Festival Guests

Abigail Addison

Abigail is a Producer and Programmer. She is a Director of Animate Projects, an agency working at the intersection of film, art and animation, that produces award winning, innovative and experimental films.

Adam Bailey

Adam is Director of Animation Development & Production at Paramount Global - Kids & Family.

Adam Redfern

Adam is a BAFTA, Emmy, RTS and MAF award-winning writer with over 20 years experience making kids' TV. He's written and produced for live action and mixed-media series and his main work and passion is animation.

Ainslie Henderson

Ainslie Henderson is BAFTA award winning writer/director/animator is currently emerging from the woods in deepest darkest Northumberland, having completed Shackle ;a 10 minute, outdoor, BFI funded, stop-motion epic.

Alessandro Chirico

Alessandro Chirico is an Emmy Nominated Art Director, Production Designer and Visual Development Artists with 14 years of experience.

Alex Jukes

Alex has a passion for animation that is weird, wonderful, innovative and breaks the rules.

Alex Torrens

Alexandra Torrens is Assistant Producer at Karrot.

Amy Gledhill

Amy is a comedian, actor and writer from Hull. Her authentic, comic voice won her the prestigious BBC Caroline Aherne Bursary 2019. She has written for CBBC’s, BAFTA award-winning series Class Dismissed as well as being one half of Edinburgh Award nominated / Chortle Award winners – The Delightful Sausage.

Anca Damian

Anca is the award winning filmmaker behind The Island, Crulic – The Path to Beyond, The Magic Mountain and many more.

Andrew Baker

Andrew Baker is the Producer of The Amazing Maurice and many other feature films.

Andrew Burrell

Andrew is a Head Writer, Scriptwriter, Producer and Story Editor for live-action and animated drama and comedy for both adults and kids.

Andrew Lord

Andrew is co-founder and Managing Director at Flipbook Studio.

Anna Eijsbouts

Anna Eijsbouts is an award winning Dutch animation director of slightly odd short animated films, a programmer for Kaboom Animation Festival and a lecturer. She works with puppets, paper, cellophane and light and loves the endless possibilities tangible materials bring.

Annabeth Robinson

Annabeth Robinson has been in education for 20 years, with a passion for exploring and researching new technologies in Storytelling and Education, particularly Virtual Reality.

Anthony Fallows

Anthony Fallows is a 3D Digital Modeller at Mackinnon & Saunders

Aubrey Clarke

Aubrey is a Commissioning Executive in BBC Children's with a remit that covers scripted drama and animation.

Barry Purves

Barry has been involved with the arts for almost 45 years, mainly in animation and theatre.

Beatrice Nolan

Beatrice Nolan is a journalist for Insider. She covers tech and business news from their London office. Beatrice has covered developments in artificial intelligence, its influence on the labour market, and AI's relationship with the creative industries.

Becky Perryman

Becky Perryman is a senior producer at Strange Beast and the founder of The Greenhouse Animation, Strange Beast and Passion Animation's emerging talent roster.

Ben Mitchell

Ben Mitchell is a Bristol-based animator, filmmaker and writer.

Bob Scott

Bob Scott has worked on nearly 20 Lego games with much beloved I.P.’s such as Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar among others; he works as a Writer/ Cinematics Director for Tt-Games.

Bridget Appleby

Bridget is an Illustrator, Sculptor, Designer, Art Director, Director, Producer and Concept Originator. She worked as ‘Creative Producer – Model’ for Cosgrove Hall Films for 30 years and then freelanced for 10 years.

Camilla Deakin

Over the last 20 years, through Lupus Films, Camilla has produced a number of award-winning films, specials and series and currently has a full slate of productions and development projects.

Caroline Leaf

Caroline Leaf's story telling animations are renowned for their emotional content and graphic style, closely tied to the innovative straight ahead animation techniques she developed. Her film awards include an Academy Award Nomination, and Grand Prix’s at Ottawa, Krakow, Melbourne and Los Angeles animation festivals.

Caroline Roberts-Cherry

Caroline Roberts-Cherry is the founder and MD of Saffron Cherry Productions, a Manchester based Drama and Kids production company.

Charlie Higgson

Charlie is a writer and storyboard artist who wrote on 2 seasons of Nickelodeons 'It's Pony' as well as several unreleased projects. Charlie currently works on Blue Zoo Studios Development team cooking up new animated shows and features.

Charlie Hopkins

Charlie Hopkins has been animating for 22 years in both the TV and video games industries. At TT Games he has worked on a multitude of projects including Lego Indiana Jones 2, Lego Lord of the Rings, Lego Marvel Super heroes and Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga.

Charlie Perkins

Charlie is the newly appointed Head of the multi-award-winning Channel 4 Comedy department.

Chas McNair

Chas McNair has been in the Games Industry for about 24 years, he is now Head of The Models Department at Tt Games.

Chloe Beale

Chloe is an emerging producer and film marketer, She was a part of the BFI Film Hub North Creative Producer Lab 2021 cohort. Her passion is story and storytelling, specialising in new and contemporary writing. She likes to tackle narratives which are largely unheard, and advocate for perspectives which are not often showcased or explored. WOODLAND is her first animated film production.

Chris Garbutt

Chris works in the animation industry for TV, features and commercials.

Dan Whiting

Dan is a senior animator at Cloud Imperium Games, who has worked for the last 5 years at their office in Wilmslow, right outside Manchester.

Dave Brown

As a Cinematics Director at Tt Games, Dave's credits include LEGO The Lord of the Rings, LEGO Jurassic World and most recently LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga. His role includes script writing, camera direction and animation direction.

Denis Do

Denis Do is a film director, he directed the feature Funan and is currently working on The Forest of Miss Tang, and a new feature called Sorya.

Ed Barrett

Ed is Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director of Animade.

Eimhin McNamara

Eimhin McNamara is an Irish animator, illustrator, and educator. He supervised animation and was technical director on Carol Freeman's oil-paint-on-glass short film The Bird & the Whale, as well as Pádraig Fagan's cut-out period horror film An Gadhar Dubh, both utilising multiplane cameras units he designed and built.

Elena Wurlitzer

Elena recently joined Jellyfish Pictures as Development Producer, where she oversees the animation slate across kids & family content, sourcing and nurturing original IP ranging from preschool to tweens.

Ethan Clark

Ethan is our Talent Acquisition Manager who heads up our talent team.

Evgenia Golubeva

Evgenia Golubeva is an award-winning director, writer and character designer. She has directed multiple animated TV episodes and written over 100 screenplays for clients such as Disney, Sky Kids, Nick Jr and the BBC.

Florin Mocanu

Florin is a Co-Founder of Bearded Fellows Creative Studio based in Manchester UK.

Francesca Alberigi

Fran is Manager of Production & Development at Paramount Global - Kids & Family

Georgina Hurcombe

Georgina Hurcombe is the producer of the BFI YACF-funded preschool series Pop Paper City, and the founder of animation studio Lovelove Films.

Graeme Murray

Graeme Murray is a Chartered Trade Mark Attorney (UK) with experience in advising individuals, companies and organisations on the creation, protection and exploitation of their brands and designs.

Hamish Steele

Hamish Steele is an Eisner-award winning creator of comic books and animation. He is the creator of Pantheon, Croc and Roll and DeadEndia, which this summer was adapted into the Netflix animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park, which Steele wrote and executive produced with Blink Industries.

Hanna Ines Flint

Hanna is a London-based film critic, culture commentator and author of mixed British-Tunisian heritage.

Hannah Lee Miller

Hannah Lee Miller has worked in numerous roles on animated children’s TV series, her most recent and notable project has been producing the children’s TV show Peppa Pig with the original team and its creators.

Iain Gardner

Iain is the Creative Director of Animation Garden, currently in partnership with Iain Harvey’s Illuminated Film Company and Filmograf Poland in the production of A Bear Named Wojtek, which he also directs.

Ian Mackinnon & Peter Saunders

Mackinnon & Saunders are world renowned leaders in character development for animation and producers of high-quality stop motion and digital animation. For over 30 years the team at Mackinnon & Saunders have brought some of the best-known animated characters to life for movies, TV series, commercials, and short films.

Ivana Kvesić

Ivana Kvesić is the director of Fantoche – International Animation Film Festival in Baden, Switzerland.

Jack Bennett

Jack is the Co-Founder Odd Bug Studio in Manchester.

Jake Cunningham

Jake Cunningham is a writer and producer working in film, audio, digital and print media.

James Snazell

James’s academic research interests are concerned with the materiality of film.

James Stevenson Bretton

James is the Founder and Managing Partner of BAFTA-nominated and Emmy-winning production company Blink Industries, a development and production studio working across animation and live action, with a 120-seat animation studio in North London.

Jamie Badminton

Jamie Badminton is a BAFTA and Emmy-winning Animation Producer. He co-founded Karrot and is Creative Director of their London-based Animation Studio and IP Creation House. Jamie produced Karrot’s flagship in-house series ‘Sarah & Duck’ (120 episodes and 3 Seasons) for CBeebies and BBC Studios.

Jane Davies

Jane is a freelance animator, editor, director, and voice director based in Bristol.

Jen Coatsworth

Series Producer on Dead End: Paranormal Park

Jen Judd

Jen is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Animade.

Jess Wheeler

Jessica is an independent producer with a background in stop motion animation.

Jim Parkyn

Jim Parkyn is a sculptor, model maker and character designer who has been involved in many best loved animations for Aardman Animations and the BBC.

Jo Allen

Jo is a commissioning executive in BBC Children’s specialising in Animation.

Jo Chalkley

Jo has worked in the Animation Industry for 30 years largely in Stop Motion, specialising in pre-school and children's animation for companies including Cosgrove Hall Films, Aardman Animations and Factory create working with many favourites including Andy Pandy, Postman Pat, Shaun the Sheep and Creature Comforts. She has also worked on feature films including 'Tim Burtons Corpse Bride' and ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death'. Most recently, on 'Chuck Steel - Night of the Trampires'.

Jo Wilkinson

Jo is Head of Production at Flipbook and is also central to recruiting new team members at the studio.

Joe Duffy

Joe is the Global Recruitment Lead at Jellyfish Pictures

Jon Turner

Jon is the co-owner of Kilogramme animation. His roles range from producer, to director, modeller, animator and script writer.

Jonny Ashworth

Jonny is the Creative Director of Mighty Giant, an animation and motion design studio in Manchester.

JP Vine

JP Vine was Director on Locksmith Animation's debut feature Ron’s Gone Wrong; he has worked across Shaun The Sheep, Inside Out, Pirates! Band of Misfits and is currently pitching his next feature projects.

Julia Wiza

Julia Wiza is a Polish filmaker who moved to UK to study animation and graduated from Nottingham Trent University. Currently she's an Art History student stationed in Poznań, Poland.

Julie Ann-Dean

Julie-Ann is a voice actor and co-founder of Scripts Out Loud, she began her career as a voice actor at the age of 16, dubbing the children’s programme The Little Vampire for the BBC. With decades of experience working in children’s TV, Julie-Ann has hundreds of credits to her name.

Julie Lockhart

Julie Lockhart is the Co-Founder and Head of Production of Locksmith Animation.

Karl Doran

Karl is the founder and creative director of award-winning agency Flow.

Kate O’Connor

Kate is the Executive Chair of Animation UK and a senior consultant in creative industries, working with a wide range of private and public-sector clients in the UK and Internationally.

Katie McCullough

Katie is the Film Festival Strategist & Founder for Festival Formula, providing strategy and submissions support to filmmakers worldwide.

Katie Slack

Katie recruits externally for roles across Blue Zoo.

Kieran Argo

Kieran is currently the Senior Producer for the British Animation Awards (a.k.a. ‘the BAAs’) - the leading biennial awards organisation solely for the UK animation industry.

Laura-Beth Cowley

Laura-Beth Cowley is a mixed-media freelance animator based in Bristol.

Lauren Auty

Lauren is currently a storyboard artist on series two of Pip and Posy, and has provided storyboards for various other kids tv projects within 2D and 3D formats.

Lauren Deakin

Lauren recruits externally for roles across Blue Zoo.

Leanne Loughran

Leanne leads the Industrial Light & Magic London recruitment team in finding exceptional VFX talent for Film, Episodic TV and Virtual Production (Stagecraft).

Lee Hardcastle

Lee is an independent film maker from Yorkshire who specialises in claymation and has garnered over a million subscribers on YouTube.

Liz Chan

Liz Chan is the Development Executive looking after the BBC Children's & Education nationwide Animation development programme BBC Ignite.

Lucy Jephcott-Spurge

Lucy Jephcott-Spurge is a Character Artist at TT games. Lucy moved to TT and character modelling four years ago and has worked on various indie and AAA titles.

Lucy Pryke

Lucy recently re-joined the BBC Children's Commissioning Team as Commissioning Executive.

Mariama Ives-Moiba

Mariama Ives-Moiba was one of the winners of the BAFTA Rocliffe Children’s New Writing Competition, and part of the BBC New Voices Programme, 2021.

Mark Crane

Mark Crane is a Lead Gameplay Animator at TT Games. Throughout his time at TT Games he has contributed to various projects, and shipped over 15 titles.

Matt Brothers

Matt is the Film & Animation Coordinator at ScreenSkills.

Matt Geeling

Matt Geeling is Head of Media at Fuzzy Duck

Matt Palmer

Matt works as Lead Animator at d3t, a co-development games studio, where he and d3t's in-house animation team, work alongside animators, character artists, and designers from some of the best games studios on some of the world’s best-known and best-loved games.

Matt Rennie

Matt Rennie is Vice President, Content & Operations at the award-winning digital media company and premium kids’ and family AVOD network, WildBrain Spark, where he oversees the production, distribution and operational teams responsible for creative strategy and commissioning original content.

Matt Walker

Writer, director and story artist based at Aardman in Bristol.

Matthew Parr

Matthew graduated in 2017 with a first class Masters and awards for outstanding research in intellectual property law and outstanding achievement in corporate, financial and intellectual property law.

Michael Leader

Michael Leader a film writer, programmer, and co-creator of the animation-focused podcast series Ghibliotheque.

Michael Rose

Michael Rose is the joint CEO and co-founder of Magic Light Pictures, one of the UK’s leading entertainment companies which makes high-quality and imaginative content for audiences, families and children worldwide.

Mike Tharme

Mike is an armature fabricator, product designer and 3d print specialist for Animation Toolkit.

Nic Redman

Nic Redman is a VO artist, vocal coach and award-winning podcaster.

Nicolas Seck

Nico is our Head of Animation and has a wealth of experience in the VFX industry.

Nora Twomey

Nora Twomey is an Academy Award®, BAFTA & Golden Globe nominated Director. She is also Partner & Creative Director at Cartoon Saloon, Ireland.

Patricia Hidalgo

Patricia Hidalgo is Director of Children’s & Education at the BBC. She is responsible for developing and implementing creative and editorial strategies for BBC Children's and BBC Education services across all platforms.

Paul Munro

Paul Munro is the Head of In-Game Animation at TT Games. He has been in the Games Industry for over 25 years, always focussed on Animation, and has spent 17 years at TT Games, mostly in the world of LEGO.

Phil Wall

Phil is an ambitious filmmaker with experience in education, directing and writing. Phil sometimes gets quite annoyed at the lack of LGBTQI+ stories in popular culture and set a personal objective to make the modern landscape gayer by the end of 2022.

Rachel Plant

Rachel Plant is an Aardman Producer.

Rahul Dasgupta

Rahul is a Senior Storyboard artist and an Illustrator from India who has been working in the animation industry for the past 10 years. Currently working with Blue-Zoo for over 3 years where they have worked on many amazing shows such as The adventures of Paddington and Colourblocks.

Ralph Kamp

Ralph Kamp, Chairman and CEO of Timeless Films, has over four decades of experience overseeing film financing, production and distribution.

Reema Selhi

Reema Selhi is the Head of Policy and International at DACS, the flagship visual rights management organisation in the UK.

Richard Evans

Richard Evans is the project manager for Creative Industries Trafford (CIT) and the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive (CHFA) at Waterside Arts.

Richard Pickersgill

Richard is Workshop Supervisor at Mackinnon & Saunders

Rikke Asbjoern

Rikke has worked on many different commercials, music videos, short films and feature films.

Rob Doherty

Rob has more than 25 years’ experience in the children’s television and animation industry. He has worked in every format of animation and in many countries around the world, as well as on both sides of the production/broadcast divide; working for Aardman Animations, Disney, M2 Films, ITV, Endemol, Initial Productions, TVC Cartoons, and Cake Entertainment.

Rosie Summers

Rosie is a 3D animator and Virtual Reality Artist, bringing characters and worlds to life in new dimensions at XR Games.

Ross Phillips

Ross is a designer and animator based in Manchester, who has been working in the industry over 10 years.

Ruth Fielding

Through her company Lupus Films, Ruth has produced many award-winning animated and live-action films, series and specials and has worked for all the major UK broadcasters and international streaming platforms.

Sam Taylor

Sam is Head of Skills and Development and is currently building out a new training scheme to help new graduates get their first job in the industry.

Sarah Muller

Sarah Muller is currently BBC Children's Head of Commissioning & Acquisitions 7-12.

Sean Clarke

MD at Aardman Animations and a senior entertainment executive with over twenty-five years of experience in animated entertainment. Principal areas of expertise include leading senior management teams, strategic planning, IP financing and brand development, integrated marketing campaigns across movie, TV & digital platforms, and brand extensions into consumer products and location entertainment.

Signe Baumane

Signe Baumane is the writer, director, animator, designer and co-editor of My Love Affair With Marriage.

Sophie Gallo

Sophie is a 26-year-old character designer and 2D animator living in Brighton. Most recently she worked for Blue Zoo as a character designer on “Supertato” and has also done freelance character designs for Disney and Netflix Animation.

Stephen Middleton

As a Creative Director with a background in design and animation, Stephen has spent the last 10 years sharpening his creative skills as part of the Art&Graft in-house team. He's proud to work alongside a talented group of artists on a wide range of projects, with a variety of progressive brands and clients. Strong concepts combined with carefully crafted art direction are at the core of his process.

Steve Henderson

Steve is the Director of Manchester Animation Festival and a founding member of the team. He is also the editor and co-owner of skwigly.com, the UK’s biggest online animation magazine and community.

Steve Kimbrey

Steve has been an animator at Blue-Zoo for the past 7 years and is currently an Animation Lead on a long-form production.

Stuart Messinger

Stuart is Producer and Course Lead with Aardman Academy.

Tim O’Sullivan

Tim is a BAFTA winning director, who co-created Sarah & Duck, working as both series director and writer on series 1 to 3. He is now head of writing and development at Karrot, most recently helping to bring Tish Tash to CBeebies, and continues to lead development and pitching for Karrot's new pre-school slate.

Tom Box

Tom is co-founder and joint managing director of multiple Emmy and BAFTA winning Blue Zoo Animation Studio.

Tom Jordan

Tom Jordan is Head of Studio at Karrot and helps keep the Karrot patch moving!

Tom Judd

Tom is Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director of Animade.

Tom Sanders

Tom is the founder of Tinmouse - A 2D studio working with B2B clients, driven by an ethos of sustainability and doing good.

Tom Stewart

Tom Stewart joined the team in August 2018 to set up the UK distribution arm Parkland Entertainment and serves as Acquisitions & Distribution Director. An industry veteran, Tom held the position of acquisitions director at Arrow Films for 8 years. He has also worked at Thames / Fremantle Media and Metrodome Distribution that cover over 30 years in the Industry