After picking up plaudits for his last film, a spooky outing called The Wardrobe, Lewi Firth Bolton has gone one step further this year and won the Bradford Animation Festival’s junior section.

His latest stop-motion animation film, the eight-minute Mr Hatten Bugleperp and the Great Hat Heist, scooped first place in the international festival.

Lewi said: “Unfortunately it was just the youth section, as you have to be 16 to enter the other categories.

“But in the main awards ceremony, they sectioned my film along with all the top film-makers like Aardman and the team behind the film, the Corpse Bride.

“I have got another festival coming up in December, the Express Student Film Festival, when I will be up against all the university graduates from around the country, so fingers crossed for that one.”

And Lewi has received big acclaim for his early efforts, with Aardman, who Lewi describes as the ‘genius behind Wallace and Gromit’, expressing an interest in his future.

“At the Bradford Animation Festival there was several people from Aardman there and they said they would really like me to come down and see their studio.

“Some time next year I am going to have a look down there. They have got 400 people working in several buildings, and I am one person in one room, of one building, so it will be a bit different,” he said.

Lewi, who taught himself model-making and animation techniques after seeing Wallace and Gromit for the first time, is now sketching his latest characters and storyboarding his next movie, which he is considering basing on a Russian folk tale.

He is home-schooled, and benefits from having extra time to be able to develop his hobby, which he hopes will become a career at some point in the future.

He also has his own website www.lewimations.com.