ANNEGRET RICHTER
Red Vision has now established facilities in Manchester, London and Bristol, and is opening further production facilities in Toronto. It has produced CGI and Visual Effects for a number of nominated and award winning series, winning the 2004 and 2005 BAFTA Craft awards for Vfx, and the 2006 RTS award for Vfx. Mousley has been a board member of BAFTA North, is a regular participant speaker at the Animex festival at the University of Teesside and also attends the Presidential Advisory Board of the UCA – San Francisco. He is an enthusiastic proponent of collaboration and co-operation in UK Vfx and post production, and sees the future of CG in the UK in many ways developing along the lines of a collegiate and integrated approach between facilities to provide the platform for the major national and international productions that the UK clearly has the talent and resources to take on.
Between 1998 and 2001 An created and directed 64 Zoo Lane (a Millimages/ Zoo Lane Productions co-production), an animated TV series for children. 64 Zoo Lane was nominated for a BAFTA in 2000 and won the Best Pre-school Category at the British Animation Awards in 2002. An has written and illustrated 13 picture books, all published by Hodder Children’s Books and Oxford University press. These include: six 64 Zoo Lane stories, Smile, Crocodile, Smile (winner at the 2004 Nottingham Children’s book awards) and her latest title Dear Dragon. An regularly visits schools and festivals accompanied by a bubble-blowing dragon, a crocodile-sized toothbrush and a box full of mini-zoetropes, to talk about her work and conduct workshops with young children.
Since joining Studio AKA, Marc has designed and directed many award-winning commercials, including spots for ‘ORANGE’, ‘NATWEST’, ‘COMPAQ’, and most recently the 'NATIONAL LOTTERY'. He has also designed and directed three short films in the series PICA TOWERS that have become cult viewing for many fans. Marc has also directed a promo for highly acclaimed Icelandic band Mum. He is currently working on another short film for Studio AKA. In addition to his animation career, Marc is the recipient of the AOI’s ‘Illustrator Of The Year’ award. He is currently in the final stages of illustrating a children’s book, written by acclaimed author Helen Ward.
Mitchell attended DeMontfort University in Leicester, England to pursue a Fine Arts degree, but switched majors to eventually graduate with an Honours degree in Graphic Design under the mentorship of John Grace. His career began in 1985 as a pioneer in computer animation at Electronic Arts and Array Productions in London and led to work at London post-production facility The Mill, where he introduced 2-D morphing to the London industry. Phil has won numerous international awards (Golden Arrow, Spot Italia, Imagina-Pixel INA, etc.) for his work on animated commercials. After immigrating to Canada in 1993 to co-found Mainframe Entertainment, Inc. Phil was part of the team that created ReBoot™, the first-ever computer animated television series. Until recently, he was a senior executive at Mainframe, which has consistently produced award-winning television productions and movies for young audiences around the world. In November 2005 he joined Singapore’s Infinite Frameworks to work on their CG feature project “Sing to the Dawn” as director. Phil began painting again with acrylics in 2000 as a creative pursuit and to keep his hands busy after quitting smoking.
Represented internationally by Ridley Scott Associates, Hardstaff has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. His clients include Radiohead, the BBC and Orange, yet it is very much the non-commercial and more avant garde applications of his talent that have led to his considerable critical success, most notably his two films for Sony PlayStation (‘History of Gaming’ and the controversial and anti-corporate ‘Future of Gaming’). Hardstaff is interested in innovative new directions stemming from the interface between Moving Image / Sculpture and Graphic Design, and particularly in the increasingly prevalent emergence of these new graphic hybrids as non-commercial media of both personal and political expression. Johnny Hardstaff is now focusing particularly on non-commercial innovative practical research projects.
His fusion of creative and technical skills has led him to be employed in a diverse range of roles in the field of computer graphics: including a spell in research and development at IBM, commercial certified training and consultancy for both Alias | Wavefront and Escape Studios, as well as production work for broadcast, corporate and ad-agency clients both nationally and internationally for which he has won a number of awards. He joined the BBC in 1996 working in the Digital Effects Workshop and assisted in setting up BBC Post-Productions first 3D Animation department where he worked on a diverse range of 3D and interactive projects, ranging from character animation to complex visual effects. Currently, he is employed as Senior 3D Artist and CG Supervisor at Condor Digital in London working on commercials, pop-promos and high-end tv projects. |
Annegret Richter is an assistant professor at the Institute of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Leipzig in Germany. She is currently writing her dissertation project on “Animated documentary - documentary animation”. She is a Fulbright Alumni and graduated from the University of Leipzig with a Masters Degree in American Studies and Media Studies. She wrote her master thesis on the subject of “Social and media criticism in American prime time animation series”. In Leipzig she teaches courses on film and television theory and practical documentary film production as well as on animation studies. Since 2004, she has curated the Animation programme at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Films. She also works at a local radio station in Leipzig where she hosts a weekly show about film, and has been writing film reviews for a magazine for the past ten years. Her publications include reviews of festivals and books as well as articles on animated documentary and animation. 
David Mousley moved from the music business and joined Red Vision in 1996, initially working with the company as a client, and ultimately becoming Commercial Director. A year later he became Managing Director, with particular responsibility for new projects and strategic business development, in order to utilise the core CG and software skill sets of the company. This mirrors his roles in Film Red, Red Vision’s subsidiary company, established to develop projects for film and television drama co-production.
Professor Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University. He has published widely in the field of Animation Studies including ’Understanding Animation’, ‚’Animation and America’. ’Animation : Genre and Authorship’, ’Fundamentals of Animation’ and ’Halas and Batchelor Cartoons : An Animated History’ (with Vivien Halas). He was series consultant for the BBC’s ’Animation Nation’ series, has curated animation festival programmes worldwide, and is a curriculum consultant for animation courses in the USA, Canada, South Africa, and Australia.
Mike Uden’s first experience in animation was as a Rostrum Cameraman on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. By comparison, his most recent work was on Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet - over 35 years later! In between times he has worked mostly on commercials (making Del Monte oranges fly off trees, making Schweppes animals talk and putting Steve McQueen in a Ford Puma!). He ran his own Animation and Effects company, Mike Uden Opticals, between 1982 to 92 and was the Production Director of one of London’s leading post houses, Rushes, from1992 to 2002. Nowadays he takes life a little easier, dividing his time between teaching English and working on the occasional film and TV project.
An Vrombaut was born in Belgium in 1967. She studied animation at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent and at the Royal College of Art in London. Her graduation film Little Wolf (1992) won many international awards including Best First Film at Annecy 1993. A second short When I grow up I want to be a tiger (1996) was funded by the Mercedes-Benz Art Foundation and selected for the Berlin Film Festival. 
Marc Craste is a senior animation director working at Studio AKA in London. Before coming to the UK in 1997, Marc worked extensively in animation studios in Sydney and in Copenhagen. 
Phil Mitchell was born in 1962 and raised in Warwickshire in the heart of the English Midlands, a region steeped in history, ancient architecture and natural beauty. He developed an early appreciation for the rich history of the area, and began studying art history in high school. As a teenager he assisted his father in the complete restoration of a water mill and windmill, both historically significant local structures, during his summer holidays.
Thomas Walsh graduated from the European School of Classical Animation at Ballyfermot Senior College, Dublin in 1994. He has worked professionally as a Special Effects Key Assistant Animator for the Don Bluth Studio in Ireland and for the Walt Disney Studio in France, contributing to feature films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997) and Tarzan (1999). He graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Cultural Studies from the Norwich School of Art and Design in 2002, with a particular interest in Masamune Shirow, Mamoru Oshii and Klaus Theweleit. He is currently a postgraduate researcher at Loughborough University School of Art and Design, researching both the history and the postcolonial legacy of a contemporary Irish animation industry. 
A graduate of St. Martins School of Art, Johnny Hardstaff has forged a highly successful and award winning career in progressive moving graphic image. His films have been exhibited widely at major museums of modern art and cultural institutes worldwide, from Tate Modern, the NFT and the ICA through to the Laforet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo.