2026 Festival Programme

10:00am – 1:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Level: Intermediate

This masterclass will cover Grooming techniques in Houdini, exploring in depth the toolset and how to use it for creating high-end characters for production. Both artistic and technical aspects will be discussed, showing how to get the best of both manual and procedural approaches. From guides combing, to clumping, parting lines and noises, all essential topics will be explored in detail. Real examples from Framestore will also be used to illustrate techniques and discuss challenges involved around it.

10:00am – 1:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Level: Beginner

2:00pm – 5:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Level: Intermediate

Abe is an exceptional in implementing Houdini workflows at incredible speed. His technical strength in Houdini is particularly impressive, whether he is diving into simulations, Creature FX, or complex Crowd systems. 

As an R&D technical director, his is driving technical innovation across his studio,  through Python scripting automation & researching emerging tech such as machine learning. He has a real knack for identifying friction points in a pipeline and developing robust, scalable tools to solve them.

2:00pm – 5:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Level: Intermediate

Moeen is a technical Houdini Educator and Trainer, and Visual Effects Artist from South Africa with over 10 years of experience in CGI and VFX. Hi is the creator of “Houdini Isn’t Scary”, “Houdini is HIP,” “Solaris is Sweet”, “The Ultimate Copernicus Guide”, and many other Houdini tutorials. Co-founder of Nine Between – a visual effects studio based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

10:00am – 5:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Level: Beginner

Phil is a technical Houdini Educator and Senior Academic at Bournemouth University.  Over the past two decades working closely with Side FX he has spearheaded Houdini Education. He is very passionate about Houdini and using procedural methods/tools in VFX practice; an excellent artist who has always been creating extreme realities with a calm, strong, plausible method.

2:00pm – 5:00pm | Poole Gateway Building, Talbot Campus

Workshop – 

Creative Assembly is a British video game developer based in Horsham, founded in 1987 by Tim Ansell. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to MS-DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platforms, later working with Electronic Arts to produce a variety of games under the EA Sports brand. In 1999, the company had sufficient resources to attempt a new and original project, proceeding to develop the strategy computer game Shogun: Total War which was a critical and commercial hit, and is regarded as a benchmark strategy game.

7:00pm – 9:30pm | Patch, 2-12 Commercial Road, Bournemouth Square

Panel – Screening – Social 

Dario Splendido is curating a public event as part of BFX 2026 at PATCH Bournemouth titled “Real-Time Horror & The Uncanny”. The programme will feature a curated screening of short works, followed by a moderated panel discussion, Q&A followed by Drinks for BFX participants and guests. Dario is a Lecturer of animation and gaming at Bournemouth University and an Unreal Authorized Instructor at Epic Games. His core competencies lie in crafting immersive digital experiences and fostering innovative game development education.

Level: Intermediate

Peter is a a texture build technical supervisor with over 25 years in the VFX industry. He has also co-founded the Meshmen Studio which trains digital artists to use new tools and techniques. He has worked in many blockbuster films such “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”,  “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”, “The Witcher” Netflix series, and many more. 

In the Mari Texturing Masterclass “Snails from Space” Peter will guide participants to use Mari in order to texture a typical VFX type asset using production proven techniques, such as Mari Nodes, and Procedural Workflows. 

Level: Intermediate

This is a full-day masterclass, where Arran will teach you how to animate multiple actions in different styles. Be this realism, traditional cartoony and contemporary hybrid stylisation. Animating in Autodesk Maya, you will be taught the theory of each style and how they differ from each other. Guided with different workflows that help you improve your efficiency and focus on creativity. Tools such as Animbot and Studio Library will help you through these procedures. Poses will be pre-constructed ahead of the masterclass to allow time for focus on other fundamentals, such as anticipations, breakdowns, overshoots, and how they are applied in different styles. You will follow Arran and work alongside him whilst he animates live. Arran will take intervals to provide direct feedback to help you focus on areas that need improving most.

Blue Zoo is an animation studio creating creating multi-Emmy and BAFTA winning content. Founded in 2000 by BU University classmates studying animation, it organically grown to become one of the UK’s leading character animation production studios. Blue Zoo aims to produce joyfully compelling stories packed and full of character by creating beautiful animation.

Since our studio was born, we’ve always experimented and explored our way to success, not just for ourselves but for our entire industry, from founding AnimationUK to helping run many progressive industry initiatives.

Furthermore, our commitment to fostering a positive working environment is unwavering. We strive to create a space filled with talented, happy artists crafting content they are genuinely proud of, routinely achieving over 95% staff and client satisfaction scores.

Simone Giampaolo is a London-based Swiss director known for his passion for meaningful storytelling, emotional narratives, and humorous characters. He graduated with distinction from the BA (Hons) Computer Animation Art & Design program at the National Centre for Computer Animation in Bournemouth, UK, in 2013.

Image by © Luke Angus, Solstice 2025

© 2025 Netflix

Pinpoint FX, and VeloraVFX are companies set up by recent BU-NCCA alumni, they talk about their experiences getting through the first year as a commercial company.

Framestore is honoured this year to celebrating an Academy Award for the design, architecture and engineering of their proprietary layered shading system, devised and developed by Head of Lighting and Rendering Technology Josh Bainbridge and Head of Software Nathan Walster​​. This incredible accolade recognises the system’s significant contribution to filmmaking.  Josh and Nathan who are BU and NCCA alumni, will talk about the Framestore rendering tech that led to Academy award and the future of rendering for Animation and VFX.

Andy Lomas will be provide an account of working with biologically inspired rules to create experimental visuals for Max Cooper’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall.  Andy Lomas is a computational artist, mathematician and Emmy award winning supervisor of computer generated effects. His art work explores how complex sculptural forms can be created emergently by simulating growth processes. Inspired by the work of Alan Turing, D’Arcy Thompson and Ernst Haeckel, it exists at the boundary between art and science. He is currently based in London, developing his art practice as well as working as a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Ed is an experienced FX Supervisor and project leader with over 10 years of managing complex projects across North America, Europe and Asia.  He is the recepient of Annie and VES awards for his work on Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age.

VFX supervisor, Max Dennison, will discuss how Cinesite helped to create Oscar and BAFTA nominated visual effects for Paul Greengrass’ 2025 film about the US’s deadliest forest fire. From the epic, roiling smoke columns and gusting winds fanning immense CG forests, to the environmental challenges of augmenting New Mexico locations to match the town of Paradise in northern CA, these were all designed to add to the film’s impending sense of drama and tension. Achieved using a skilful combination of research and development, complex FX simulations, curated lighting, challenging tracking and sophisticated compositing, in this session, Max will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the creative and technical challenges of crafting such large-scale environmental visual effects.

Join ACCESS:VFX and Simon Devereux chairing a panel of industry experts as they share their experiences and advice on how to succeed in the VFX industry.

Simon, with over 18 years of experience in the creative industry and a background as a freelance illustrator, Simon has held key roles in talent development and learning across visual effects, games, television, and commercial radio. As the current head of the Framestore Talent Development Team, he is also the Founder and Director of ACCESS: VFX, a global industry movement uniting over 75 leading studios, industry bodies, and educational institutions in visual effects and animation. ACCESS: VFX champions inclusion, diversity, awareness, and opportunity through its four pillars: Inspiration, Education, Mentoring, and Recruitment.