Talks / Ideas / Philosophy

Meet The Puppet Masters Animation Conference

1 Waterside Plaza

Sat 7 Nov · 10:30

360m · Theatre

About this event

The return of Puppet Masters, delivered by CIT and the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive. The event is ideal for animators, filmmakers, artists working with animation and fans of hand-drawn and stop-motion animation. This year’s event features in-person talks and discussions with Grammy-winning animator Em Cooper, BAFTA-nominated animator Lizzy Hobbs, SXSW Special Jury award winner Sophie Koko Gate and award-wining animation cinematographer Dave Alex Riddett, along with a new video interview with Mexican animator and director Nayelli Ojeda, following up on her wonderful talk at Waterside back in March. The event schedule will be published here soon. Em Cooper is a British artist and film director working in oil-paint animation and film. She is interested in subjectivity. Her oil-painted film practice has developed in answer to a desire to express the sensation of lived-experience. Her interest is in approaching what it feels like to be alive in the world, making representation into expression, or part of a passing moment of sensation. She is the 2024 winner of the Grammy for Best Music Video, for her oil-painted video for The Beatles, I’m Only Sleeping, commissioned in 2022 for their re-release of Revolver. In 2018 she was nominated for an Emmy for her collaboration with poet and activist DJ Savarese, in the film Deej. Her installation work includes Emergence, an immersive artwork and collaboration with composer Jim Perkins for the Turner Contemporary Margate. In 2024 she was commissioned to create two sequences for the movie Paddington in Peru. Elizabeth Hobbs is a traditional animator with a background in artist’s books and printmaking. Her films are made under a rostrum camera, and in the production of her animated films she has used relief print on 35mm film, butterfly prints, images created with a typewriter, paint on a bathroom tile, collage and paint and ink on paper. The films are often based on historical figures or literary adaptations and they’re sometimes funny or rude. Elizabeth likes to share her process and techniques through workshops, masterclasses and lecturing. Elizabeth is senior tutor on the Directing Animation MA at The National Film & Television School, and Associate Lecturer on the MA in Animation at London College of Communication. Sophie is a South London based animation director. Her films burst with electric colors and squishy suggestive imagery. Usually following a cast of eccentric characters, Koko Gate weaves comical stories of interpersonal relationships set in her fantastic surreal worlds. Never shying away from themes of sexuality, Koko Gate’s work is interested in femininity, the body, pleasure, and love. Her style combines flat digital graphics with airbrush textures to arrive at a unique playful aesthetic that is instantly recognizable. Outside of her personal work, she is repped by Blink Ink in London and Roof Studio in NYC for freelance work. She was a 2018 ADC Young Gun, and her most recent film Slug Life won awards at Ottawa Animation Festival, Vienna Shorts, SXSW, GLAS, and will screen at Sundance 2020. Nayelli is a Mexican director and stop motion artist whose work explores the poetic relationship between humanity and nature. She blends animation, fine art and environmental sensitivity to craft visually immersive narratives. She trained in animation and further developed her stop-motion practice through specialised programs across Mexico, the United States and Canada. Her work as an animation director has been selected and supported by international development platforms such as Talents Guadalajara (Berlinale), Bogotá International Film Festival (Colombia) and Animarkt (Poland). Nayelli is the founder of Wisdom House Films, an independent creative studio dedicated to stop motion and experimental storytelling. With the support of Mexico’s national film fund IMCINE/FOCINE, the studio produced her stop motion short film Yugen, a piece crafted from Mexican ceramics and inspired by the natural world. Award winning cinematographer Dave Alex Riddett BSC has been involved with Aardman Animations since the mid 1980s. He has worked as Director of Photography on all of Nick Parks' celebrated Films since the 'Wrong Trousers' as well as many 'Shaun the Sheep" projects, countless short films , commercials and the Netflix xmas special 'Robin Robin". Note: Both Lizzy Hobbs and Em Cooper feature in Waterside’s new animation exhibition, Camera Obscura (24th Oct 26 - 11th Jan 27). Full details here .