Grant awarded to: Laura Tofarides
Ymddiried’s Contribution: £1,150
I used this grant for travel and accommodation to attend the World Premiere of my short stop motion film Gofod Ymennydd/Brain Space at the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology in the United States. Our World Premiere was enormously important for me and my career because Portland is home to two of the biggest stop motion studios in the world, which are Laika (Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Missing Link) and ShadowMachine (Pinocchio, The Tiny Chef Show). I’ve made my career in the UK and have worked on multiple features and series here at Aardman, animating on things like Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Robin Robin and Very Small Creatures, as well as other UK-based productions Isle of Dogs and Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires. I’ve also worked internationally in China on a short film and in New Zealand on a series called Kiri & Lou.
I wanted this festival to be the world premiere because it’s one of the best in the world for stop motion and draws big crowds in our specific niche.
Our premiere was on a huge 30m, 300-seat IMAX screen and shown alongside other stop motion films which we were in competition with. This meant the packed audience was full of stop motion fans, directors, producers and hiring managers, many of whom came to speak with us afterwards, and we forged some great connections which could lead to future work as an animator. I’ve also kept in contact with many of the animators and filmmakers I met there, some of whom have since come to visit me at Aardman, and we might collaborate in future.
I leveraged my contacts before attending and managed to get a tour of a big studio there. This allowed me to speak to animation professionals whom I’ve only ever emailed a few times and get some great feedback on my showreel. I got to pitch my feature film idea to the development team of a large studio. This is an enormous opportunity and one I wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t there in person.
I’m so thankful to Ymddiried for allowing me to travel to our world premiere. It meant I could be in the room at the awards ceremony to accept our Silver award for Best Stop Motion in person. This was such a huge honour, and I was able to give a small speech to the filmmakers, organisers and judges assembled in the room. Thank you so much for this incredible gift, I will remember it always!
