11 DECEMBER 2019

The UTS Animal Logic Academy, recognised as the world’s leading animation school in immersive media and mobile production excellence*, is pleased to announce that writer/director Alex Weight is joining the Academy’s teaching team as Creative Lead.

Alex’s international career spans two decades as a writer, director, animator and script consultant in senior roles across the animation and VFX industries, working at companies including Rising Sun Pictures, Animal Logic, Flying Bark and Script Central.

Most recently Alex worked on Peter Rabbit and wrote and directed the Chinese animated feature films Frog Kingdom 3 and Frog Kingdom 4. He was co-director of the animated feature Blinky Bill: The Movie, animation supervisor on Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and lead animator on the Oscar-winning animation feature Happy Feet.

“It’s an exciting time to be working in animation and visualisation with new production companies setting up and more work coming to Australia every year. I look forward to helping the next generation of animators and digital artists carve their own place in the industry," says Alex.

Alex joins VFX Lead Matt Estela and Technical Lead Dan Flood to round out the Academy’s team of industry professionals teaching the Master of Animation and Visualisation – a one-year accelerated postgraduate degree that fast-tracks talented digital animators, artists and coders into professional roles in commercial productions.

“We feel privileged to be able to offer our students mentorship through Alex’s experience as a storyteller and animator in creating award-winning animation and visualisation projects – and look forward to seeing what the coming year’s group of exceptionally talented digital artists come up with,” says Head of Academy, Ian Thomson.

Alex is following on from Chris Ebeling, who played a crucial role in the development of the Academy since its inception in 2017 and has led the student teams to a number of national and international awards. Chris is moving on to co-found ‘Virtually Human Studio’ - a digital start-up exploring emerging technologies in gaming, data and mixed reality. The Academy wishes Chris well on his new endeavours.

Founded in 2017, the UTS Animal Logic Academy is a world-first collaboration between Australia’s leading young university, University of Technology Sydney, and globally recognised Australian production powerhouse Animal Logic, designed to foster highly skilled local talent in support of the rapidly expanding animation, VFX and visualisation industries.

The Academy has also recently been ranked number one school in the world for both Mobile and Immersive Media Production Excellence 2019 by industry powerhouse The Rookies. The Academy's student projects have also garnered a number of industry awards, including the short 3D animated films Jasper and The Colour Thief and VR/AR/MR projects ‘Xploro’, ‘TerraChi’, ‘Soundbender’ and ‘Rear Windows’. The 2019 final projects feature the animated short Bounty Hunter and the real time immersive interactive experience ‘SubAqua’.

Applications for the 2020 cohort of the Master of Animation and Visualisation are now open.

For more information about the UTS Animal Logic Academy and the Master of Animation and Visualisation, visit: https://animallogicacademy.uts.edu.au/

https://www.uts.edu.au/about/td-school/news/director-alex-weight-join-uts-animal-logic-academy