Manchester Animation Festival selects ‘The Race in the Sky’

Animation, Model Making, Stop-Motion Animation, Visual Effects
Festival Laurels - Official Selection: Manchester Animation Festival 2017

The Manchester Animation Festival

The Manchester Animation Festival is a yearly event, held to celebrate the animated art form. It is the UK’s largest animation festival that invites not only animators from the UK, but from around the world.

This new festival is now in its third year and naturally we’re very keen to support it. Which is why we are thrilled to announce that our work will be showing this year. ‘The Race In The Sky’ will screen as part of their Commissioned Films category in November.

Still image for 'The Race in the Sky' - Puppetry & Stop Motion Animation

The Race In The Sky

We completed ‘The Race In The Sky’ in September 2016 as our sixth animation for CiTV’s Share A Story. Share-A-Story is a competition for young viewers to enter their stories for the chance to have them turned into an animation. ‘The Race In The Sky’ was written and narrated by 11-year-old Jenotha Seenivasan.

The story is a cosmic tale of the sun and moon who race to decide who ‘owns’ the sky. A wise cloud declares that the first to make it around the world wins the sky.

The models used in the film were crafted from recycled materials. They were given a bit of magic using ‘light writing’, long exposures created with torchlight and bare light bulbs. We used a number of techniques in this animation. These included stop motion animation; puppetry; green screen; and compositing.

We would like to give special thanks to Nina Noon, Andrea Haenze, Chris Mair and Leah Hadley. They were all fantastic and got stuck in with us during the production. The film will be screening on Tue November 14th at 12;10 and Wed 15th at 15:40.