Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Secret of Kells

A little while ago at work I saw a screening of the Irish animated film "The Secret of Kells" and also a presentation on how the film's style had evolved. I enjoyed both the film and the presentation very much. The filmmakers are longtime fans of "The Thief and the Cobbler". The Thief inspired them to start working on their own feature film 10 years ago while they were still in college studying animation. Their film has very much it's own style and story, but you can see how they embraced and emphasized the flat nature of their artwork in a way that was inspired by what Dick and Roy did on the Thief.Very inspiring also the stories about how they worked on "Kells" initially on the side for several years, while working on commercials and other things at the studio they founded in 1999 in Kilkenny: Cartoon Saloon. Just a few years ago (2005) the project gained momentum and independent financing and was finished by several teams in Ireland, Belgium, Hungary and Brazil. The amazing thing is that it looks as if it was done in one place. I was happy to see that my old Iron Giant friends Marcello and Jean de Moura were involved through the Lightstar studio in Brazil.

links to: blog and website.

1 comment:

jean said...

Hi Holger, I am so glad you enjoyed the show, we enjoyed working on it, although it was taxing at times,, 30 minutes is no easy feat! The crew worked hard, I can only hope it screens here in Brazil! Keep your eye out for Friends Forever, from Motionworks, we did that last year also, I think it airs in September of this year. Great to hear from you, Iron Giant Days, the good old days, now that was a great project! Shame Warners did a lame marketing campaign!