New Talent New Content New Opportunity.
Sponsored by Belfast Media Festival
Location: The Works
Time: Wednesday 16th November, 3pm
A conversation about the future that sparks ideas about the alignment of student goals and animation industry needs for the future of amazing, award winning animated content coming out of Northern Ireland.
Clare Campbell, NI Screen (chair),
Richard Gordon, JAM Media,
Gavin Halpin, Paper Owl Films,
Yuanyuan Chen, UU,
Aimee Lingman, Italic Pig
Clare Campbell
Interim Skills Manager, Northern Ireland Screen
Clare joined the skills team at Northern Ireland Screen in October 2021. She is responsible for delivering all the skills development programmes across the 6 priority sectors, identifying skills gaps and creating opportunities to address those gaps.
Clare has 25 years experience within the local industry in both Production and Post. Previous to joining Northern Ireland Screen she spent 13 years as Facility Manager at Yellowmoon Post Production.
Aimee Lingman
COO, Italic Pig
With over 25 years experience producing games and digital campaigns in Canada, New York City and London, Aimee now calls Belfast home.
Aimee has worked with the Syfy Channel, the Michael J Fox Foundation, and a number of business startups in Canada, USA and the UK. She was responsible for the digital strategic direction of Girlguiding UK for seven years, producing over 45 original online games and spearheading its digital communication to over 400,000 members.
Aimee has worked across all platforms and media - web, mobile, PC/console, and VR - and has been involved in the production and marketing of all Italic Pig projects.
As COO of Italic Pig, Aimee spearheaded the 4-day week initiative and is proud to be part of a team that is reputed for promoting equality, diversity and better-than-best-practice emphasis on work-life balance.
Fun fact: Aimee once rode a tricycle around Australia. It was a tandem recumbent tricycle, but that’s still technically a tricycle.
Dr. Yuanyuan Chen
Lecturer, Ulster University
Dr. Yuanyuan Chen is a lecturer in animation history and theory at Ulster University, and she is also the co-course director for BDes (Hons) Animation.
Her research interests include animation theory and history, Asian animation, experimental animation, East Asian Cinema, non-fiction animation, and animation narrative.
Her writing has appeared in scholarly journals and book collections, such as Modernism/modernity, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, etc.
Richard Gordon
Managing Director, Jam Media
Richard Gordon heads up JAM Media’s production studio in Belfast and is responsible for the studio’s operations and productions. He is currently engaged as a series producer on series 2 of ‘Nova Jones’ (20 x 24 mins) for CBBC, and as an animation producer on the upcoming 2D series ‘Isadora Moon’ (52 x 11 mins) for Sky Kids.
He was recently a producer on a 2D feature film ‘A Greyhound of a Girl’ and other recent credits include ‘Nova Jones S1’ (10 x 24 mins) for CBBC - series producer, ‘Jessy & Nessy’ (40 x 11 mins) for Amazon Prime - series producer, ‘Becca’s Bunch’ (52 x 11’) for Nickelodeon - producer.
He has also produced award winning short animated films “The Wiremen” for the Irish Film Board and RTE (2018); Featherweight (2019) and Candlelight (2022) with NI Screen.
Gavin Halpin
Managing Director, Paper Owl Films
Gavin Halpin is the Managing Director of Paper Owl Films, which he co-founded in 2012.
Since graduating with a 1st class honours degree in Film and Communications from the Dublin Institute of Technology, Gavin has produced hundreds of television programmes and his experience has given him a unique perspective on the creativity, resilience, and belief it takes to create award winning content.
Gavin is a driving force in Paper Owl Films as the key business affairs contact and Executive Producer.
