Call for Entries: Christmas Competition

*UPDATED INFORMATION IN RED!

I have been thinking on this for a long time and have finally decided to have our first stop-motion animation competition for all our readers as a thanks for all your support and also to have a bit of fun! The idea will be for entrants to create a stop-motion animation up to a minute based on the theme "Hearts Desire" which can be interpreted anyway you like. The winners will be judged by our guest judges (yet to be announced).  Malcolm Turner and Helen Gibbins of the Melbourne International Animation Festival (which I am so excited about!). We recently interviewed Malcolm about the MIAF festival this year here if you want to check it out.

Malcolm and Helen have kindly offered ONE free Festival Pass to MIAF 2012 to go into our prize pool. This prize will unfortunately only be open to Australian residents (unless you can let me know if you want to fly over for it!) but all our other prizes will be open to international entries.

First prize will be a copy of  a great book called Basics Animation 04 - Stop-motion by Barry Purves (below). and there will also be some runner up prizes to be announced at a later date.

Part of the runner up prizes will be a copy of Mad Monser Party (1968) a Halloween themed children's film created by the Rankin/Bass animation house and written by Mad magazine's creator Harvey Kurtzman (with Len Korobin). 

I found out about Mad Monster Party through this article at Dangerous Minds which also has a great little clip from the film to watch.

Also a copy of the DVD Lotte Reiniger's Fairy Tales whom I discovered through our interview with Isobel Knowles. Lotte Reiniger was an amazing papercut artist/animator from Germany starting her work around 1922. Click here to watch a sample of her work from the film Papageno from 1935

There will be more details to come but here is a basic guideline for entries are:

• The competition will be open to all our subscribers through the blog and Facebook and is for people of all skill levels.
• Entries Close  Sunday 11th December 2011.
• If you are interested in entering please make a comment in the post below or on our facebook page to sign up.
• Your stop-motion animation can be made from anything - paper, textiles, plasticine, photographs, everyday objects etc - use your imagination.
• Your animation can be anywhere up to 1 minute as long as you address the theme 'Hearts Desire'
• Entries should be emailed to thecreativehaven@hotmail.com and should include a link to your video (through youtube, vimeo or whoever else you might use) and a short description on how you have addressed the theme 'Hearts Desire'.
• All entries will be screened on The Creative Haven blog and facebook page for people to see, the top entries will be judged by our Malcolm Turner and Helen Gibbins who will accordingly choose 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.
• There are a variety of stop-motion softwares you can trial such as Dragon Stopmotion,  Stopmotion Pro, Stop Motion Maker or any other editing software like Premier Pro.

The idea is to have fun doing it, sharing it and hopefully win a great Christmas present in the process! So sign up now!

Screening: It's a Jungle In Here - Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine

(Image Source: Melbourne Festival)

Thankfully, here is another great animation event in Melbourne that I won't miss (especially after being away for the Shaun Tan talk, Adam Elliot talk and the Peter and the Wolf Screening!)

We recently interviewed the amazingly creative Isobel Knowles here about her work. She had mentioned in the interview a new collaboration with Van Sowerwine (another amazing animator) on the animation It's a Jungle in Here. The animation will start screening this week as part of the Melbourne Festival at Screen Space  and run from the 14th to the 29th October - so if your in town get along to check it out if you can!

Here are some details about the work from the Melbourne Festival website:

IT'S A JUNGLE IN HERE

How would you react if someone started behaving inappropriately, or aggressively? Do you try to pretend it isn't happening, or protest and take action?

This is the question posed by It's a jungle in here, an interactive installation artwork that inserts two people into a simulated environment and has them both create and respond to a series of increasingly unsettling encounters.

As the participants find themselves forced into the role of attacker and victim, a live feed of each participant's face is mapped onto the animated characters, channelling the tensions brought forth as the social compact begins to collapse.

Part psychodrama, part multimedia marvel, It's a jungle in here is a confronting tour of the fragile rules that organise our public lives.