5th jan

Well,
a new year and back to work!
It does'nt take long to get back into all the stress of production.
The place is getting very cramped and we are reorganising our space a bit to
accomodate a better work flow. Hopefully we will be in a nice new space before too much longer.
I spent much of my life in the current space and though it has a lot of memories (I even met my wife there) I will be glad of the "fresh start" feeling in the new place.
Of course there won't be too much time to feel anything as we are getting super busy.
Its quite a stretch to keep an eye on everything as it is.
We have a great, great team of new and old friends though.

So here is the current line up -

Tomm Moore - Director (storyboarding a lot at the moment too!)

Nora Twomey - Sequence Director and Animation director - storyboarding at the moment.

Nora is the most experienced and rounded director in our studio - her first film From Darkness has won many awards , as has Cuilin Dualach (Backwards Boy) and Celtic Maidens her other two shorts. Much of the crew on Brendan worked on these films too, so its a nice family atmosphere in a way.Nora is essentially co-directing with me on Brendan.

Remi Chaye - assistant director - a super all rounder guy from France, never met him before
this production but he soon became totally invaluble.
Remi has made some amazing short films - usually entirely on his own. He has worked on loads of productions in France as well. He is currently developing a beautiful feature film set in Russia and the far North.

Ross Stewart - Art Director - resident genius - boy I hate this guy, hes just plain good at everything, I knew him since he was 12 or 13 and he has ALWAYS been brilliant. He worked with us on a lot of Saloon stuff, most recently Cuilin Dualach, and hes just plain amazing as a designer, background artist, painter, musician and most other things too. He also has'nt even got the decency to be a jerk so we can hate him.
At least hes few months older than me. hehe.

Barry Reynolds - Lead Character design - another old Saloon friend and another genius. Just the best drawer I ever saw and good at pool too. He has worked with me to finalise all the main characters and has designed a lot of the secondary ones himself .

Jean Baptiste Ven Damme - character design and modelsheets- A veteran of Cuilin Dualach - he jacked up the standard of character animation no end on the doctor character - you gotta see the film to see what I mean. Hes an absolutly amazong designer too. His own style is pretty scary stuff so we got him to do some Vikings for us - man, they are pretty far out! He is currently working on the modelsheets and helping figure out how to pull off the difficult flat style we are attempting.

Tod Polson - Head of Bgs - I call Tod the Forest Gump of animation. Except he ain't stupid, no sir. He seems to have either studied with or worked with every cool person in animation, and hes still friends with them all too! He is currently knocking all our socks off with an amazing color script based on the rough storyboards.

We have recently been joined by super talented French back ground artists - adrien and lily - but more on them next time - right now I better go do some work!

T