Blackrock Animation Film Festival

Above is the animation my students created during the sand animation workshops I hosted with Imelda Donohoe, at this year's Blackrock Animation Film Festival.

We facilitated two classes; one with a group of special needs students from the Carmona Society, and another with a mixture of students aged 7-17 years old.

We started the classes by screening Meldy's recently completed sand-animation film "Struck Emotion" and Caroline Leaf's "The Owl Who Married a Goose."

Below are some spooky looking photos from the workshop, that show the students hard at work:

We were lucky enough to have a visit from Merlin Crossingham near the end of the second class. Merlin was over for the festival, giving a lecture on his work with Aardman as creative director of Wallace & Gromit and animation supervisor, we almost tricked him into doing some sand animation himself. You can read a little interview with him here: LINK

Special thanks to festival director Fionnghuala Neill, the Carmona Society, and all the board and staff of Urban Junction in Blackrock.

Rubbish Express wins at BAFF 2012!

My student's film "Rubbish Express" won Best Animation in the 12-18 year old category at the Blackrock Animation Film Festival last weekend.

This award is a well deserved acknowledgement of the student's hard work and ingenuity, and I hope after watching the film you think so too.


"Strange little green men have come up with a novel solution to their rubbish problem
- Dump it on Earth!"


Rubbish Express was created over 5 days in April, by Adam Cantwell-Xenopoulos, Sasha Lorigan, Philippe Lorigan, Sean McInerney, April Mooney, Amber Mooney and Ruby McAlister.

It was one of four films produced during a 2 week long animated film workshop, hosted by myself along with Pádraig Fagan and Carol Freeman, featuring original music by Chris McLoughlin. You can find all four films here, as well as a behind the scenes showing how the students animated the films.

This workshop was an initiative of the PURE Project, along with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Also, if you are curious, we have recently completed four more environmental workshop films, during the 2nd Annual PURE Wicked Animation Film School. You can find those films here.

Below you can see some photograph's showing the workshop in full swing

Enjoy! And thanks for reading.

Rooster @ Annecy 2012

‎"The Rooster, the Crocodile and the Night Sky," a film myself and Pádraig Fagan made back in 2008, is screening in Annecy this year.

It's in programme four of the Irish animation industry retrospective; Forty Frames of Green, and Screeening times are Monday 4th June at 1400 and Friday the 8th at 2030. There's loads of other great film being screened as part of the retrospective too, so check out the lists!


I'll be attending on Monday at the DECAVISION if any of you want to come up and say hi afterwards
http://www.annecy.org/annecy-2012/festival/programmes:201245

DCNYF ANIMATION WORKSHOPS!!!

Hi all!

As I mentioned previously, I've been planning some workshops with Dublin City Council Libraries and Dublin Chinese New Year Festival as part of the Chinese New Year celebration's this February. We've managed to put together a programme of workshops that will cover a good range of Dublin City, 10 workshops in all, 6 thaumatrope workshops which are in partnership with local primary schools and 4 flipbook workshops which are available to book by contacting the host libraries.
(For the flipbook classes I'll have thaumatropes with me as well in case anyone wants to try their hand at that too)

Here is the timetable of activities:

Tuesday February 1st:

1. 1000-1100 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Mary Queen of Angels National School (Already pre-booked by a school)
   
2. 1200-1300 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Dolphin's Barn Library (Already pre-booked by a school)
   
3. 1500-1630 - Flipbook Workshop - Recommended for ages 8-13
   Location: Walkinstown Library - Contact details to book a place: Link 

Wednesday February 2nd:

1. 1030-1130 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Pembroke Library (Already pre-booked by a school)
   
   
2. 1200-1300 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Charleville Mall Library (Already pre-booked by a school)
   
   
3. 1500-1630 - Flipbook Workshop - Recommended for ages 8-13
   Location: Finglas Library - Contact details to book a place: Link

Thursday February 3rd:

1. 1030-1130 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Pearse Street Library (Already pre-booked by a school)
   
   
2. 1200-1300 - Thaumatrope Workshop
   Location: Ballymun Library (Already pre-booked by a school)

Saturday February 5th:

1. 1100-1230 - Flipbook Workshop - Recommended for ages 8-13
   Location: Coolock Library - Contact details to book a place: Link

Saturday February 12th

1. 1400-1530 - Flipbook Workshop - Recommended for ages 8-13
   Location: Central Library @ the Ilac Centre - Contact details to book a place: Link

I will be assisted by two 2nd Year Ballyfermot Animation students Adrián and Kellie, as well as my fellow Dún Laoghaire graduates Rachel and Lisa.

Special thanks to Geoff Power and Anne Gannon for allowing me to participate in their project, which I hope is the first of many.
All the best,
Eimhin

PS. Unfortunately I wasn't able to facilitate a stop-motion workshop, but something is in the works that might come to pass in the next few months. I hope this guy is some consolation in the meanwhile.