Issue 4 - February 2025

Cloth Cat Academy

We've had a great start to the year in Cloth Cat Academy, welcoming back some previous attendees and also opening up our courses to attendees live online.

So far this month we've held courses in Toon Boom, Moho and Unity. Our new upcoming courses can now be booked via the website. We have a Cel Action course coming up in April and a Production course in May!

Toon Boom: Rigging for Production - February 2025 Course attendees.

Moho: Mechanics in Motion February 2024 Course attendees.

The Academy has hosted for another wonderful group of participants on this months courses, all coming together with different goals in terms of what they wish to achieve. There's been some great feedback from attendees on what they've personally gained from the courses which is available to view on our reel here!

You can also view course feedback here and register your interest for any of our future courses.

If you're interested on attending an Academy course soon, be sure to check the support section on our website in order to check your eligibility for any bursary funding.

A reminder to make sure you leave enough lead time when applying for any external funding prior to the course beginning in order for your applications to be processed by external bursaries. Media Cymru are also currently offering a Development fund for Freelancers. If eligible, this fund can support any time off you may require from current employment in order to attend training.

UPCOMING COURSES:

3rd-7th March - Toon Boom: Animation Toolbox with Dani Abram

28th April - 2nd May - Cel Action2D: Production Animation with Cath Lloyd

Learn More...

How we use Blender's unique Rigging features at Cloth Cat

Our Lead Technical artist Josh Doyle talks us through the rigging processes used at Cloth Cat and how Blender provides a great platform for our in house rigging processes...

KIDSCREEN 2025

Jon Rennie MD

A more positive experience this year, despite all the upheavals in the industry. I feel we're doing the right thing in Cloth Cat focusing on the links between gaming and animation; working on our new family games this year with an eye to cross platform narrative content. Cloth Cat Games

We'll be at Get Animated, Annecy Animation Festival, and CMC next, but I'm going to skip MIPCOM for the first time.

There's still plenty of opportunity out there, but for smaller companies it's even more important to raise your own profile and carve out a niche - bigger companies have the cashflow and sales budgets for big projects and provide security for platforms. Nimble companies have to find their own path to success.

Thanks again to Sarah and Lauren from The Children's Media Conference for all their support, and DBT for their continued positivity for the media and children's industry! Good to see all my friends on the delegation again and I'll see you at the next one!

Secret Spring

Our third collaboration with education publisher Helbling was for Secret Spring! In a change to the two previous series, Whatsit and Space, we decided to use 3D and experiment with a Blender and Unreal pipeline, taking the plunge on game engine rendering. Find out how we completed the project and watch the first episode on Youtube!