Students attend Manchester Animation Festival

BA (Hons) Animation and MA Animation students were given the opportunity to network with industry experts at Manchester Animation Festival 2025, an annual celebration of the animated art form supported by Leeds Arts University.

Manchester Animation Festival is the UK’s largest animation festival, hosted in Manchester from 9 – 13 November, and online from 14 – 30 November 2025. This year, Leeds Arts University sponsored the event ‘Making of In Your Dreams’ which took participants behind the scenes of the new Netflix feature film ‘In Your Dreams’, with former Pixar talent Director Alex Woo in conversation with Festival Director Steve Henderson.

Amongst the many workshops, talks and masterclasses attended by our students was a worship hosted by Adult Swim, where participants were invited to play the classic drawing game ‘Exquisite Corpse’, encouraging animators, aspiring animators and animation fans to work together. To make things even more exciting, each attendee also had the chance for their work to be picked up for a paid commission, fully produced and supported by Adult Swim.

As part of the event, an individual live drawing challenge tasked participants with taking one of the characters from Adult Swim’s hit animated TV series ‘Smiling Friends’ and turning them quintessentially ‘British’. MA Animation graduate Alfred Kumwenda, was awarded second place, taking home an iPad and pen for his efforts.

This is Alfred’s third Manchester Animation Festival; this time he also took on a volunteer role to support the event. His winning character design for the Adult Swim event reimagined Mr Boss from Smiling Friends as Wallace, the infamous Aardman creation. As Alfred puts it: “what’s more British than the famous cheese-loving inventor”.