Manchester Animation Festival

Animating Tomorrow 2024

A dynamic exploration of the cutting edge—Animating Tomorrow examined how emerging technologies and innovative approaches are reshaping the future of animation. With digital puppetry, meta human creation, production management and design and layout all explored, labs and workshops empowered studios to push the boundaries of creativity and contribute to the ongoing evolution of the animation industry in the North-West of England. 

With hands-on demos, informative panels, refreshments and networking opportunities, animation studios big and small were welcomed to the business to business event held at Host at MediaCity on the 12-13 March 2024.

Animating Tomorrow is brought to you by Manchester Animation Festival and is supported by 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 Programme.

Day One – Tuesday 12 March 2024

09:00 – Welcome

09:30 – 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.

Guests: Alex Lambert, Creative Director at Happy Finish & BXRN; Annie Shaw, Producer Virtual Production, VFX & Mocap at REALTIME; Phil Stewart, Head of Realtime at Blue-Zoo Animation; moderated by Entertainment Technology Consultant Ben Lumsden.

11:00 – Demo Labs – MoPo, NVIDIA Omniverse, MetaHuman in a Moment & Animotive

12:30 – Lunch (plus OptiTrack demo)

13:15 – Demo Labs – MoPo, NVIDIA Omniverse, MetaHuman in a Moment & Animotive

17:00 – Closing Remarks

17:30 – Drinks Reception (plus OptiTrack demo)

Day Two – Wednesday 13 March 2024

09:00 – Welcome and Recap

10:00 – Animating Tomorrow – Roundtable Discussion: Implementing what we have learned, understanding issues, big questions.

11:30 – Leadership Roundtable and tour of HOST

12:30 – End of event

Information  for workshops

MoPo
A unique virtual puppetry production tool used to create high quality, stylised, animated content in a fraction of the time of usual animation production. In this lab you will learn about the software and get a chance to have a go at using it. https://www.madewithmopo.com/

NVIDIA Omniverse
A game-changing tool for real-time simulation and collaboration. In this lab you’ll learn about Omniverse solutions that can revolutionise your workflows, enhance collaboration, and bring your creative visions to life. https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/omniverse/

MetaHuman in a Moment
MetaHuman is a complete framework that gives anyone the power to create, animate, and use highly realistic digital human characters in any way imaginable. In this lab you’ll get a chance to learn the basics of MetaHuman and even have a go at making one.Presented by members of Epic’s MetaHuman team based in Manchester.  https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman

Animotive
Animotive harnesses spatial computing, generative AI and real-time rendering tech to make 3D animation production fast, fun and affordable. It democratises the 3D animation production pipeline by tearing down the technical barriers and removing up to 80% of the cost. Brought to you from RETìníZE one of the world’s leading creative-tech companies, working across AR, VR, AI and software development. In this lab you will learn about the software and get a chance to have a go at using it. https://www.retinize.com/

OptiTrack
OptiTrack™ is the largest motion capture provider in the world, offering high-performance optical tracking at the most affordable prices in the industry. The OptiTrack product line includes motion capture software and high-speed tracking cameras, as well as contract engineering services.  https://www.optitrack.com/