Annecy Animation Festival 2019

It’s been a few weeks now but I’ve finally got a bit of time to sort my post-Annecy notes and sketches. I haven’t been for a while, this being my fourth trip. It never fails to inspire you and re-ignite your love for animation! You come away wanting to DRAW haha!

The ticketing system is a bit more high tech than when I last went…all QR code scanning and app booking. It took me a few days to get the hang of this as I seemed to have missed booking ANYTHING. Luckily I bagged an additional screening of ‘I lost my body’ (j’ai purdu mon corps) which was being produced at the last studio I worked at (Pipangai) on Réunion Island.

This film was EPIC. Exactly the kind of animation and storytelling I love to see in a feature at the moment, as it felt very fresh and engaging. It was a bit of a downer of a film. I mean, it’s French so of course it’s moody 😉 But it is beautiful in the way it was executed and blows the socks off anything else in the independent circuit right now. The first 5 minutes are sooo cool. It’s not the sort of shot choices you see in a 2D animated film (probably because of the directors background and the combining of 3D and 2D tools). Here’s a trailer:

I got my head around the ticketing eventually and saw a load of great short films (for me, these are the best bit of festivals). The range of styles and forms the storytelling takes is the big THING that inspires me. I wrote a bunch of notes along side sketches, hence why the long decode time as I’m often writing in the dark..! I met many lovely people there including old friends, which is always a big highlight. I got to chat away to many folks at Toon Boom whom I’ve never met in person, but I’ve recently completed some promo work for as part of their 25th anniversary. You can watch that below:

There’s a whole section of the Annecy festival called Mifa, which is sort of the business area. You can have meetings here, go check out companies who make software, studios who are recruiting, and so on. You’ll often get some freebies too! I did a fair amount of chatting here, so the week was quite busy all in all. I DID manage to squeeze some sketching in though. I’ve also got a collection of sketches from my half day in Geneva before I headed home, which I’ll aim to post soon. I’d like to add some colour to more of these, as the scenery was so bright and often I didn’t get time to paint on location. The storms rolled in for a few days, which meant there was a real contrast! Could’ve just spent a week there sketching and painting, never mind all the films! Here’s a gallery of sketches and many more photos (iPhone is just a bit too easy). I took a disposable black and white camera that I bought in the airport on a whim. When I get those developed, I’ll post a few! I met one of my heroes, Ronnie Del Carmen there. He as a lovely chap and I’ve been a fan of his work and comics for years. We have a lo-fi selfie, so I’ll be sure to post him one when the roll is finished 🙂