To the Waters and the Wild

Recently we took a trip with the whole crew to Sligo to see some of the sights that inspired our film.
We had visitors from our Luxembourg coproduction studio 352 and some new recruits in the Saloon. It was good to show our Belgian, French , Luxembourg and Hungarian friends some of the West of Ireland.
We stayed in Markree Castle in Sligo and went walking near Ben Bulben.
 We even visited W.B.Yeats grave to pay our respects.

Here are some photos by various Salooners of the trip. The photos and memories will surely fuel us  thru the year making backgrounds , animation and designs based on the landscape we saw.

Producer Paul Young surveys his domain

Everyone bundled back onto the bus

Salooners take breakfast in the manner in which they are accustomed to.

Pangur Ban showed up to wish us luck - or maybe ask for a bit part.

Producing animated films is a lonely road.

Paul Young , as ever, pointing the way . (straight off a cliff it seems here though)

Backgrounds

We have had two background painters from Luxembourg join our team to train for a few weeks lately.
Its lovely to see the watercolour basis for the bgs being painted before they go into photoshop .

Heres a lovely wip by one of our Irish bg painters Ciaran Duffy - and a shot if art director Adrien merigeau showing laurence and pascal from 352 the technique he used for making the bgs .