Just like some of our favourite cartoon characters, the Animex festival on Teeside has been stretched out of all recognition to become a giant in the field of animation. As the sixth festival gets underway today, Steve Pratt reports.

FIVE years ago Chris Williams returned home to the North-East from an animation festival in London in an angry mood. He'd travelled all the way there only to find out on the first day that many of the guest speakers wouldn't be appearing.

"I came back here a little bit angry that one guy never turned up, and then another one didn't. Instead, they said we have this guy called Dave from down the road," he recalls.

His annoyance was compounded on receiving a call from a festival asking if any students from the University of Teesside were entering their work in the competition. That was fine, until he discovered they weren't planning any regional screenings of the entries in the North-East.

"So I said, 'Why don't we do it for you?'," says Williams, who teaches computer animation at the university.

And so The Animex International Festival of Animation was born with the idea of incorporating screenings with visits from leading animation figures.

The sixth Animex - which begins today - promises to be bigger and better than ever. Things have certainly moved on since the first which was run on a budget of £2,000 and a lot of enthusiasm. This year the Middlesbrough-based festival has its first world premiere among a week of screenings, talks and workshops. American animators who worked on the Oscar-nominated film The Incredibles are among the guests too.

The mix finds animators, directors, students, artists, designers, writers and educators coming together to share knowledge and skills and promote the art of animation. "It's become bigger and bigger and, I would say, better every single years," says Williams.

The Teesside event has even become the model for a similar festival in the US. "Some people came over last year wanting to talk to us about setting up a festival like ours," he says. "The reason was that they come from a very similar area in terms of economic background and the way the university is perceived by the local community. They liked that we weren't a trade show, but concentrated on the creative side."

He was among a group from Teesside who flew to the US for interviews and presentations to help the Americans get their festival up and running in April.

Animex remains one of the few. "There are similar events but not many. Of its type, I would say we are the biggest in the world," says Williams.

Funding has grown, although the festival remains centred at the university. But events also take place outside, including the UGC cinema, and continue throughout the year in the community.

Audiences are a mix of animation students and professionals, not just from Teesside but from all over the UK and even as far afield as Australia. "The festival is regional in terms of its outreach but in terms of its focus is international," he says.

Animex 2005 has scooped the world premiere of Dream On Silly Dreamer, a documentary with animation about the impact of job losses at Disney Studios. Producer Tony West and director Dan Lund are flying over from the US for the screening at The Arc cinema in Stockton today.

The film was prompted by the day in 2002 when more than 200 artists at Disney's feature animation department in Los Angeles were told by Thomas Schumacher, then-president of the feature animation division, that they were being replaced by computers.

This became known as the "Tom meeting" and ended 75 years of traditional animation. Lund, one of the sacked animators, began interviewing people for the film the next day.

"Our film's honest look inside a major animation studio may prove an eye-opener to students seeking careers in the business," says West.

"A number of our colleagues have suggested Animex as a fantastic place to screen Dreamer because of the festival's dedication to the craft of animation and also because of the large number of students who attend."

The festival also features two of the animators behind the Pixar film The Incredibles, nominated as best animated feature film in this year's Oscars. Mark Walsh, who was also the directing animator on Finding Nemo, and Rob Russ, who worked on Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life, will be talking about how the superheroes known as The Incredibles were created.

Another speaker is Bill Westenhofer, visual effects supervisor on the forthcoming film of The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.

Animex Production, the new commissioning strand of the festival, will screen five new animated shorts at the UGC cinema. The animators include Bob the Builder creator Curtis Jobling, who will attend the event.

"The festival has grown ever year and that's not necessarily because we wanted it to but because people asked for it to grow," says Williams.

Full details of the festival are available on the website at www.animex.net