Manchester Animation Festival

Animating Tomorrow

Animating Tomorrow 2026 takes place on Mon 9 & Tue 10 March. More details here.

Since 2024, with the support of Media City Immersive Technology Innovation Hub, MAF have been running an event called Animating Tomorrow. Designed for those already working in the animation industry in leadership and senior production roles, specifically in the Greater Manchester area, Animating Tomorrow examines how emerging technologies and innovative approaches are reshaping the future of animation.

Previous guest speakers have come from Industrial Light and Magic, Cloud Imperium Games, Aardman, dock10, BlueZoo, Moho, Epic Games, Realtime and more.

There have been more changes to the animation industry in the past 5 years than there have been the 30 or so years prior to it, and we still don’t have a general consensus or material grip on the way that AI will change our industry for good or ill. Animating Tomorrow allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of the industry, to take a glimpse into the future and to consider how innovations might change the way we do business. If a.i is here to stay, what do we as artists need to do in order to put artists first, to not only retain jobs but create jobs and how do we do that in an ethically sound way?

Innovation doesn’t mean the flashiest tech or the latest bit of software, you can still innovate with a pencil and a scrap of paper, but Animating Tomorrow gives us the headspace to explore what we mean by innovation and how we can implement these sparks of ingenuity into our day to day lives.

Over 2 days, we invite the community for a dynamic exploration of the cutting edge. With hands-on demos, informative panels, sharing sessions and networking opportunities we have are able to bring together the region’s incredible animation community to connect with technologists, evangelists, manufacturers and fellow creatives who are leading the way with cutting edge hardware and software. With the community able to explore the technology through hands-on testing and free flowing conversations and formal feedback sessions, the possibilities of incorporating these technologies into workflows were top of the agenda. Big questions such as the ethical side of change is explored and discussed in these enriching sessions.

Previous workshops have included:
MoPo
NVIDIA Omniverse
MetaHuman in a Moment
Animotive
OptiTrack
Universal Face Rig
Vicon Motion Capture with dock10
Immersive Creativity: Crafting Stop Motion Magic with VR Technology
New Ways to Think 2D Animation with Moho

Explore the programmes.