Animex.

This year Animex came to newcastle. It features talks from people in the industry of animation. The specialist fields within the talks are gaming, storyboarding, comics etc. Workshops are also a feature of Animex.

This year they got a lot of artists and animators to run the workshops. They had games expert Alex Trowers who is a designer for Boss Alien ltd. He was running a workshop that was explaining how gameplay isn't only to do with the character. He was talking about how gameplay can pretty much be extracted from the surroundings of the character.
Another example of a workshop was Chris Robson, who is a 3D Artist and the founder of www.3d-palace.com. The workshop he was running was building a 3D detailed robot walker, reminds me of star wars which is always a plus. All the assets were already created by Chris but you had to put the pieces together. Also he shown people how to texture the robot.

Animex is really good to get to know how people get successful and work in the creative industry. Really you should take business cards so if you happen to talk to other people who are interested in what you do or you just get talking. You could even be talking to someone from Ubisoft for example and you could hand them a business card, that would be a good start for anyone.

I think going to things like this is really important because you get so much good advice and information. The creative industry is a really competitive field and you will require some 'street smarts', in a certain sense. And, building on what I said earlier, there can even be opportunities. All you need to do is talk to the tight people and have a business card and who knows your foot could be in the door. you could even meet some people who you want to collaborate with, just chat with, share interests etc.