Is RTÉ letting Irish Animation down?

With a slew of Oscar nominations to its credit, the Irish animation industry is on the crest of a wave. But leading voices in the sector say success has come despite, rather than with the help of, the national broadcaster, RTÉ

Valerie Flynn, 04 Mar 2010

Oscar night is approaching and the big Irish story this year is the fantastic achievement of the country’s animation industry in earning three Oscar nominations. However, insiders feel that the sector’s success is happening in spite of a conspicuous lack of support for animation in Ireland, with RTÉ being depicted as the major villain of the piece (dastardly Shredder to the animators’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you like).

The list of Oscar nominations is impressive. Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon’s stunningly beautiful The Secret of Kells (with a soundtrack by Kíla) is in the running for the Best Animated Feature. Dublin’s Brown Bag Films has been nominated for Best Animated Short (they were nominated in the same category in 2001) for American Tail. Irish Avatar art supervisor Richard Baneham has also picked up his second Oscar nomination, having previously worked on The Lord of the Rings.

For The Secret of Kells director Tomm Moore, just back from LA, the last couple of weeks have been “a bit mental”.

“I went to the Oscars [Nominees’] Luncheon the day before yesterday and I was sitting at a table with Sandra Bullock and Quentin Tarantino. It was totally bizarre,” says Moore.

“And it was really weird, the lads from Brown Bag were there and Richard Baneham, who I went to college with, and a lad from Northern Ireland (Peter Devlin, nominated for the Best Sound Mixing award for his work on Star Trek) – it’s really weird that of the 121 nominees who were there, five or six were Irish.”

Like Baneham, and Brown Bag’s Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell, Moore studied animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. After graduating 10 years ago, he set up a studio in Kilkenny (“it was that or emigrate”) and started making commercials and TV series, as well as illustrating the first ever graphic novels as Gaeilge, An Sclábhaí and An Teachtaire.

Meanwhile, he was also chipping away at the idea of a film based on the illustrations in the Book of Kells.

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