Animating Tomorrow 2026

Explore Animating Tomorrow 2026

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Schedule
About the sessions & Workshops
Speakers and Workshop Leaders

Applications for Animating Tomorrow 2026 are now closed.

Join us for an electrifying two-day celebration of innovation, creativity, and collaboration in animation! Animating Tomorrow 2026 is 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 will dive deep into cutting-edge animation production pipelines and new technology from leading experts and practitioners. Keep the evening free as we host Making it in Greater Manchester, an evening showcase of regional projects, followed by a Northwestivus networking event. More details coming soon.

Designed for those already working in the animation industry in leadership and senior production roles, Animating Tomorrow 2026 is your chance to network, learn, and shape the future of animation. Don’t just imagine tomorrow—come animate it with us!

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.

Details

This is a closed event and is free to attend for successful applicants. It includes refreshments, lunch and a networking event.

This event is open to companies based in Greater Manchester and the North-West.

The event will be aimed towards those in active employment in senior production roles in the animation industry. It is open to both studio representatives as well as freelancers with a proven employment record in the region. There is a maximum of two places per studio available.

Attendees are expected to attend both Day One and Day Two.

Location: HOST, MediaCity, Salford, M50 2ST

Date: Mon 9 & Tue 10 March 2026

Apply

Applications for Animating Tomorrow 2026 are now closed.
Please register your interest via the form before Monday 16 February (Noon), places are limited so not all applications will be successful. All applicants will be notified by Tuesday 17 February.
Please remember the event is only open to companies based in Greater Manchester and the North-West, and aimed towards those in active employment in senior production roles in the animation industry.

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
10:30 – 17:00 | Presentations with Q&As. Coffee and Lunch Breaks included.
17:00 – 17:15 | Closing Remarks
17:30 – 18:30 | Making it in Greater Manchester
18:30 – 20:30 | Northwestivus (Networking open to all! Takes place at The Salmon of Knowledge, MediaCity)

Day Two – Tuesday 10 March 2026

About the sessions & Workshops

Talks

In Conversation: 50 years of innovation and creativity at Aardman

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.<

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