ITI Articles

For the first time this year, Media Design School (MDS) has been officially involved with the 48HOURS furious filmmaking competition.

MDS is not only the proud sponsor of the New Frontiers Award that will be given to an animation film entered in this year's competition, but they also sponsored a team of graduates and tutors (Half Full) to produce a 3D animation short film in 48 hours, and are thrilled to announce that Half Full won the Animation Category for Auckland.

Half Full, led by 3D Animation tutor Simon Heath, took over the school premises for the crazy weekend. It all started at 7pm on the Friday night when they were given a lucky genre: time travel.

From 7pm on the Friday night till 5.15pm on the Sunday night, Half Full – which gathered up to 27 people from animators to modellers, postproduction people and IT support – worked day and night to produce a 2.30 minute-long original and entertaining animation. ‘Timelines’ benefits from a great cast including Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and Kerry Post, a phone operator in search for perfection. The team also takes you places from the prehistoric age, to the future, and even to the moon.

“It was wonderful. It was such an insane weekend. We really performed above expectations!” says Simon when recalling the experience. “And we went through 88 cans of V and 1 of Red Bull,” he jokes.

From brainstorming and locking ideas down, filming an animatic through to modelling, animating, texturing, rendering, lighting and just simply polishing the short film, they proudly handed in their animation well in time and could finally collapse from exhaustion.

And the buzz didn’t stop after the insane weekend. They are now the Auckland Winner for Best Animation and in the running to win the overall Best Animation Award that will be announced during the live national TV final on C4, July 3rd. Keep an eye out!