Animex Student Animation Awards - A Celebration of Student Animation Worldwide

The Animex festival was first launched at the Middlesbrough-based University of Teesside in 2000 to celebrate all aspects of international animation. Previous guest speakers have included animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen, the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright and one of the animators behind the Lord of the Rings series, Jason Schleifer.

The festival next year will include the Animex Student Animation Awards, a unique competition dedicated to recognising and rewarding student animation produced both in the UK and abroad. Sponsors for this year's awards include Adobe, Alias Wavefront, Apple, ChromaColour, Corel, Discreet, Iomega, Macromedia, Nvidia, Maxon, Pixelution, ToonBoom and Viglen.

The categories in the 2003 competition are: -

• Best 3D Computer Animation
• Best 2D Computer Animation
• 3D Computer Animation for Games
• Best Computer Web Animation
• Best Visual Effects
• Best Short Animation
• Best Experimental Animation
• Best Editing Award
• Best Sound for Animation

Selected entries in this year's competition will be shown at BALTIC, the major new international centre for contemporary art situated on the south bank of the Tyne in Gateshead (www.balticmill.com), on the 27th, 28th and 30th of January 2004. Visitors to these free showings will be invited to contribute to an ‘Audience Award’ by voting for their favourite animation.

Entry to this new award scheme is free and open to both UK and overseas students. Any frame by frame or computer assisted animated film or video created by a student between 1st January 2002 and 31st July 2003 will be eligible.

For an application pack contact Justin S Greetham (j.s.greetham@tees.ac.uk) Senior Lecturer in Graphical Applications and Visualisation on tel 01642 342692, alternatively visit the website at: http://www.animex.net. All entries must be sent to Paul Bunnett, School of Computing & Mathematics, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA before 1st August 2003.

---