ANIMEX – Effects and Games

Animex, Middlesbrough's annual celebration of animation, returns in the New Year featuring a mix of screenings and talks. Guests include video games writer Rhianna Pratchett and Tom Martinek from the legendary film special effects company Industrial Light & Magic.

Now in its sixth year, the Animex festival runs from Monday 31 January to Friday 4 February 2005, with events across the Tees Valley. The festival begins with the two-day Animex Game, where video games experts debate the industry, followed by Animex Workshops, a one-day session of practical tips from experts to both aspiring and professional animators, and concludes with the main event, Animex Talk! - a two-day animation conference, featuring some of the biggest names in the world of animation today.

Rhianna Pratchett is a freelance games writer and reviewer, appearing regularly in PC Zone, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Computer Buyer and Official Xbox magazine, amongst others. For the past year she has also been giving talks, consulting and working on scripts for computer games. Rhianna will speak on Monday 31 January at the University.

Other guests at Animex Game include Chris Crawford, founder of International Games Developers Association, respected author and widely heralded as the father of games design, and Aleks Krotoski, games broadcaster and researcher.

Animex Talk! sees Tom Martinek, a CG Supervisor from Industrial Light & Magic, deliver a talk about the films he has worked on in his career, which include Mask 2 (currently in production), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Minority Report, A.I., The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2, Mission: Impossible and many others.

Joining Tom will be Curtis Jobling, the designer of the worldwide hit children's television show Bob the Builder, and Ed Harris, a ten year veteran of the computer animation industry having worked in video games, special effects, commercial production, corporate animation, technical visualization, medical animation, web graphics, animation instruction, trade show graphics and magazine advertising.

Animex also includes the results of the Animex Student Animation Awards, screenings of animated films created by local people and animation displayed in and around Middlesbrough town centre.

Not content with showing and talking about animation, Animex has introduced two new elements to commission work from the region. Animex Production offers professional animation firms in the region the opportunity to create new animated films, while Animex Pitch Party is aimed at amateur animators in the region.

For further information about Animex Production and Animex Pitch Party, or any other part of Animex, visit: www.animex.net, email: info@animex.net or call 01642 342691.

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