Manchester Animation Festival

Animating Tomorrow 2026

An electrifying two-day celebration of innovation, creativity, and collaboration in animation! Animating Tomorrow 2026 wass the ultimate event for the North-West animation community, uniting industry talent, trailblazing creatives, and global leaders in creative technology to revolutionise the way we bring stories to life. If you missed this event in the past, you can read more about it and see our highlights video here.

With in-depth hands-on workshops designed to inspire and empower as well as talks and demonstrations that dive deep into cutting-edge animation production pipelines and new technology from leading experts and practitioners. We hosted Making it in Greater Manchester, an evening showcase of regional projects, which was followed by a Northwestivus networking event.

Designed for those already working in the animation industry in leadership and senior production roles, Animating Tomorrow 2026 was your chance to network, learn, and shape the future of animation.

Animating Tomorrow is brought to you by Manchester Animation Festival in partnership with MediaCity Immersive Technologies Innovation Hub – a growing community of innovation in Virtual Production, Immersive Technologies and Gametech supporting businesses in Greater Manchester. This event is supported by Innovate UK as part of the Greater Manchester Innovation Accelerator Pilot Programme.

Explore Animating Tomorrow 2026

Schedule 
About the sessions & Workshops
Speakers and Workshop Leaders
Photo Gallery

Schedule

Day One – Monday 9 March 2026

08:30 – 09:00 | Arrival and Registration
09:00 – 09:15 | Welcome from MAF
09:15 – 10:30 | Art of the Possible Roundtable
Speakers:
Jo Redfern (Futrhood Media)
Criss Richards (McCann)
Lisa Brook (British Council)

10:45 – 13:30 – Speaker Presentations:
Virpi Kettu (Kettu Studios) Dogs’ Dales AR
Elodie Moog (Praxinos) How can 2D artists embrace Unreal Engine with Odyssey?

13:15 – 14:15 – Lunch
14:15 – 17:00 – Speaker Presentations:
David Cosgrove (RETìníZE) Animotive: VR MoCap and Virtual Production
Tom Box (Blue Zoo) Figuring Out Your Future: Agentic AI

17:00 – 17:30 – Closing Remarks & GMAIT update
17:30 – 18:30 – MAF Presents: Making it in Greater Manchester
Duncan Rudd and Max Brodie (3DR Studio & Nice Sound)
Bradley Harris (Krygon Studios)
Wes Wood (Animation Toolkit)
Annabeth Robinson (University of Salford)

18:30 – 20:30 | Northwestivus (Networking open to all! Takes place at The Salmon of Knowledge, MediaCity)

Day Two – Tuesday 10 March 2026

08:30 – 09:00 | Arrival
09:00 – 09:15 | Welcome & Day One Recap
09:15 – 10:30 | In Conversation: 50 years of innovation and creativity at Aardman
Sean Clarke, CEO
Sarah Cox, Creative Chief Director

10:30 – 14:45 | Workshops and Lunch Break
14:45 – 16:00 | Showcase
16:00 – 16:30 | Summary & Looking Forward

About the sessions & Workshops

As Aardman Animations celebrate their momentous 50th anniversary, we’re delighted to be joined by MD Sean Clarke and Creative Director Sarah Cox for an in-conversation discussion to uncover the innovations that have propelled the studios since 1976 and to take a look into the future of the UK’s biggest animation studio.<

Art of the Possible
Panel Discussion exploring the changes that innovative technologies might bring about to animation production and how these will shape the industry. Speaking on this panel are: Jo Redfern, digital media and youth strategist at Futrhood Media; Lisa Brook, Film & Creative Technology Relationship Manager at British Council; and Criss Richards, EMEA Creative Technology Lead at McCann.

How 2D artists can embrace Unreal Engine with Odyssey?
Elodie Moog, Praxinos
Join us for an insightful session exploring how the Odyssey 2D toolset can revolutionise your creative process in Unreal Engine. Whether you’re a storyboard artist, animator, technical artist, or designer, Odyssey’s powerful features can streamline workflows, enhance storytelling, and bring your projects to life with exceptional 2D art. Learn how Odyssey integrates seamlessly with Unreal Engine, offering new possibilities for animation, game design and visual storytelling, then vote for the topic of your choice for the workshop the day after!

Figuring Out Your Future: Agentic AI
Tom Box, Blue Zoo Animation
In an era of rapid technical change, we have moved past the novelty of next-word prediction and slop generators to tools that possess genuine reasoning, autonomy, and provide value. Looking past the headlines to evidence the shift from simplistic prompting to the architecting and orchestrating of context, we will explore how professionals are moving away from “prompt roulette” toward designing goal-oriented systems that plan and execute complex workflows with safety. Can we bypass the race to the bottom by utilising these agents with compound effect, allowing us to focus on the high-level judgment that defines each of us as a professional?

Dogs’ Dales AR – Transforming a Place with Transmedia Storytelling
Virpi Kettu, Kettu Studios
Dogs’ Dales is Kettu Studios transmedia project in Yorkshire, combining storytelling and gaming with education, tourism and entertainment, shining a new light on old locations.

Animotive: VR MoCap and Virtual Production
David Cosgrove, RETìníZE
Animotive is a VR MoCap tool that allows performers to truly embody their character – while also allowing directors to see their perfomers in live virtual environments, empowering them give perforrmance notes in real time. We are joined by Head of Production, David Cosgrove who will give background to Animotive, its place in 3D pipelines and how we want to empower creatives to quickly tell stories.

Making it in Greater Manchester
Making It in Greater Manchester is a show-and-tell celebration where makers from the world of animation show off their latest work, share how they did it, and chat about the ups and downs of bringing ideas to life.

Introducing BipBop with Duncan Rudd and Max Brodie
Designed and built for online distribution, the BipBop pilot was created and made by a small team in just a few months. We will share some of the strategies and workflows which made this possible.

Building Sven. A Photoreal Orangutan on an Indie Budget with Bradley Harris
Manchester-based indie studio 3 Minutes West came to Krygon Studios with a bold challenge:
For their next feature film, Turning Tales, they needed a photoreal, film-quality orangutan, but without the £6–10 million price tag quoted by major VFX houses.
In this talk, we’ll share how we’re using MetaHuman, Unreal Engine, and cutting-edge real-time workflows to bring Sven, a fully digital orangutan character, to life on an indie budget.
With support from Innovate UK, we’re exploring how advanced creature FX can be made faster, cheaper, and more accessible, opening the door for more independent producers to tell ambitious, character-driven stories without studio-sized resources.

Rooki by Animation Toolkit with Wes Wood
Meet Rooki, the first stop-motion armature that comes with its own ecosystem.
Every Rooki includes full access to the Anibild Digital Platform — a growing library of onion skins, 3D-printable STL assets, lip-sync tools, animation exercises, and Dragonframe-ready resources designed to help you learn, animate, and customise faster than ever.

Havelock’s Kingdom with Annabeth Robinson
Join Annabeth who will talk about the development of immersive heritage project using unreal, metahumans , and AI assisted mocap for an Innovate UK funded development project with Bright & Shiny productions.

Workshops

Workshop: Unlock 2D art in Unreal Engine with Odyssey
Get the chance to learn how to mix 2D and 3D in Unreal Engine with one of the following topics: Animating 2D FX around a 3D character or Making a storyboard in a 3D environment.
https://praxinos.coop/odyssey.php

Workshop: Agentic AI Bootcamp: From Zero to Custom Tools
Theory meets technical reality in this hands-on workshop designed to move professionals from spectators to “context architects”. Using tools like Claude Code and open-source equivalents, we will build tools with autonomous agents capable of planning and executing complex workflows. We will shift from simplistic prompting to algorithmic orchestration, designing bespoke utilities that solve real-world bottlenecks and understand the risks involved and how to mitigate them. Crucially, these experiments are grounded in sustainability; we will facilitate real-time monitoring of energy and water consumption to ensure our custom systems remain high-impact but low-footprint. Participants will leave with a practical framework for using “intelligent” agents with sustainability in mind, that move beyond slop.

Workshop: Making AR Art!
Create your own piece of AR art, diving into the storytelling and entertainment with Kettu Studios using the Artivive app as well as taking a look at similar applications.
There will be group work in this workshop! For this workshop we think it is better for attendees to use their own laptops as they may want to use art or tools they are familiar with using, however it is still possible to take part in the workshop without your own computer. We will ask you to confirm if you will bring your own laptop on day two of the event if you select this option

Workshop: Animotive
Animotive is a VR MoCap tool that allows perfomers to truly embody their character – while also allowing directors to see their perfomers in live virtual environments, empowering them give perforrmance notes in real time. The Animotive crew will demonstrate how you can quickly embody characters, load sets, interact with props – then export assets for to be used in other parts in the 3D pipeline.
https://www.animotive.com/studios

Speakers and Workshop Leaders

Sean Clarke
Aardman Animation
Sean Clarke is a senior entertainment executive with over 30 years of experience in the animation industry. His core expertise spans leadership of senior management teams, strategic planning, financing and brand development, integrated marketing campaigns across film, television, and digital platforms, as well as extending brands into consumer products and location-based entertainment.
Most recently Sean is a co-executive producer of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Netflix’s original film Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and an executive producer on the preschool series Very Small Creatures, and Aardman’s next film Shaun the Sheep: Beast of Mossy-bottom
In November 2019, Sean was appointed CEO of the multi-Academy Award®-winning Aardman Animations, succeeding co-founder David Sproxton after his 43-year tenure. Sean has been with Aardman for over two decades and previously led the Brand and Licensing division for more than ten years, playing a pivotal role in shaping the studio’s global brand presence.
Aardman Animations
instagram.com/aardmananimations/
linkedin.com/company/aardman
linkedin.com/in/sean-clarke-aardman

Sarah Cox
Aardman Animation
As Creative Chief Director, Sarah Cox sits on the Executive Board of Aardman Animations where her role is to shape the creative strategy and the Development slate. She played a central role in bringing Oscar-nominated ‘Robin Robin’, CG series ‘Lloyd of the Flies’, and Morph spin-off preschool show ‘The Very Small Creatures’ to Aardman’s portfolio. As Executive Producer, she contributed to Emmy-winning Shaun the Sheep productions, BAFTA winning Wallace and Gromit ‘Vengeance most Fowl’, and spearheaded collaborations with major partners like Lucasfilm, Pokémon, and Pingu.
Before joining Aardman, Sarah co-founded ArthurCox, an award-winning film and animation production company, developing and directing BAFTA-nominated projects such as ‘Nina Needs to Go!’ for Disney Junior and ‘Search It Up’ for Azoomee, and producing acclaimed works like ‘8 Minutes Idle’ and ‘John and Karen.’
Her stop motion short ‘Don’t Let it All Unravel’, was one of the 60 environmental films commissioned for the ‘Live Earth’ concerts in 2007 and has since won 11 international film awards and has been screened at numerous festivals and winning the Grand Prix at Tricky Women in Vienna 2008.
Her other independent shorts have been widely screened at International Festivals and include 2 British Animation Awards, a Silver Dove at Leipzig for Plain Pleasures in 2002 and ‘Heavy Pockets’ was also BAFTA nominated in 2004.
Sarah has taught animation at prestigious institutions including the NFTS and is a voting member of BAFTA and AMPAS. She contributes regularly to industry events presenting keynote speeches and joining discussion panels.
Instagram: @aardmananimations
https://uk.linkedin.com/company/aardman?trk=public_post_follow-view-profile
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarah-cox-8b123013

Elodie Moog
Praxinos
Elodie Moog cut her teeth as a technical-sales agent at TV Paint Développement before co-founding the startup Praxinos in late 2018. Since 2009, she’s been teaching 2D digital animation in famous universities like Les Gobelins, Animation Workshop, CalArts, Beijing Film Academy, and providing tech support to animators/film directors all around the globe, including Pixar, Blue Sky, Cartoon Saloon, Passion Pictures, and more.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/praxinos
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elodie-moog/
https://www.youtube.com/@Praxinos

Tom Box
Blue Zoo Animation
Tom Box is the co-founder and joint managing director of Blue Zoo Animation, one of the UK’s leading studios and a recipient of multiple Emmys and BAFTAs over its 25-year history.
Tom fell in love with programming in infant school and has spent his career sitting on the fence between art and code. A true creative technologist, he is obsessed with how emerging tools can push human creativity and entrepreneurship further, rather than replacing them. At Blue Zoo, Tom oversees the studio’s technical strategy and cultural evolution, including its B Corp certification, ensuring that as technology advances, the studio’s positive impact does too.
Blue Zoo Animation Studio
@blue_zoo
https://www.linkedin.com/company/blue-zoo-animation-studio/

Virpi Kettu
Kettu Studios
Director, Animator, Designer and Producer with 25 years of international experience in digital storytelling, character animation, and creative direction. Past employers include Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Creature Comforts), Universal Pictures, The National Film Board of Canada and DreamWorks. Also many music videos made including Katy Perry, Father John Misty and Radiohead.
Past 12 years Virpi has built Kettu Studios in the Yorkshire Dales that provides animation and immersive media production along with animation lectures and exciting animation workshops for all ages.
In Yorkshire Dales Kettu Studios has developed a transmedia storytelling project Dogs’ Dales, advancing local digital entertainment and educational offer. ” Kettu Studios “www.kettustudios.com
www.dogsdales.com
@kettustudios
@dogsdales
http://linkedin.com/in/virpikettu

David Cosgrove
RETìníZE
David is Head of Production and Asset Lead for Animotive at RETìníZE. Initially leading the post production on all 3D 360 Cinematic content at RETìníZE, David and the team began to develop their VR MoCap & Film-making app, Animotive.
Having spent over 10 years telling stories in immersive media using Maya, After Effects, Premiere, Unity & Unreal Engine – David now works with studios and educational institutions who want to utilise Animotive to create content that leverages Virtual Production techniques and real-time animation.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/animotive-retinize
https://www.instagram.com/animotive_com/

Jo Redfern
Futrhood Media
Jo is a digital media and youth strategist, and former animation Exec Producer. She has managed animated IP across YouTube and Roblox and is also a Podcast host and Speaker. Her previous experience spans BBC, Disney and her clients range from ITV Studios to The Premier League.

Lisa Brook
British Council
Lisa has worked in film and creative technology for 15 years specialising in festivals, live cinema events and XR. Alongside her work at British Council as Film & Creative Technology Relationship Manager, where she leads on creative XR projects and international collaboration, she is Artistic Director of Live Cinema UK where her portfolio includes cross sector live events involving live scores, XR, immersive and site specific work.
@britisharts

Criss Richards
McCann
Criss Richards is a Manchester-based applied AI and creative technology leader. He started his career in NHS infrastructure across the North West, where constrained budgets became a catalyst for creative problem solving and building novel solutions that actually worked. That resourcefulness carried him into technology consultancy, working across healthcare, digital transformation, and product development before landing at McCann Manchester, where he served as Head of Technology before founding the Tech Innovation Lab and leading the agency’s push into generative AI and production technology.
He now serves as EMEA Creative Technology Lead, working alongside the global synthetic media team at Omnicom Production. His focus is getting AI out of the demo room and into real creative workflows for global brands, asking and answering what’s genuinely possible when you put the right tools in the hands of creative teams.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mccann-manchester/

Photos