hello there

Well,

its getting so busy now its hrad to find time to think never mind post.
I hope it'll all settle down soon, its mainly just all teh new people, and a bit coming and going.
We have new a new layout guy - Marc .
The layouts are flying along, the hardest thing is feeding this crew while keeping an eye that nothing is being lost in the flurry of activity. Theres a huge amount of reuse in the layouts because of the style, somany objects are designed and then just moved around to crete different composistions in the same environment, especially in the interior scenes, so its allowing teh technical layout to go quite fast.
Its been a bit depressing in some ways seeing boards I was'nt completely finished noodling with going to layout - its much bigger deal to change things after that , so i guess I just have to let go most of the time when it gets to layout.
Cuts, composistions and so are pretty much locked from then on.
We have locked the first third of the film now animatic wise.
I am spending the day tommorow with the editor, Joe, just marking the scene lengths and stuff.
Cutting the wavs to get them onto the x-sheets.
Using Animo, we can have digital X-sheets from the word go, which is cool - very precise stuff.

Wea re installing an assest managment sodftware called "Hobsoft" that was used on Asterix and the Vikings, hopefully it will help us manage all the files that are being created between all 5 studios and it will allow us to communicate more easily too....at least thats the plan!

We have a new animator joinging us today, Jean Morel an ex-Disney guy who worked on The Lion King on Scar and on Hercules and stuff on Andreas Dejas team, thats quite exciting.
Jeans showreel is mighty impressive, so its great to have him joinging us .

Also in a few weeks in association with Barley films in Dublin, we are having a masterclass from Mike Nyugen , the director of "My Little World" and a supervisor on The Iron Giant.

Thats gonna be cool I'd say. I went to Gobelins during the week last week, amazing work there, the students all seemed to be in big demand. But hopefully one or two will join us here!

I was depressed to find I am now to old to begin training in Gobelins - I'm 29 and the cut-off is 26. So my new ambition is gonna have to be to make the Cartoon Saloon a place where I can learn as much as i might there!
So goodbye to any dreams of going to Gobelins, or being a Ballerina, or an astronaut.....sigh.

Emmmm...Bruno is starting to work on the temp track for the score this week, so thats exciting too, we have a tele-meeting set up for Thursday.
Unfortunatly we did'nt get together to go to Miltown Malbay this year for the Willie Clancy festival.

Last night i went sketching in the woods near my house with Adrien, Lili and Remi.
I'm boarding the final pass of the forest sequences now , and just to sit in a forest and sketch was very nice.
I think i'll try and do it again tommorow.

I am having to go super fast now on the boards as theres thsi trundling machine behind me that is catching up to me, and I have to keep it busy!
Its a lesson for next time - LOCK THE BOARDS BEFORE LAYOUT...ahh I always learn thehhard way I suppose.

Its been nice in some ways to say that certain thinsg are "locked" , finished and time to move on, like all the modelsheets and all - in a nice big thick package now, seems substantial.
I've uploaded a few ....

Next time....thats something on everyones minds now, thinking of what the next project will be already....

So thats a quick update after a long radio silence!

T

wottaweekend

well this weekend we moved house - five new layout artists arrived and I ALMOST finished the brendana nd aisling meeting scene.
wew.
welcome - Telman, Darren,Stephane and Raymond,and Niklas.

sebestian

http://www.gobelins.fr/galerie/animation/gen2006-4.htm

More Gobelins goodness - check out the dog and the beautiful bgs!
as I say ALL these students are amazing!

pyrats

http://www.pyrats.net/watch-movie.html

man this is so class. Students, wha'?
check out the happy little dance on the guy about to be hanged when he thinks they're there to save him. class.

Sure ALL the Gobelins stuff is always so classy. I swear its a good old kick in the bum.

The New World

watch it. its pure class.

Aisling meet Brendan, Brendan meet Aisling

well,

I've been fighting with the scene where aisling and brendan first meet all week.
I started with nearly the same staging as the first pass. But it was'nt really working with the final location designs and the final voices.
So I started changing stuff - with out thumbnailing on paper - just playing with stick figures.
Just could'nt get there. That stupid thing where I keep asking Nora what she thinks, thinking I'll like it if she says its okay.

Stupid, cos if I'm not happy with it I always have a nagging doubt even if others say its okay. So I showed it to her and Stewie, got good feedback and started to rethink it, again without thumbnailing on paper like I normally would. Just too eager for it to be done like.

Basically got nowhere , but yesterday morning I did that thing where when you are half asleep and you can kind of watch it like on a tv in your head, got some good ideas, but of course I was imagining the voices at the timing that suited the ideas as apposed to the actual timing of the kids voices. So I put it all down fast in thumbnails. Felt good.

Then the whole afternoon was gone on an EFX meeting with Jeremy, which was good, got stuff sorted and Jer got back up to speed. Then getting on with movin' stuff from the house.
Went to a thirtyeth birthday party. Its all weddings, babies and thirtyeths these days. I still remember when it was all 21sts and graduations!!

Anyway did the playing it thru' in my head thing this morning again, came in and plowed all the ideas from the thumbs into Flash really rough.

Finally had the "aw yeh this'll be deadly in colour" buzz going on, and "I want to animate this scene myself" buzz - so was fairly chuffed.

Then I got THE FEAR - like, shit its no good, bloody hell layout is starting in a week , this scene is scheduled to go to layout in less than a month, aw crap its probably all wrong staging wise, , all THE FEAR.

But I showed it to Gav, and he laughed in the right places and said "deadly" even where its really rough and all, and he got it - it read, it played , he knew what was going on with stick man scribbles, so its working i think................

I hope.......

Now I'm going in to tidy it up.

Probably too many mid shots.

hmmmmmmmm

APB FOR 2D animators

We are still looking for experienced 2d animators. Being from the EU or qualified to work here a big help. We are testing people, as the style is quite tricky.
Thanks,

T

Pictures

I was thinking a bit about the whole posting pictures thing - I like posting them, just to show whats happening to the few people I know who I don't see too often who drop by, and also because it seems to have gotten a few people in the industry to notice what we are doing and stuff.

Although this started out as a fairly personal Blog to just document what was happening, it soon became obvious that everyone had a sort of misgiving or whathaveyou about the types of things that should or should not be said and put up here, so its sort of evolved into a mixture of personal log and newletter of some sort.
I guess we'll put out an art-of book or comic or something of the development art and preproduction stuff, so while I'm not gonna give stuff away quite as freely or often as before, theres piles and piles more stuff being generated everyday and its nice to give a peek into the production sometimes.

Also to illustrate points and so on.

I've decided to try this - small sized jpgs , with BIG watermarks- hopefully that'll protect the stuff enough and allow us to still make some cash out of an "art-of"-book later ! (evil capitialist cackle MWAHHAHWHAW)

Anyway these are some cool colour models that were put together recently.

Also , a small sample of the layout notes Ross Stewart has been working on, which I think are little mini-masterpieces of information delivery in and of themselves. I sure hope they help everyone stay "in the style".

cats laughin

yeh its beautiful weather out there , totally like a holiday , kilkenny is great in the good weather in the summer , the cat laughs comedy festival is in full swing and i'm here indoors in work.
well there you go.
Remi is off in Annecy and I'm taking the chance to catch up on the paper boards and models sheets to double check we are okay to start layout in a coupel of weeks.
Each time a new group of artists starts its a bit nerve wracking - hoping we'll be able to hit the style and quotas and all that.
also a whole new set of faces in the place.
anyway putting the voices into the animatic at the moment too.
Lots of hiccups getting the files in a form we could use but we are finally sorted .

enjoy the sunshine.

t

voice recording

wow - a week I'll not forget in a hurry.
We recorded all the voices in 3 days and then edited them and stuff in 2.
Just home now. Guts busted- must be the stress! But it was tremendous fun too as Father Ted would say.
Katia, Paul, Fabrice, Nora , Kairen and myself were there for the records.
Then just myself and Nora and Kairen did the editing with the engineer a "sound" guy called John (pun intended heh).
We were in Ardmore sound, Tom Caulfield and Barry O Donoghue called in for some of the sessions, it was good craic overall.

Liam Hourican was really cool as a lot of the extra brothers - particularly leonardo.
The voice he did for Friedrich was so funny I cryed my contact lens out!

Paul Tylac did some great stuff as Assoua as well, very big and booming stuff.

Brendan Gleeson did a great performance on Monday , he really got into the character and asked a lot of questions and found really interesting takes on the lines. He gave the character so much authority. Mick Lally and himself seemed to really get into the parts, acting them out physically as well and with their voices.
Brendan Gleeson is such a big guy it was cool seeing him acting opposite little Evan. He really made the character his own and really made him come alive.

Mick Lally WAS Bro.Aidan, even his mannerisms between takes were very inspiring for the character. He really loosened up the dialogue and was very interested in the character. He even said he did'nt think Bro.Aidan would refer to St.Colmcille as "saint" because he probably knew him! It was a cool little insight that will be bring a subtle depth to the character.
Mick had a bit of a head cold, but we thought it will be a neat thing to bring into the character animation, making him more grounded and "in" the world, I started sketching Bro.Aidan sniffing and sneezing and stuff as Mick did his performance.

As all the actors were roughly the age of their characters and also roughly the same build and so on, it was kinda like seeing a real-life representation of them in front of us.
Fabrice shot soem reference footage which will be fun to use in the animation.

Evan McGuire our 11 year star was really great , and the scenes where he played against Brendan Gleeson and with Mick Lally had me shivering, it was so cool to hear so much life put into the lines we've picked at for so long.

Christen Mooney was really fantastic as Aisling, she was really brilliant, had all her lines off by heart and considering she's only been on the planet since 1998 its amazing the understanding she brought to her character! Nora helped get to some of the trickier lines, and listening to them back today it was really exciting.

It was cool to hear it back like a radio play, but strange too, because characters like Pangur and the vikings and stuff were conspicous in their absense! Its gonna all come together only with the pictures and thats as it should be in animation. Their are parts in the film that the actors really liked, and which i guess could be done in live action but I'm really hoping that overall its gonna be something ONLY acheivable in handdrawn animation.

But with the voice performances in the bag it feels like we are off to a great start.

Tús maith leath na oibre as the man says.

T

voices

So Belgium was Oefti. Seems like a lot of good solutions can be found with the software of the Freres Ume and they have a beautiful studio in Liege. It was good to see Eric, Vivanne, Toon and Benoit.
The kids were down yesterday for a workshop day, they are lovely kids and we had fun showing them all the stuff. It was great to see their reactions to the animatic, them being the target audience age and all. They did a little read through together and they are both very professional and easy to get along with. It was good to have them meet each other and see the studio and stuff ahead of the records next week.

I'm a bit nervous now, but we are as prepared as we can be I guess and I'm hoping it'll go well.
I'll be heading off to Bray now in a few minutes, theres a whole big gang of us going to be there so we'll have some fun too I hope.

Well, fingers crossed , next time I write a post we'll have the final voices in the can!

T

Faster and faster

Faster faster take me to your master!
(ZigZag from the Thief talking to the crocs)

Yeh things are going really fast now.

Didier , Fabrice, Ivan and Bruno Coulais came over on Tuesday.
Bruno seemed really into the artwork we showed and felt the story was working in the animatic.
He is a really nice guy and we feel lucky that he'll be working on the music.
Katia's fella organised a great night of trad music in the Pumphouse on Wednesday night and everyone had a blast. The craic was mighty and Bruno seemed really into the Irish music.

We hope he will be back for the Willie Clancy festival.
He's gonna do a temp track based on the rough stuff Nora put down on the animatic and thats really exciting - to have feeling for the score up front. Hopefully it will be inspiring for the animation and all too.


We had a party for both productions here in the studio while the guys were here and it was quite overwhelming to see all the crew - or most of it anyway in one room. 40+ people, thats some amount after years of never really being much more than 10. Cuilin seemed like a big crew for us last year!

Anyway the records are soon and we need to cast the final voices for the additional monks.
We will have the kids down on Saturday for a workshop day. Then we are meeting Brendan Gleeson and Mick Lally on the Sunday and on Monday we begin recording!
It'll be hectic , but Fabrice is gonna come over again to help with the voice directing as he's doen that before. He had some good notes on the animatic too - just tightening up lines and so on.

Tommorow I'm off to Belgium with Nora, Martin and Remi to meet the Belgian crew and work on the ink and paint tests. Its gonna be a busy few days and then we're back just in time for the records.

Layout is baring down on us with the crew starting in June, I'm gonna be boarding at least until end of July so its getting like spinning plates on sticks kinda thing.
Its a bit stressful alright but we're getting there.

I think things are still looking pretty good and if the voices are good it'll be a huge leap forward.

Didier was really cool about the blog - I was a bit worried he would'nt agree with it, but he thinks its cool. He's into linking it with the marketing site that we'll launch in September.
Adrien and Lilly have a cool idea for a Brendan game that'll be on the site so that should be cool.


Fabs will be helping out with the voice breakdown and we are gonna be up to our eyes for a few weeks after the voice records.
He's been doing soem gorgeous scenes as testers - just little chunks that are silent and don't need the final dialogue.
I've been thinking its a little less stylised animation wise than we first envisaged but looking very well.
He's flying through it so thats a good sign I hope .
Just hard to get my head around the fact that by Christmas all our animation will be done and the layout will be finished.
All the remaining work will be overseas by then.

As Katia says - once you enter the layout phase its like entering another dimension....yikes!


Anyway Ben is beside me here getting fed up so I better go!!

T

hey and ho and hi

so - another week or so whizzes past faster than you can say something that does'nt take very long to say

Got thru' very little boards , its getting slower and slower as we get busier and busier.
Anyway its still going forward and the current system with remi doing a layout pass on the boards Nora and I do is working really well.

Finally got some closure on the main part of the Irish finance which is nice, its a drip by drip process but we are in a much sturdier place now.
So that was nice.

Emm,deadlyBgs by Stewie , Adrien and Lily this week - starting to see the more creative Bgs that are part of the more lyrical parts of the film that I'd been looking forward to and now I'm on the forest part of the boards its fun to be opening up outside of the confines of super tight continuity issues that we had to respect "inside" Kells itself as a location.
Its funny, at this point I almost feel like I could walk around that space, and although theres loads of artistic license in the style we picked, it feels consistant when I scroll through the 100 or so Bgs or "scene illustrations" that we've done so far.

Eve, an intern from France, has done a beautiful job on a layout test Remi set for her and we are hopeful she will be able to join our team for a while this summer.

Raining cats and dogs these days you'd swear it was'nt summer at all.

We are probably recording the voices the last week of this month now - trying to get Mick and Brendan Gleeson into the studio at the same time is tricky as they are both busy. We hope to bring the kids who will play Brendan and Aisling down for a workshop one of the weekends between now and then.

Martin has been cleaning up the modelsheets for Cellach recently -looks classy. But Barrys drawings are so tight that its kind of easier than normal he says. Theres no redrawing going on between the rough and the clean its just all about the line. He's a bit of an illuminator is our Martin!
The thing with good crew, I can't say it enough, is it makes it seem almost easy somedays!
Remi often spots important stuff on the boards too or suggests really cool alternatives that I did'nt think of when I was plowing thru' a second pass of a scene.

Theres a lovely frisson of jealousy and awe and a bit of gratitude and probably loads of other stuff when you see people taking your stuff and going further and making it better than you would have on your own. I know Disney DVDs are full of this kind of praise and it usually makes me cringe but there you go, its just a fact.

I was at a "artists day" today in the Castle in Kilkenny- just a networking kind of day with workshops and all. I did a writing workshop, one of the speakers was a novelist that used to write for tv, He wrote on that great puppet show from years ago that I loved as a kid - "Spitting Image". Its mad the heads there are around Kilkenny. Liselott and Nora and Mike were there too. |The castle is a class space, big old beams and stone walls. Maybe in a year or so we'll have a preview screening there or something! Teddy Newton from Pixar gave a talk there last summer as part of Feile Beochán - the Irish animation festival that Ross John of the Murrays ran with Kairen Wailloch.

Didier Brunner the French Producer, Fabrice Ziolkowski (all round cool cat and screen writer) , Bruno Coulais (the composer from France) are visiting this week. Sure it'll be great craic.
Probably won't get much boards done.

We recieved some ink and paint tests from Belgium yesterday , looks great to see some coloured animation. Nora, Martin and myself will head over there week after next to see the crew there and work thru' some smaller issues that are easier sorted face to face.

Sin é muintir le Dhia,

Tá alán obair agam inniu , bhfeidir go scriobhfaidh mé cúpla rudaí eile amarach,

Slán anois,

T

An Tain

http://www.leabhar.com/tain.htm

Just a quick link to the newly published version of An Tain.
It was a long time in the making, with Barry Reynolds whos one of the main designers here on the film (and long-time Saloon collabrator) drawing it and Adrien Merigeau one of our Bg artists colouring it. Its really putting the two I did to shame! Check it out on the link above.
Hey why don't you buy one!!!

Thief that never gave up

Hey there,

just posting to say boy howdy.
Weathers good and I can feel summer comin' so its all good.
Spent the day toolin around in the car and walking in the forest in Jenkinstown with Ben and teh madra dana Cu-dog.
The forest sequence is next on the agenda for a final pass so it was inspiring - bluebells are sproutin and stuff.
Li and I found a great new house last weekend with a pottery attached for her to do her ceramics so its all good.

The production is having trouble finding layout crew but we have several solutions and several leads too so hopefully it'll all come together.
We had a very productive production meeting on Friday the first one in our swanky new meeting room with big swingy chairs !
Narrowing down the voices now - its a tough decision between so many talented kids but we need to decide now.
We had call-backs on Thursday for Brendan and auduitioned for Aisling too.
Its a giid problem when they are all so talented and its a tough choice!
Kairen Wailoch helped out a lot and Nora , of course, was brilliant with the kids, I'm learning a lot about actinga nd stuff at the moment too.
Finished the Robert McKee book "Story" and now I'm mad to write a new script!
Gonna start with some comics ideas that have been bumping around in my noggin for a while and post those here too.
The lads in Barley films in Dublin gave us some good note son the animatic and thats good to keep us focused and to have an outside opinion.
Didier and Fabrice will have notes for us soon too I guess....

Just gettin used to my new contacts too - its mad having peripheral vision again! Nice one.

Anyway I found this guy Garret Gilchrist who is restoring one of the unsung masterpieces of animation - the Thief and the Cobbler.
Dick Williams has always been such a huge inspiration to myselfa nd all of us here.
I met him in 2002 at his master class in Denmark, showed him some old stuff from the film, and he was very encouraging.
The documentary "The animator who never gave up" that i saw in college was a big inspiration too over the years, the passion he had for animation is so infectious.
I LOVE the design style of the Theif too ...
I'll post some pics that were on this forum about the restoration -http://www.originaltrilogy.com/forum/
I even had a picture of Dick williams stuck up at my desk to symbolically kick my ass when I was slackin! Fabian has my old desk now and he's got Dicks severe gaze staring him down now!
BTW Fabs is doing some magic stuff with the kids playing hurling at the moments some nice 2d doing what 2d does best kinda stuff.

Anyway check out the gorgeous artwork from the thief over on that forum.
25 years in the making - all on ones, ah ye all know the legend I'm sure!
But thats a heck of a cartoon - some of the detail seems insane especially as its from the days of handpainted cels and so on. I can't wait to see a good quality version of the scratchy old workprint that everyone copies in animation school!
Someday I hope the powers that be will release an official classy restoration.
Until then its mighty that Garret is doin' this important work.


anyway back to work...

T

easter

well, finally moved studio yesterday - quite emotional in some ways.
still fresh start, spring clean, easter time rebirth , all that stuff.
so tuesday morning I'll be going to work in the new place and it'll be the first time in 6 years not to
go into st.josephs.
meemmoorieeees

anyway, good week, we had auditions in dublin at the magnificent offices of barley films and then also in Galway, found quite a few talented potential youngsters for the roles.
Its reassuring when the choice is so difficult .
amazing kids really.

okay just postin a short one,

happy easter.
t

Skunk Fu Crooo

Hey there,

I'm just posting this to put out an APB for experienced Flash crew for Skunk Fu.
We are looking for experienced crew who know Flash ASAP, and I noticed a some of the nice folks who left comments here are classy Flash-guys and stuff, so if ye know of anyone contact -

info@cartoonsaloon.ie - Jordan Gaucher is the line producer and he's the man to talk to.

Thanks!!!

T

all the pretty pictures

http://www.woutertulp.nl/

This guy is my new hero.
So many styles , all so well conceived and executed.
When I grow up I wanna be like that, except hes younger than me!

This is nothing to do with the production of the film - except that I'm thinking of it now when I should be working on the boards for tommorow before Jeremy comes down.
Anyway I was recently thinking of how the amount of available artwork and info about artists for artists has exploded in the last few years.
I remember in school, the best artists I knew were Stewie and Aidan (in fact they are STILL two of the best artists I know but thats another story), then in college there was all these new artists and my head went into a spin seeing all their stuff and trying to measure up. Then I kinda found my place or whatever, and so on... but now with the proliferation of blogs and websites like www.drawingboard.org and www.drawn.ca, its just mind blowing the amount of brilliant artwork thats so accessible. In fact it can be quite distracting and overwhelming!
Anyway its just a phenonomenon (mehnawmanaw) that I've been really aware of lately since I started the blog and starting going to others blogs.

Overall its great - inspiring , interesting, informative, but it requires real discipline not to get sucked in to just surfing and drooling at all the work!


right back to work!

clean up

just to give you an idea of how we are communicating with the guys in Belgium about the computerised line thickening system.
we are still testing it.
Martin did up this sheet as well as a number of others to clearly explain what we were talking about.
ahhh international co-pros!

back from the big smoke

1. 

Well, it was a day of two halves as the man said .
In the morning we realised how urgent it is to get all the contracts and finance stuff
signed off on asap.
The Irish finance is very complicated to organise , especially the Section 481 and so on, and the fact that its a co-production means we are totally reliant on our partners in France and Belgium getting all their paperwork together too.
So they in turn are relying on their financiers, broadcasters , all that to give it priority and so its all a bit stressful and seems to drag on and on.
However we are nearly there, and we have good men on the case, James Flynn of Octagon Films is exec producing, James Hickey our lawyer. And of course Paul "Hollywood" Young here in Cartoon Saloon the producer. Anyway I hope all parties will pull together and we'll put the paperwork to bed in the next week or two.

On a lighter note , the meeting with Mick Lally went a treat. He's totally class . He just sounded completely right, hit the right tone and everthing immediately.
It was so exciting. Nora and Paul were greatly impressed too.

Nora acted Brendans part with Mick on seq32 and it was really exciting to hear. We recorded some dialogue and its magic to hear the lines with so much character .

Makes 'em sound really believable too. Nora said at one point (when I went out to the jacks or something) that she said to Mick that Brother Aidan is a bit of fool - and Mick corrected her - "No , he just takes his wisdom lightly" so that was class.

He's seems really into the role .
He really liked the script.

I was so embarrassed by all the spelling mistakes that I noticed on the train re-reading it. I can't believe how many slipped thru'!

So I made a little mock up with a picture I nabbed from www.elmamurray.com
(hey its good to say where you find stuff with this blogging business I reckon!) and a drawing of Aidan.
He might be able to do the recording in May, schedule allowing , hes in a play at the moment.
So that'll be great.

It'd be great to get a table read with him and Brendan Gleeson.

I did a little mock up of him as Abbot Cellach too. Just nabbed that pic from a google image search.
Like the beard on him in that, makes him look a bit more like the character!
Paul has gotten used to directing actors a bit in doing the Skunk-Fu recording sessions
and he was really a great help on that score.

Actually in the original version of this project, which was basically a totally different film, different story and so on, we had imagined Brendan Gleeson as the main character and we based the character design on him.
But that characters not even in this version of the film .
All the other actors who tried out for other parts were great too, really cool to hear the lines run thru' by pros.
But I'll not say too much as we are gonna audition a fair few people for those roles and we have'nt really decided on them yet.

One of the actors at the auditions was saying about how it kind of irks him that , y'know Shrek and all put these BIG NAMEs besides the characters and it takes him out of the film. Thats a good point, and he also said a neat thing too - when you consider that the BIG NAMEs probably only spent a week or two recording the dialogue and then the animators spend YEARs on the rest of the performance. But sure maybe thats just the nature of the techinque.

here, maybe I should leave the rants to better men than me, its not all that important in the greater scheme of things of course.

This post has gotten looooong.

I'll do a seperate one about the clean-up cos thats a whole other story...!

another mad one

yeh, still mad, good day yesterday it flew but I got a lot f drawing done.
the scene is much much better.
drawing into flash just seems to make my composistions and acting stuff weaker.
I prefer the paper, but then you get lost in a world of scanning and resizing and whatnot.
The mad thing is I'm roughing in Flash and then going to Paper once its working.

anyway , going up to dublin tommorow, some legal stuff in the morning and then auditions in the afternoon.
A bit scary dealing with actors - never done that before, Paul and Nora and her husband Michael have done most of the voices for anything we've done so far.
So tommorow I'm meeting a kid , Mick Lally and Paul Tylak.

Paul Tylak is doing voices on Skunk fu so maybe he'll be good on the illuminators.
funny guy by all accounts.

Mick Lally should be perfect for Aidan I'd say. Great thing is both he and Brendan Gleeson are fluent Gaeilgoirs so they should be able to be the voices for the Irish language version also.

I feel weird auditioning a kid, seems kinda cruel to try them out, knowing they'll be disappointed if they don't get it. I know how delicate it is with Ben,like.
Anyway we need to try. Its such an important role.

Its kinda like when people try out for roles on the film art-wise. Its the crappiest part of the job. I know how crappy it is to do a test , or a pitch, work real hard on it and not get it.
Even the worst tests we got, some poor dude spent a day or two on.
Thats kinda scary.

But , I was saying this to Remi this morning, and he agrees, its so embarassing and awkward especially as we'll all be back to testing and trying out for stuff in a year or so. But its important to get the right crew. Especially as we are the lead studio.

So maybe I have some idea of how tough it is for actors that way, trying out for parts all the time.

Right so,

Oiche mhaith agaibh,

t

saturday

• 

• 
  

• 
  

well, another week, spent most of paddys day drawing shots from the Royal Tenebaums, the composistions are so gorgeous in that film. Actually kinda flat and mannered in a sort-of-like our film kind of way. I just love the feeling of that film though. In fact all of Wes Andersons stuff rocks.
Adrien and Lily are big fans too, we are the Wes Anderson fan club of Kilkenny. heh.
Saw Sunset Boulevard again too, thats pretty classy also. drew some shots from that too, but want to do more. Its kinda a good way to really analyse the composistions and stuff. and its kinda like doing quick lifedrawings too so its good practise.

I drew loads , thought I'd post a few and one that Ben did that was pretty cool.
He really saw the shapes and the symatery.
I love that when Royal is leaving the kids he is kind of shot at the end of the table and in perspective , kinda distant and then when hes back talking to Margo and "The Baumer" the roles are reversed kinda and its shot the opposite. Ben picked up on that too.
Cool.
He's gonna kick my ass at the ol' drawing soon.

this older studio is still having occasional powercuts and the new place is having teething problems so its kinda stuck between the two for now. We are gonna stay here at least until the server for our project is up and running. The Skunk Fu crew seem to be getting on okay down there in the new place. I must go down and check it out.

Remi has been going thru' all the boards which we've been drawing straight into Flash and making them into workbooks - looks kinda impressive all printed out in a big thick booklet form.
When you pick it up it feels substantial! Anyway its just 26 minute sof it so far, We are closing the gap on whats final in the boards and layout has been delayed until June so we have abit more breathing room than orginally thought.
JB is going in and tidying up some of the poses and stuff so its looking quite nice.
The scenes with the Scene Illustrations in them look well, and even with the scratch voices and temp music its starting to feel like a film.

I'll post a couple of the workbook pages.


We are having "The problem of the Prince" a little bit with Brendan though. the expressions on the other characters seem more ..well expressive so we are gonna go back into the model sheets on Brendan and try to make the poses less restrained . Loosen him up a little.
Also we are really hunting for the voice actor now - its a tough one. I'd love if Ben could do it but probably we need a kid with a bit more experience.
We sent the model sheets and script of Bro.Aidan to Mick Lallys agent this week so hopefully he'll be into it.
Nora wrote character descriptions for the actors too - they are really clear and precise. Its easy to look at them at a glance and see what the characters motivations and arcs are as well as their relationship to the others is.

We have two days booked in Ardmore Sound which is ,like the best sound place in Ireland, for May. I'm kinda nervous, only TWO days seems so short compared to the rest of the production.
Also directing actors? yikes. I'm gonna go to one of the Skunk Fu recording sessions before then just to get a feel for the set up or whatever, I was at the recording for Cuilin but it was very informal just a bits and pieces of "walla" as it was mainly done with V/O.


So also we are considering the clean up style, it may be just too labour intensive as is and maybe it'll be better to just clean up normally and try and add the thick outer line in Ink and Paint.
Its computery but at the same time , in movement , it could give roughly the same stained glass effect. They did it on the "Mr.Bean" tv show that way and it looked Okay. But still its a compromise, and probably the first of many. With a limited budget we have to be careful where we put the effort in. The style we were trying first took , like an hour per drawing and just think we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot trying to get an outsource studio to do it that way on the budget we can afford. Asterix and the Vikings had that style but apparently it was really hard and of course the budget was 5 times ours!
So we'll see, we are trying to organise a test with the Belgian Ink and Paint crew.

Thats about it , things are going roughly apace and theres not a whole heap more to report.
Fabs is animating the wolf tests now and they are looking well.

Oh yeh , I saw the film "Birth" - jeanny its class. I saw it in the cinema before but bought a copy there last week and watched it last night with Liselott. Class. Nicole Kidman is a deadly actor too.
and the little kid was amazing.
and I'm not working and I should be!
over and out,

T

some more designs

from 2001-2004

evolution of a design

hey here are some images from down through the years of how brendan evolved.
From basically a secondary character to the main character.
also you see how the design style changes and flucuated a lot ...

co-production

hi again,

i thought it might be cool to do a short post about the way the film is financed and how it will be made.
I would have loved some inside dope like this back when we were first figuring this stuff out so I hope this is helpful to any one out there thinking of trying to produce something.
Well, also this is primarily a personal blog so I should say this is my take on it and how its shaped up for us so far, I guess no two projects are financed the same and I am surely no expert on these things.

But anyway - Brendan is a co-production between Les Armateurs in France , Vivifilm/Walking the Dog in Belgium and ourselves in CS.
The project orginated as a basically totally different story set in the same period and with similar characters here in CS. We brought a trailer (which we made straight of college with some funds we got from a government scheme through Young Irish Filmmakers) to an event in Germany called Cartoon Movie.
Cartoon Movie is an event hosted by an organisation called Cartoon, which is funded in part I think by the EU (though you pay big bucks to go to it) ,and basically its a forum to pitch projects to potential investors/distributors and co-producers.

We partnered up with Les Armateurs who had had great success with Kirikou and were just begining production on The Triplettes of Belleville at the time. They were working with Vivifilm and Walking the Dog in Belgium on some 3d and 2d parts of Triplettes.

The budget of 5.35 million Euros was raised in each country, with each country raising their part of the finance to cover the part of the production they would take control of.

So we are looking after the pre-production up til layout and 20 minute of animation here in CS.
Les Armateurs are looking after additional BGs , 35 minute of animation (which they will outsource to Kecskemet Film in Hungary) , post production and music.
Bruno Coulais is the French composer who will work with Irish group Kila to do the score.
Fabrice Ziolkowski is the screenwriter brought on board by Les Armateurs who helped redefine
the story and characters.
Didier Brunner is the producer for France.

Then in Belgium, producer Vivian Van Fleteren is raising the cash for the CG elements and 20 minutes of animation. Then she is working with production house, Walking the Dog to do the actual artwork. They have a beautiful studio in the centre of Brussels. Ace animator Benoit Feroumont is heading up the 2d team there with Anton(Toon) Roebens on the technical end of things. The Belgians will also handle ink and paint. They will fund the clean up also which is outsourced to Eastern Europe most likely.

So this, complicated and spread out production/financing method is almost standard now in Europe it seems, some great movies have been made this way and a few not so hot ones too I guess.

Its a big challenge and its all ahead of us still, but we hope with enough planning and good design upfront we can pull it off. I know our partners are experienced in this way of working but I'm sure it'll be a bumpy ride at times. We hope to do a good enough job to raise the money for another film, that hopefully won't be as spread out or as low budget.

The cash from Ireland was raised from The Irish FilmBoard, the national broadcaster RTE, distributor Buena Vista Ireland and then we shared in the international deals with Celluloid dreams and Eurimages and so on.

It took about 5 years from the first version of the film until production began to raise the finance and find all the partners and there were long stretches where it seemed like a pipedream in the distance while we strugged to keep the studio alive with service work and commercials.
We invested about 200,000 Euros in to the project in swaet equity and expenses to raise the budget we did.

I hope thats interesting...for me starting out this stuff boggled my mind, and it still does. A set-up as complicated as this has so many pitfalls, but we are determined to make this thing now, and like a snowball, it seems to be rolling ever faster and getting bigger.

So , eh, thats it as they say.
I'm off to meet up with a potential life model so we can get life drawing going again in the new studio.
nice one.

T

P.S. added some colour sketches by Todor Polson, just to liven up this texty entry!

Lá Fhéile Phadraig

heres some more random things from my desktop -
a colour model for aisling based on martins clean up drawings
a page of sketches from when we were trying out different hairstyles for Brendan.
and an old scene illustration of a deleted scene by Adrien Merigeau characters drawn by Jean Baptiste .


its the end of the week cos tommorows paddys day. ah yeh parades and all that.
pity everyone will be mainly getting sloshed.
i suppose we have a stereotype to maintain. sure feckit i may as well join in.

anyway just a quick note - good news today that Brendan Gleeson has been confirmed as the voice of Abbott Cellach - He is a class actor probably his face at least is quite well known by now.
He's perfect as the Abbott - he is a long time friend of the project and was orginally slated to play the lead character in a previous incarnation of this project many moons ago.
Its great that he'll be involved now.
So thats cool anyway.
The other cool thing has been all the comments and feedback.
thanks to all who stopped by. I clicked through a few of the blogs of people who left comments -
amazing amount of excellent artists out there doing their thing.
Big thanks also to www.drawn.ca for mentioning us - esteemed company to be sure.

Anyway sin é anois, I'm off to watch the Royal Tenebaums with the missus,

oiche mhaith agaibh,

T

old school and new school

• 

hey thanks to all who stopped by!
was down in the new place today - skunk fu moved already.
its lookin nice. should be cool maybe a bit packed but the "newness" will be nice.
so, turns out we are lacking a layout artist, so anyone reading this who is interested please do
get in touch - we need an experienced person who is willing to live in KK, actually experience is only kinda nessesary being good at drawing and able to use photoshop is moreso.

anyway heres something a little crazy -

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html

the future eh? I found it on www.drawingboard.org, in the tech section was thinking of getting a cintiq or a tablet pc but was checking what people thought about it when i stumbled on this. we were all oohing and aahing at it today.
we have this running joke in the studio about the ANIMATRON 2000 a computer that animates for you - you just say "more appealing, jump! - higher! now do it with emotion!" and so on.
this seems like a step in the right direction.

heh

anyway heres something more old school - some of Martins clean up on Brendan - (which i guess is gonna appear at the top of this message) - anyway it was gas to look at this "future" yokey and then go and order old school stuff from chromacolour for the clean-up - pencil, gloves even cels!

one for the road

I tried to find a photo of the current studio to put up but found this instead - a two year old photo of the crew on Cuilin Dualach -

from top left - Jean Baptiste Van Damme ,
Ross Stewart, Paul McKweon, Paul Young, Fabian Erlinghauser, Nora Twomey (director of Cuilin)
bottom row - Aidan Harte, Sean O cuilin (producer for sonta productions) Tomm Moore (me!!) Martin Hayes - (fiddle meastro and composer on Cuilin)



well, the sounds of people moving computers in the next room is reminding me that we will be moving studio very soon, the new place is about ready, its very exciting but also a tiny but sad.
the young irish filmmakers have been part of my life for nearly as long as i can remember.
we have been in this building since 2000 and its really old,cold and grungy but its become home.
still the constant power failures are reminder enough that its time to go.
whats ironic though is that my son Ben, who is ten now, has just joined the filmmakers today.
he's arriving as i'm leaving, which is all for the good and quite fitting really.


a big shout out to Mike Kelly of YIFM - thanks!

cool house

http://houseofcool.blogspot.com/

here, i was just reading the "house of cool"

blog this morning - besides the fantastic art on their site - the things ricardo curtis says about running a studio and all ring so true.
and also his "in the beginning" post is very close to how i felt in college vs. now.

I gave a talk in ballyfermot last week, its cool to go over the history of the place that way.
i enjoyed it in the end, but i got the vibe that the students were mainly into CG now.
That kinda worries me sometimes - that we have become really too into our flat and pushed stuff and it'll alienate people. I just don't know, I have always loved , like Dick Williams stuff and things like that. Todor sent me some books by the Provensons, they are really sophisticated "flat" types designs, but I dunno, maybe as a kid I might have rejected them. Gavin, here in the studio was talking about our attitude to the arty National Film board of Canada stuff as kids vs. now.
Now, as an animator I love the boldness and designy-ness of a lot of that stuff but then, as a kid it seemed just weird and I probably would have rejected much of it as un-good compared to something like the Don Bluth stuff i was into at the time. Ironically that Don Bluth style is what I try to avoid now in favour of some thing more "out there".

This week Stewie and the lads were working on the sequence in the Abbots room, I wanted to push it as far as possibel into an abstract space with the pattern of his plans on the walls acting as framing devices - but being sure we have'nt gone too far can be tricky sometimes.

anyway heres a couple .... see what you make of it...

grainne

hey ho,

these are from last weekend, i was reading about grainneuaile and was inspired o do some images of her. there were some nice guys over from france doing some layout tests, must be so hard to come to another country and do a test in a strange studio. I stayed in here over the weekend with them and between doing the boards I did these illustrations. they are'nt really finished but what the hey. posting them makes me want to do more.
could be a good film or comic in the graineuaile idea...just thinking about it for now, actually i feel these are a bit too much in my usual style now i'd like to push for something different.
Anyway things are going quite well on the film, a new guy, Martin Fagan has started to work on the clean up - check out his beautiful line - like ink eh?

man these images are uploading all wonky ...sorry - the image of aisling is martins clean-up.

Anyway watched "Elizabeth" an english movie with Cate Blancett as Queen Elizabeth - really a gorgeous movie and really good story too. but the artdirection and shots are fantastic. I love all that costume and stuff from that period- also watched Napaleon Dynamite , like three times in the past two days - freakin' sweet movie .

So the scene illustrations are proving to be really useful...i'll do another post with some of the latest.

hey, if anyone is out there - please leave a comment - would love to see whos reading this!

(if anyone)

heh

howyah

well had a nice week - spent three days relaxing in bristol with the missus.
great time - went to cafe meitreya - excellent vegan food
good gig too in the fleece - pure horsehair and laura veirs.
very cool night - also saw an amazing rembrandt - an old lady ina big white ruff.
tonight i'm off to hear steve reichs music for 18 musicians with some of the guys from work.
ahh - i'm having too good of a time!
dossy.
anyway just checkin' in. some great stuff happening - must go away more often!
remi and noras boards are lookin good and this latest from lily is pure class.
its such a buzz to see it coming together now.
still a lotta work ahead and the coupla days off really gave me a boost
i was starting to get really tired.
hokay - craic into it now...

yo!

So told a few people about this and so maybe theres someone out there!
Word to big bird - Just got a mail from Fabrice Ziolkowski - the screenwriter, and
he'll be over making a "making of" soon. Thats cool just hope its not a "lost in la mancha"!

Just posting a nice pic Lily did - Lily Bernard and Adrien Merigeau are working with Ross Stewart now doing a lot of scene illustrations - between 240-400 final Bgs that will be the blueprint for the final look of the film.

I'll post the one by Adrien (I drew the characters) this is based on a concept I did years ago and its a scene I am glad to say will be in the final film. very simple shot but i like it.
I was picking at it for ages - more than the more complex scenes. Its weird that way.
Anyway its great to cut these Bgs into the animatic - gives a quick feel for how the scene will look.
And as its a "screen shot" its agood guide for all the departments right down the line.

Been thinking of Mick Lally as the voice of Brother Aidan, it would be cool if we could get him- he'd be great.
But Michael McGrath and Nora did a great job on the scratch track too, its a really good guide.
Anyway falling quite behind in the boards so I'll knuckle down now.
Just signing in to say howya .

sunday

well, its cold and lonely up here tonight.
law of diminishing returns from this weekend work.
yeh, i get a bit caught up but i don't seem to have the intense concentration
of the first few weeks doing it.
its just a kind of malaise, letting myself wander mentally.
i get a bit caught up though but should be making bigger inroads.
I think i need to be more mentally disciplined.

anyway we have a sound and temp track animatic finally.
i've been cutting stuff since we put it together, with nora.
it was 89 minutes long and we only have 75 - actially 72 with 3 mins credits.
its really a big story to tell in 72 minutes, have to be very succinct.
i have been cutting a lot of what was added as we tryed to "lighten" stuff since last summer.
it just muddled the tone and was wasting precious screen time.
also the montages were indulengent and over-long pretty picture stuff.
looked at rocky again, and in 2 hours of screen time the montages are all less than 2 and a half minutes long. so we really have to be succinct.
What are we saying? say it - ONCE! and move on.
So much of the second act was repeating our selves or saying things that did'nt need to be said.

Was kinda depressed at first but diving in and cutting got me back to the heart of the story and
made me a little more passionate about it again.

I keep dreaming of it being finished and showing in the Bonlieu in Annecy.
Always nightmares though! no one there and so on.
heh, its really under my skin now.

Anyway I think the final "growing up" montage is quite abbreviated now, will have to look at the whole thing w few times to see if its still working.

sin é a cairde - slán anois,
t

saturday

well here I am in work again listening to laura veirs and still not really "in" the sequence.
gotta just blast into it and then go back and look at it.
heres a sketch of the lovely liselott "the head in the bed" that I coloured up to get warmed up or to avoid the storyboard problems not sure which yet- bit of both I guess heh.

hi again

well, its 4.30 am or so I can't sleep , this is normal for me. I had a pretty unproductive week personally, did'nt do much art, just some character poses and a tiny bit of boards. I figure i need to make 20 secs of final boards a day on average to finish the sequence i'm on now. the time goes between feeling like crap with this bug going around and the stresses of the producing end of things. most of the week my head has been on finincial crap, very stressful trying to think of the cash flow and absorb the problems of finance. I am determined to create a document to remind me of all the intricacies for next time! But my partners in the Saloon are all on it so I know we'll pull through!
Anyway my head is racing around art problems mainly tonight. In the main things are going very well, Ross Stewart made one of the Best bgs yet today - the abbots room in the storm it looks great. The model sheets are coming together but the inconsistencies need to be ironed out - very small and minor things but we really need the model to be rock solid so it does'nt wander in animation.
We reckon we'll need an a new assistant director as Remi is so busy with the boards right now.
Jeremy and Lorraine were down today - they live in Galway and are looking after the effects. we saw some good stuff today - just needs to go a little more stylised and simple. It sometimes seems like a detail to me, the effects, but well designed effects will really tie the whole thing together.
Fabian has been working on the animation test and it looks well, he is figuring out a lot of stuff and one thing i know is that we will probably loose a bit more detail on the characters before we are through, the big thing on Brendan himself is the cape - its too much extra hassle, we'll keep it only for certain sequences.
Jean Baptiste is back on the Vikings and I am eager to see a test in CG to know if thats the way to go with them or not.
The animatic is nearly done with the temp sound, its exciting to see it coming together but itt'll be a very busy three months now finalising the boards - all the directing needs to go in there and I;m busy on a lot of stuff. Great to have Nora involved though - shes really the glue that'll stop it going all lopsided - shes keeping a great overview on it all.
well feet are freezing - back to bed I go!
mind devulged of the main worries!
back to work tommorow!

hah an update

well thought i better update.
had a frustrating week with delays in finance and premises, but at least the finance seems to shaping up so we soldier on. this old place will do us for a while longer!
thought i'd try this watermarked thing - maybe its enough to protect the art-
much of this stuff is'nt so far from whats on the website anyway.
must lookinto whether or not its cool to update this blog with new art.
think it would be cool. still theres zero traffic here so i guess i'm just doing it for me.
hi me.

Til next time Todor!

ahh sure no post for a week or two and then a couple at once.

drawing a bit more now. work breeds work. i guess its like excercise - so easy to put off.

one of the best things about this production is working with experienced and taleted folks.
our colour script is being created by tod polson, although we originally planned for him to
stick around and be head of bgs ,another production has greater need pf his powers and he cannot ignore this great burden of responsiblity he bears so , sadly he is departing us tommorow!

a real nice guy - check out his gorgeous film - www.pumpkinlove.com
its a really mighty cartoon.
anyway i learnt a huge amount from Tod and I'm sure we'll work together again soon.

also he got me started weight training which is one of those things I just never wanted to start without someone showing me the ropes. As well as a superb colour stylist Tod was once a champion power lifter- some combo...

another manic monday 16th jan

well, i realised this blog business may be a bit boring since i cant post too much new art as its better to keep those types of things mysterious for legal reasons, so i'll just keep this up as little personal blog more than anything. a good place to record how things are generally.
well, the weekend was spent mostly trying to finish the "honeymoon" sequence in final board form.
finding it hard going back and forth from paper to flash, trying to make good drawings and have a sense of the timing and all too.
obviously its not an actual "honeymoon" thats just what we've been calling it!
i aslo realised again how little i know , i reviewed a prospective animators test and basically failed to see how strong it was, because i was so distracted by the model being a bit off!
the fact is the model sheets we did for the test were quite early and so not that consistent, so it was'nt too easy to be "on model" for anyone!
It took Nora "brains of the operation" Twomey to point out the strengths, but then I guess thats why shes animation directing and not me....
anyway working with such talented folks can be depressing sometimes but the thing to do is keep trying , keep learning I guess.
heres a silly cartoon i did of the beloved wifey liselott -

A. Riabovitchev: Some sketches from Prince Vladimir

A. Riabovitchev: Some sketches from Prince Vladimir

check out this guys blog - hes working on this russian feature prince vladimir - wow!

despite my reservations about being biased by techinque in this tiny world of animation I must say all the same that
its great to see high quality 2d animation getting made - whether the big american studios value it or not!

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