A trip to Digital Graphics in Liege , Belgium.

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Digital Graphics is located in a beautiful old red brick farmhouse in Wallonia. 

 

Sfx Maestro Jeremy Purcell lays out his plans to build up an entire stormy sea from a hand animated library of waves , splashes and foam combined with cg water and watercolour textures applied to the tvpaint animation at compositing .

Sometimes the "painters palette "used for digital ink and paint can look quite strange. Here we see ben in an uncharacteristic shade of pink. 

And ferry dan is a bit off colour looking here too - but all will be well on screen in the final output. The crazy colours help the ink and paint team tell where two subtly different colours overlap .

Damien shows us a scene of grannys car leaving the ferry kicking up a load of smoke. The smoke is designed like several charcoally smudges with lighter chalk lines drawn inside which is then animated with a particle system .

I took these iphone snaps last week when we visited Digital Graphics in Liege who are responsible for all the ink and paint, texturing ,compositing and cg efx in our film. 

Serge Ume and his team are old friends by now and its always a pleasure to visit their beautiful studio. The compositing we saw of a couple of early scenes was exciting and rewarding to see , all the work of the past year comes together at this stage. 

Even though we still have some major sequences to animate I feel like we are entering the final stretch of the visuals. 

The brainy folks in dg have developed some impressive new tools for ink and paint that mean they are basically painting scenes as fast as we can deliver clean up drawings... Its kind of amazing that just five people can handle all the ink and paint for the whole film.

The sequences that use the rougher pencil look and watercolour style are coming together well too , we are benefiting from techniques that digital graphics pioneered on the lovely film - "Ernest and Celestine."

Our hand drawn and anime studio efx supervisor Jeremy Purcell came over and  went thru the plans for the stormy sea sequences which combine a number of handdrawn elements with an anime studio boat and dg water efx. 

Adrien and I were happy to see the characters beautifully matched to the bgs painted in Luxembourg and Kilkenny and our Cartoon Saloon production manager Katja Schumann who is also an accomplished compositor herself came to get her head around the process dg uses in order to best prepare for the final seqs deliveries and to help iron out any last problems.

As usual many belgian frites , 

beers and chocolates were consumed and we arrived home happy and looking forward to seeing all the past years work coming together over the next few months.

Serge Ume , studio head , compositor ,coproducer, architect and Ink and Paint artist at work .

 

Two of our Belgian comrades discuss how rain falling on some Irish nettles should effect the leaves , they have developed a "plip plop" library of rain drop animations for such scenes.

A visit from the stars

We were honoured to show our lead voice actors around recently - young David Rawle snuck a day in between shooting Mooneboy and heading back to school to visit and see how the film is shaping up.

A Lucy O'Connell dropped by with her mum too , she watched the whole animatic and seems happy with the progress o far - phew!

Finally art director Adrien Merigeau and an "away team" of Salooners visited the Saltee islands recently on a follow up research trip to our previous ones.

Amazingly Saoirse herself was there in her seal-form to greet them.

Time flies ....

Hard to believe we are nearing the end of animation production in Kilkenny. A lot of the team are finishing in the next weeks and some have already left us , either for other projects or to go home . As a small thank you and celebration of their efforts we had a fancy dress party on wednesday night with most of the remaining kilkenny crew. Some great creativity in the costumes!

Right now Im in Noerlum studios in Denmark with the very talented crew here. They have been turning out some really great animation - Its a pleasure to see it all coming together...

Digital graphics

Just a post to show you all the wonderful crew in digital graphics who are just getting started on all the ink and paint, compositing and cg efx for our film...it's exciting to start seeing the bgs, characters and sfx all combined and integrated by this talented team..

Screen Daily coverage of annecy presentation

http://www.screendaily.com/news/moore-unveils-song-of-the-sea-footage/5057432.article?blocktitle=Latest-News&contentID=1846#

Tomm Moore unveils extensive footage from Song of the Sea

17 June, 2013 | By Melanie Goodfellow

Feature scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2014.

Award-winning Irish director Tomm Moore unveiled extensive footage from his upcoming feature Song of the Sea at a Work in Progress session of the Annecy Animation Film Festival on Friday (June 14).
Like Moore’s previous film - Oscar-nominated The Secret of Kells - the picture takes inspiration from Irish folklore, centring on the legend of the Selkies, mythological creatures that are part seal, part human.
The storyline revolves around brother and sister Ben and Saoirse, who are forced to leave their coastal home to live with their grandmother in the city following their mother’s mysterious disappearance.
When they decide to runaway and return home by sea, the voyage takes an unexpected turn - leading them into a fantastical marine world - where it becomes clear there is more to Ben’s silent sister Saoirse than meets the eye.
The $7.5m (€5.6m) film is a five-way co-production between Moore’s Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon, Belgian The Big Farm, Luxembourg’s Melusine Productions, Paris-based Superprod and Danish Norlum.
Moore said the film would be ready for delivery in the second-half of 2014, and potentially a Toronto launch. The English-language voiceover - featuring David Rawle, the young star of Sky’s series Moone Boy, alongside rising star Lisa Hannigan, Fionnula Flanagan and Jon Kenny - was recorded last November.
A sales company has yet to be set for the film. The Secret of Kells was sold by Celluloid Dreams.
However, the feature has already been pre-bought by Haut et Court for France and StudioCanal for the UK and Ireland, in a deal done back in 2011 under the Optimum banner. The latter also released The Secret of Kells.
Moore has set the film against the backdrop of late 1980s Ireland.
“I wanted to capture the old Ireland before the whole Celtic Tiger thing started… it’s actually set in 1987. I always describe the film as a melancholy, musical comedy… the melancholy part is that little bit of nostalgia.”
He explained that films as diverse as Mike Newell’s Into the West, Hiyao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro, and The Jungle Book as well as Irish poet Y.B. Yeats and modern-day shanachie, or traditional Irish story-teller, Eddie Lenihan had acted as references for the work.
Moore developed the script with Irish screenwriter Will Collins, whose previous credits include My Brothers.
Moore said: “The Irish Film Board, which is supporting the film, was keen for us to use an Irish writer and suggested some names.
“I met a lot of really good writers and creative people but then Will sent me a rather strange email in which he said he had just written a script set in 1987, loved Totoro and wanted to work on an animation film.”
“My wife was convinced he had been going through our trash,” he added with a laugh.
The director dug into six years’ worth of development artwork for the Annecy presentation. On the basis of the material shown on Friday, the animation promises to be even more sumptuous and detailed than that of The Secret of Kells.
French artistic director Adrien Merigeau showed extensive examples of the work he had done for the backgrounds, revealing how he had captured the plunging cliffs and rolling landscapes of Ireland’s West Coast with intricate detail for the film.
The artwork and rough footage met with an enthusiastic response from the audience who gave it long and loud applause.
“You’re positive response is really appreciated. Until now we have not shown this stuff to anyone apart from the pupils of my wife, who is a schoolteacher. It encourages us to push on,” said Moore.

Annecy

A lovely couple of days in annecy . We made some new friends and met up with some old ones again .
It was a full house for our presentation and many people were not able to get in.
Our presentation went well even though we planned to show much more artwork but we just ran out if time.
The feedback has been encouraging and motivating for us as we head back home to continue with the production.
Big thanks to dmitri and jeromine and everyone in annecy for inviting us.



We will give the same presentation at the ideate event in kilkenny in a couple of weeks so hopefully we can show everything then.

Just added some new photos from our facebook page.

Mooneboy season three launch

At the kilkenny cat laughs festival yesterday the third season of mooneboy was launched. We are delighted to be doing the animation for the new season and it was a pleasure to meet young David Rawle again. David is of course the voice of main character Ben and i showed him some work in progress footage .
We also got to meet Chris ODowd and other members if the cast.

Fabian Erlinghauser our animation supervisor gave a workshop for budding young animators showing them how to draw the characters from Mooneboy.

Annecy presentation

I'm getting ready for the Annecy presentation and gathering all the bits and pieces of concept art, sketches and development designs that we will show there in a couple of weeks.

Its amazing to dig thru 6 years of development artwork and remember how far we have come....

Heres a few random bits and pieces from my trawl thru the folders... 

an page from my sketchbook from the very early days- 

when the idea of a story about Selkies was just forming...

Some splash designs by Jeremy Purcell

Some concepts of Na Daoine Sidhe by Amelie Flechais

A colour concept by Ross Stewart 

Studio 352

The lovely people from Studio 352 , plus me , adrien, Stuart and Fabian. Plenty of beautiful work coming from Luxembourg these days ... Thanks to you all!

Glencolmcille

This beautiful place in Donegal was the inspiration for the part of the country where Ben and Saoirse live. This week Niklas Andersen and Ciaran Duffy have been working on the layouts for a big complicated sequence at the end of the film that takes place there , I think it's going to be a lovely part of the film . Here's a photo of me sketching there , taken by Adrien Merigeau on one of our research trips a few years ago. And also the beautiful concept piece he made after the trip.

Facebook

Hey just a note to say that one of our lovely production team, Anne Flore, has been updating a Facebook page for song of the sea , where you can get more regular updates about the production.

If your in fb go and seek it out!

Recent adventures

Here are some iPhone snaps of my recent adventures ...travelling to partner studios and even visiting the president ...

The crew in Norlum

The animators in Noerlum are deep in production with some really gorgeous work being produced there . Fabian , Fredirik and I presented a work in progress teaser reel and discussed the coproduction so far at the Cartoon Cine conference while we were in Viborg.

Great danes

Last week, Adrien, Stuart , Fabian and myself visited Studio 352 in Luxembourg to catch up on the layout, animation and bg work presently being done there. It was good to meet the new additions to the team and to meet again with the crew who spent time with us in Kilkenny earlier in the production. I feel like it's all going really well and I'm excited to see each new scene taking shape. They have a lovely crew in the studio now , I hope to get a chance to visit them again later once they are deeper into production.

Back in Kilkenny we have been joined by another old friend from The Secret of Kells , Niklas Kragh Andersen , a great layout guy. It's a pleasure to be working with him again.

Niklas, me and Andrejz

Here's a photo from a recent "fajitafriday" in Billy Byrnes pub in Kilkenny, with myself , Niklas and Andrejz Radka pictured. It was a great night with almost the entire Kilkenny crew out to see Andrejz off. Andrejz is finished his 3 month stint in Kilkenny and will continue to animate for us from Paris. Indeed another of our talented animators , Ornelie Prioule is returning to Paris to continue to work from home as well. It was great to work with them in the studio for a few months and I'm sure the whole crew will continue to be inspired by the work they send us each week.

Gilles ,Animation Supervisor for 352 and his army issue tin mug (he really is exmiltary! )

some of the 352 crew including Nic Debray and Victor Ens who visited us in kilkenny and who are animating some
lovely scenes at the minute. 

We have over 60% of the posing completed and even more layouts done. The key bgs are finishing up this month and ink and paint is getting started in digital Graphics in Liege .

Hard to believe that , all going well, we will be almost finished by this time next year...

Oh and by the way there's a few photos from my visit to Aras an Uachtarian, where we celebrated 20 years of the Irish Film Board with President Michael D. Higgins. I'm pictured with such men of greatness as Will Collins , Nicky Phelan,Paul Young and Eamon Devalera.

The lads in the Aras

Me and the long fella.

Me, Nicky Phelan (of Brown Bag fame) and Will Collins in Aras an Uachtarain

a production flow chart i spotted in 352 - the work of Mssr.Thibaut Ruby no doubt

The best crew in Star fleet

Quite a few people were absent today but heres a crew photo we took anyway because Mr.Steve McCarthy is leaving Kilkenny (but he will continue to work with us  freelance from Dublin town)
..we will have to do another one soon with everyone else....

Saint Patricks day

Thanks to The Secret of Kells , I've had some interesting paddys days these past few years, and this year Nora is in Rome where it's screening and Paul is in Dingle , I believe it also screened in Dublin in the Ifi.

I'm delighted its still being shown around the world in connection with our national holiday.

I hope Song of the Sea is similarly adopted as a positive animated view of Ireland. It's set in much more modern and less romantised times than The Secret of Kells though but I think we are showing Ireland as It was in the 1980s and as it still is in some parts.

Some gorgeous bgs have been done of Dublin landmarks and of old Ben bulben , Donegal and even the midlands . But it's the little details of the country that I'm excited to include, the everyday sights that are so familiar to us living here that they become mundane until they are seen on postcards or in touristy promotional material.
Here's a lovely background of a pub from the film by Alice Dieudonne .It Is based on a great little pub here in Kilkenny though I've changed the name to my own surname in Irish :-)
I guess for better or worse its the pubs of Ireland where most of the paddys day celebrations take place.


But of course I hope all these details just serve to create a rich backdrop to a story that people everywhere can relate to, the characters emotions and relationships are not uniquely irish but hopefully universal...

Fields and Woods

Production continues to rev up, the posing is well underway and animation is started.
Layout continues with our new Ad Stuart Shankly helping to pull it all together.
Theres a good feeling amongst the team I think and we certainly have some amazing talent in the studio.

Some of the posing team have been working on the sequences in the fields and woods ... a very nostalgic section of the film for me.
I spent a good chunk of my childhood rambling thru the fields and woods nearby to where I grew up just outside Kilkenny.

I want evoke that strange 1980s mix of ancient rural life and modernity where a quiet field of cows might be overlooked by imposing  pylons that had a strange electric hum.

Wildlife of course was never far away but us being noisy and boisterous kids we usually unintentionally scared away any wild animals we came across. However I do have some memories of the magic of seeing a fox, frozen still , looking at us in the middle of a field at sunset or of rabbits popping out of their warren in the edges of the disused quarry behind our house.

We are trying to incorporate some wildlife into the compositions in this sequence,which is partly inspired by the riverboat sequence in "Night of the Hunter" . We have a few scenes with wild animals watching the kids from a safe distance or just going about their business in the foreground while the children pass by unbeknownst to them.

Here are some lovely colour studies by Pedro Vergani , a very talented intern from Gobelins who spent some time with us last year while we we were boarding this sequence.