Meet Izzy Burton! MAF 2022 Ident Creator!
3 August 2022
Every year at Manchester Animation Festival we like to give a creative associated with the event the opportunity to give MAF a new look for our posters and ident design.
This year the fantastic Izzy Burton has stepped up to the challenge! Having screened her short film Via in 2018, the MAF team have long been fans of Burton’s work and her command of colour and light across gorgeous landscapes and the storytelling in her art, so who better to capture those stormy November Manchester skies than Izzy Burton?
Currently freelancing from her home in Brighton, Burton has previously worked for the likes of Blue Zoo, Passion Pictures and Golden Wolf as an Art Director and Lead Artist on multiple projects and her short films have been screened and won awards throughout the world.
We caught up with Izzy Burton to find out more about her work and the design of the 2022 MAF ident!
How did you get started in Animation?
I loved Art and Maths and was looking for a way to combine the two when I was choosing my University degree. I was going to study Computer Science but my mom noted how excited I was about the potential to pick Animation as one of the modules in the 2nd year of the course I was looking at and she suggested I look at Animation courses. It felt like I had been missing something right under my nose – I had been making my own rudimentary animations since I was 12 and had books on the history of Animation, but I guess I didn’t realise you could do it for a job! I’m glad I took this path because for a long time I felt worried about dropping English earlier in school because of my love of storytelling and writing but I ended up there by doing animation.
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Your work seems equally at home in illustration as you do animation, what do you like best about the storytelling capabilities of each medium?
I realised very quickly that I was being hired for animation jobs because my work looked illustrative and being hired for illustration work because my work felt cinematic – I used to be uncomfortable sitting somewhere inbetween but I realised it became my calling card – “cinematic illustration” is why I get hired.
Almost all my ideas I see as moving images in my head, with music and sound, that’s just how I naturally view things so I think I’ll always be more rooted in animation than illustration, but there is something nice about the limitations of illustration and having to tell so much in one image that really makes you think about composing the image to tell the best story. Bringing that sensibility into animation is always going to make cinematography stronger.
Is it fair to say that you’re inspired by nature and the outdoors, is this your happy place, creatively?
Definitely. I vividly remember being at primary school and another child saying “look at that black bird over there” and thinking how strange that they didn’t know that was a Rook … I assumed everyone knew the difference between jackdaws, crows, rooks and ravens, but apparently not. My mom taught me most of the birds by the time I was 5, and I grew up with just miles of fields and countryside at the end of my garden.
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There’s a lot of photos of me writing stories and illustrating them as a child, or copying the words out of an animal encyclopedia and illustrating them too, but I’m often curled up in the corner of the garden doing so. I feel very lucky to have grown up around so much nature, to know when Autumn is on the way because the air smells slightly different, to have rescued buzzards and wild rabbits, the latter falling asleep on my lap whilst I watched TV, to build dens in lightning struck trees (that only just finally rotted away this last year) it was a very romantic childhood. I think it will always be my happy place creatively because it is just a part of who I am.
What inspired the 2022 MAF Poster?
Post-apocalytic-nature–taking over urban spaces imagery is in almost everything I draw (I’ve started to think it’s because I’m not the hugest fan of people and crowds, and a post-apocalytic world is a quiet one). I liked the idea of nature spreading through Manchester (this time not post-apocalytic) and that Manchester’s rainy reputation would actually help nature to do so. I thought about the idea that most insects can’t fly in the rain, so thought the bee would have to use a leaf as an umbrella to make his way home (to HOME). All of this brought through this lovely idea of deep, dark teal skies and the warmth of the Manchester red brick, which felt like a good palette for the poster.
What’s next for Izzy Burton?
I’m spending a lot of time at the moment investing in my own projects and in projects that have the potential to grow my career in the future – that means I’ll seem quiet for a while but hopefully it will pay off. One of these things being I’m pitching a short animated film for funding at the moment that would be my longest short film to date and a real chance for me to show off Directing subtle but emotive character performance, which I haven’t done much of yet. I’m also writing lots, and am off to Japan in January for an Art Residency concluding in my first ever gallery show.
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You can see more of Izzy’s work on her website izzyburton.co.uk