Industry Insights #2
Location: The Mac Thursday 21st November 2024
A special event hosted by AniMates in partnership with HaywardHawk.
For our 9th AniMates event, we were spoiled with this venue! Tonight we hosted another Industry insights in the Mac, Belfast’s home of international art exhibitions, live theatres and top shows and events.
It truly did not disappoint, and the best red wine we have had Id like to add!
Arrival drinks kicked off promptly at 6.30pm. Its always a joy seeing the regulars roll in and ofcourse a few new faces as well. Aware its a school night, we began the festivities sharply at 7pm.
Our first speaker was Steve Woods, an animator, writer, speaker, and auther of the newly released "drawing The Line", the first book on Irish animation. Steve kicked the night off with an excellent talk and afterwards I was thrilled to purchase a signed copy of his book. I look forward to reading this! Get your copy here https://www.stevewoods.ie/
Next up was Adam from Adams Animation Academy. Practically a celebrity at this stage because if you are in the animation community its likely you have already taken his course or heard talk of it! I took Adams Toon Boom course a few years ago and found it fantastic, so I was super excited to meet Adam in real life! Adam took to the mic with a talk about the industry, it was both interesting, informative, entertaining and full of excellent Dad jokes. If you haven’t taken a course with Adam, I highly recommend you do, check out https://www.adamsanimationacademy.com/
Following Adams talk, Ian from Elk stepped up to tell us all about the exciting studio developments and up and coming news about ELK. We were also treated to a lovely video of Dundalk, Elks home and what a great place it looks! Ians talk was super positive for the future of animation in Ireland and a breath of fresh air. Its always exciting to have some insight into whats coming in the future! Check out ELK at -
https://www.elkstudios.tv/work
And is if all that wasn’t exciting enough, Andy Wyatt, Ireland & UKs Toonboom partner hosted a raffle to allow one of our guests to win a years ToonBoom License! Safe to say we were all a little bit jelous of the winner for this prize! Head on over to hear to learn more about Toonboom https://www.toonboom.com/products/harmony
And for those still standing after this awesome line up, after chucking out time a handful of us headed down the road to the traditional pub The John Hewit who had reserved us the cosy nook so we could spend the rest of the evening networking and drinking the finest beer in belfast!
Thankyou to our speakers and guests, we cant wait to see you all again soon!
