Bart Simpson and a Lord of the Rings hit the UK!

Animex, one of the biggest and best animation festivals in the UK is delighted to announce the attendance of Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, and Jason Schieffler, special effects expert for The Lord of the Rings films.

www.animex.net

Animex is a major animation festival held from Tuesday 28 - Friday 31 January 2003. Organised by the University of Teesside, in collaboration with Middlesbrough Council, Animex is now in its fourth year and looks set to be bigger and better than ever.

Split into two parts - a series of community events such as workshops etc (see below for more details) and a conference based at the University of Teesside featuring talks by some big names (Ray Harryhausen was here a couple of years ago) and screenings. And yes, it all takes place in Middlesbrough!

The first two days of the event promise a mix of eclectic and brilliant happenings, with an exciting array of animation activity in and around the town centre of Middlesbrough, including: Animex Screen - a special series of animation screenings held at a local cinema; Animex Xtreme - a showcase of bizarre, rarely seen, off-the-wall animated films; Animex Teentoons - an introduction to the joys of creating animation for young people and Animex Town - a special project for community groups to create animation of their own.

Thursday and Friday sees the University host the industry conference that started it all - Animex Talk! Attended by some of the world's leading animators, producers and directors, Animex Talk! has again attracted some top people. This year's line up features voice-over specialist and voice of Bart Simpson Nancy Cartwright, and a talk from Jason Schieffler from WETA about the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, among many others.

Previous guests at Animex Talk! have included four Oscar winners: Phil Tippett, special effects animator behind the original Star Wars trilogy and the RoboCop films; Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion pioneer who created the skeleton warriors in Jason & the Argonauts and countless other amazing creatures for the movies; Bob Godfrey, the brains behind the classic cartoon Roobarb & Custard and Henry's Cat, and Michael Dudok De Wit, who went from the festival to win an Oscar for his emotional animated short film Father & Daughter.

The Animex animation festival began in 2000, developing from the popular computer animation courses offered at the University of Teesside. These include BA (Hons) Computer Animation, BSc (Hons) Visualisation, BA (Hons) Computer Games Design, BSc (Hons) Computer Games Programming, BSc (Hons) Virtual Reality, MSc in Computer-Aided Graphical Technology Applications, MA in Computer Animation and MSc in Virtual Reality. More details of these courses can be found on www.tees.ac.uk

For more information about Animex, including booking details, visit the website: www.animex.net All guests appear subject to work commitments

For more information about Middlesbrough (including how to get there and accommodation details), visit: www.middlesbrough.gov.uk

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