindly gave up a week of their time to come to our studio and animate. Georgie and Charlie have provided an insight into the experience below. Special thanks to those who gave a ‘hand(s)’ during the weekend shoot too – Adam (@wrongcrowd), Jo (@joellybaby), Carmen, Natalie and Christina.

This year Twestival is going ‘Local’ in cities around the world on Thursday 24 March 2011. Events for Twestival Local will raise funds and awareness for local nonprofits that organizers identify for having an incredible impact within their own community.

The events can be as big or small as the city wants to make it. We have had Twestivals in a local pub, a bowling alley, a trapeze studio, and even a giant yacht, all thanks to the generosity of local donors and sponsors who come forward to support the volunteer efforts. It is about using your time, talent and resources to come together on one night to make a difference. Think global, act local.

Georgie Cobbs

Working on this Twestival project for Sliced Bread throughout the past 7 days has been exhausting yet definitely exciting. The prospect of a creating a stop-frame animation from start to finish in just a week definitely had its problems but putting together all of our resources and creative minds (and some sweets) everything got resolved calmly. It was incredibly inspiring to be spending the week in a place, bursting with creativity, like Shoreditch is. Animating paper and origami birds definitely had its hurdles and restrictions due to how fragile they are but we found a way to simply rig them and animate their movements convincingly.

Big thanks to Jamie Denham for giving four students/graduates the opportunity to be involved in such a wide-spread project and giving us the freedom to be creatively responsible and also to all the participants who were kind enough to give up their Saturday afternoon to volunteer their hands for the project.

Charlie

Oh my goodness! Where do I start?! I’d sum up the total experience as something like concept to animation in 6 days,fighting with blue tack, making and fixing mistakes we didn’t have time to make, pecking at grapes and MAMOM sweets while waiting for camera batteries to charge. For myself, the beginning started with high levels of excitement to be involved in a live project within the creative industry. The icing on the cake was that I’d be spending a week in the amazingly creative Shoreditch area. Nerves were normal as usual, as I was curious about how animating with 3 other individuals was going to turn out! It ended with a well deserved 30minute break on Sliced Breads amazing roof garden terrace, laughing joyously & hysterically (probably a result of sleep deprivation) at ourselves & the whole entire week with the amazing David Steed & Georgie Wright (Hannah you were there in spirit).

Awesome shout out to Sliced Bread’s head honcho, Jamie Denham, for giving students/ recent graduates the opportunity to get involved!

@stephenfry (via @ninjaboi) tweeted this earlier today, so twotally twool you’ll love twit!

Full link here:  Super News Twouble with Twitters

If you are in the animation industry and on Twitter, please add me (and I will auto follower). I am keen to get a group together where we can exchange industry news on jobs, films (features and shorts), games, literature, tutorials . .  essentially anything animation related. Twitter is an excellent way of ‘news feeding’ information.

Follow me at: http://twitter.com/3djamie

There is a Sliced Bread Animation Twitter account and this will become more active when the new site is up (http://twitter.com/slicedbreadanim).

There is also this animation group on TwitterGroups – http://twittgroups.com/group/animation

Paul Walsh’s (of BIMA) newest venture – Social networking application for mobile users.

Follow Wubud (on Twitter) and win a Mac Air when I reach 5,000 followers..

I’m in.