Back in 2007, while finishing off my studies in IADT – DL, my classmate Pádraig Fagan approached me with a story idea. It was a modern day fable, about a Rooster that is in love with the Night Sky, until one day a dastardly Crocodile comes and steals it away. We put together some artwork and presented it to Barry O’Donoghue of Barley Films, and he came on board to pitch the project to the IFB (now Screen Ireland).
The boards we pitched to our funders at Screen Ireland:
Artwork pack produced for our funding pitch:
Luckily we were selected and the next few months was a whirl of hoarding cardboard and putting together our team to produce a mixed media experiment in animation!
While we were finalising our storyboard animatic, my main role was developing our characters, building on initial sketches by Pádraig.
There was a good bit of back and forth while we honed in on the characters, but once we started making them out of our chosen materials they came together pretty quickly!
With the beloved stage and TV actor Frank Kelly on board to provide the perfect narration, we rolled up our sleeves and got to animating!
We had a very special guest appearance by our old class mate and super star experimental animator Orla McHardy, who handled the oil paint on glass elements for the Sunrise and Runaway Sea sections.
After we finished the film we got to travel with it a good bit, including its premiere at the 2008 Galway Film Fleadh, the Screen Director’s Guild of America screening in 2008 and our Annie Award nomination in 2010, alongside numerous film festivals around Europe!
Stills:
