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Student animation wins praise from Stephen Fry

18 June 2009

Dan Wilkinson, a Digital Media Design student at City College Brighton and Hove, has won praise from Stephen Fry for an animation he created for his end-of-year project. Students were given a brief to create an animated opening sequence for a TV programme to give them an awareness of the current commercial applications of animation techniques. Dan came up with new opening credits for the popular BBC2 programme QI and Stephen Fry described his animation as 'a charming and funny title sequence ?very cleverly thought out and achieved.'

Dan, a second year Foundation Degree student, explains:

Dan Wilkinson with 'Elwin'

Dan Wilkinson with 'Elwin'

'In some of the QI shows, they refer to the researchers as the QI elves so I thought it would be great to create a labyrinth world where the elves lived and worked. I named my character Elwin and bizarrely, he bears quite a resemblance to my grandfather! It took a week to make the model and the whole 30-second sequence took around 300 hours to complete. I managed to find Stephen Fry's email address online and my animation got put through to him. He was in America at the time and I was absolutely over the moon that I got a reply back within an hour.'

'Before I did the course, I did projects in my own time but without having a deadline you don't always knuckle down and push towards a final product with but with this brief, I knew I had to put all the time into making it look right. Before I started the course, I'd never used a computer package, the most I'd done was word processing and I just drew by hand but being able to put artwork onto the computer and get into the interactive side of it and make everything come to life has really opened up my creativity.'

Dan's work featured in the end of year Digital Media graduation show held at Lighthouse in Brighton which was an opportunity to showcase student work to potential employers. The show explored design for screen and print using the latest digital tools incorporating sound, image, type and movement in a wide range of contexts from web and interactive design through to illustration, film-making, animation and i-dents for TV.

For press information, please call Brian Bell, Marketing Communications Officer, on 01273 667788 Ext. 488 or email bb1@ccb.ac.uk

About City College Brighton and Hove: Situated in the heart of Brighton, City College Brighton and Hove has become an international centre of vocational excellence. Every year 2,000 full-time, 10,000 part time, over 500 Higher Education and 250 14-16 year old students as well as many international and European students choose City College as their place of further and higher education training. In addition, the College provides training to over 2,000 businesses via its 'City Business Skills' department which focuses on employer training needs. Offering over 700 courses from basic level right through to business and postgraduate training, City College is working with its partners to develop the workforce of the future.