BAA Regional Focus – Scotland
Scotland, our brother to the North, is steeped in history, atmospheric landscapes and beautiful cities nestled within rugged, untamed highlands – a juxtaposition that has been a source of inspiration to many artists seeking to bring new ideas to the table. In honour of the British Animation Awards’ first satellite events taking place across the country, including a special livestream of the ceremony at Stirling’s Codebase, today we look at Scotland’s continuing legacy of intrepid animators past and present, whose work has won numerous international awards. It goes without saying that animators the world over, let alone within Scotland itself, owe a debt to early trailblazers such as Norman McLaren, whose penchant for innovative, experimental approaches paired with a prolific filmography remains an inspiration to this day. Many of the past BAA winners have hailed from this culturally-rich heartland, at least in part due to numerous, long-running animation courses including those provided by Duncan of Jordanstone, Glasgow School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art that promote individuality and creatively inventive work, producing award-winning students who stand out and move on to higher degrees as well as contributing much to the broader animation community; graduates such as Selina Wagner who won the 2004 BAA Craft Award for her degree film Takuskanskan and Keilidh Bradley, whose 2019 film Fox Fires was among the People’s Choice Award nominees at the BAAs in 2020.
Will Anderson, whose BAFTA-winning graduation film The Making of Longbird was screened at over 50 film festivals internationally, has continued to develop his work ever since, working across multiple animation mediums, commissions and personal films. Frequently taking on metaphysical themes, his films are emotive, sensitive and humourous, recent work including his 2017 film Have Heart about the life cycle of a GIF-animated bird plunged into an existential crisis (that won the BAA Best Short Film award in 2018) and 2020’s Betty in which an animator processes his own recently-ended relationship through his characters Bobby and Betty; the short would go on to win a 2020 Scottish BAFTA.
After working together on his graduation film, Will Anderson has frequently teamed up with long-term collaborator and fellow Edinburgh College of Art graduate Ainslie Henderson. Over the past decade the duo have co-written, directed and animated multiple projects together and have often lent their characters their own voices, bestowing them with wit and judicious use of Scottish idioms. Henderson himself is predominantly a stop-motion animator making use of uniquely organic puppets brought to life in a distinct, tactile fashion, such as 2015’s Stems. The following year Henderson won the BAA for Best Music Video in 2016 for James: Moving On, with previous BAA wins including the Student Excellence award in 2014 for his graduate film I Am Tom Moody (Ainslie would also create prize artwork for the 2018 BAAs). More recently the duo have joined forces again for their upcoming BAFTA funded short film SHACKLE, produced by Anderson and animated/directed by Henderson.
Multi BAFTA Scotland award-winning, Glasgow based animator Ross Hogg‘s work is defined by distinctly different styles on each film, showcasing a passion toward experimentation frequently seen in filmmakers that hail from a country rich in creativity. Hogg was nominated for a BAA award in 2020 for his short experimental 16mm film 4:3, using physical film stock and paint.
A prominent part of the region’s animation industry is the illustrious, long-running Edinburgh International Film Festival with its inclusive promotion of Scotland’s film heritage. Animation in particular has been highlighted through the prestigious McLaren Award for best British animation since 1990, overseen for a decade by another key Scottish talent Iain Gardner, the festival’s animation programmer until he stepped down in 2019. Beginning his career as an apprentice at Richard Williams’s studio, Iain’s long history in the industry has made him a fount of knowledge as both a director (whose films include Akbar’s Cheetah for Channel 4 and The Tannery, produced with Axis Animation in Glasgow) and promoter of animated works. Presently heading up Animation Garden, Gardner has since been developing Mustard & Ketchup and A Bear Named Wojtek through the BFI Young Audiences Content Fund; he also contributed a piece of art for the BAA award in 2018.
Scotland’s heritage in both the animation as well as broader cultural industries has provided fruitful soil for multiple studios, both as outposts for established studios such as the aforementioned Axis (which also has studios in Bristol and London) as well as Rockstar North in Edinburgh, part of Rockstar Games based in New York, producers of the well known Grand Theft Auto series. These have been developed alongside other homegrown talents such as Muckle Hen based in Edinburgh, which provides a range of services alongside animation for various commercial content; Eyebolls, also in Edinburgh, is a creative production studio that represents multiple talented individuals who work across film, TV and print; ISO Design in Glasgow produce large-scale, interactive media projects for TV, museums and other creative/heritage institutions; Interference Pattern, founded in 2008 in Edinburgh, have produced Oscar-winning and BAFTA-nominated animated content; and Wild Child Animation, a relative newcomer founded in Stirling by a team of industry veterans in 2020 who collectively boast an impressive array of credits and accolades, enabling them to make a significant splash on the animation scene through their use of mixed-media animation, multiple BAFTA nominated and winning productions and various top-tier clients. On top of the well-known shows and years of experience behind them, Wild Child are nominated for the Best Children’s Series award at this year’s BAAs for their series The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, based on Liz Pichon’s best-selling books, making them an exciting new studio to keep our eyes on.
Wild Child have teamed up with Screen Scotland to host the live stream of the British Animation Awards at Codebase in Stirling on Thursday March 10th. Email bookings@britishanimationawards.com for more info and tickets.