Irish Animators

It’s been about a month and a half since I set up my Portfolio site and I’ve been watching my stats with a curious eye ever since. So far I’m realising that I have no clue about how to get high rankings in Google, I know nothing about meta tags or keyword density or optimisation, although I see them mentioned everywhere. If you type my name into google I think my portfolio site doesn’t appear until half way down page 3 of the results and that’s not even a link to the actual site, it’s just my CV document. As for other terms like Irish Animation or Freelance Animator or anything else that might bring a possible client my way, well I don’t think I even make the charts. So basically, until I can wrap my head around all that technical stuff and get some idea of what I need to do to get my site up there nobody’s going to find it right?

Well, actually no. Thanks to this blog, I’m getting some traffic. Even with my rubbish marketing of my portfolio site it’s still getting quite a few hits every day and if I look again at the google search, gingerpixel.com is the number one result for anyone searching for me. A large portion of my traffic comes from people looking for animated related searches even though I don’t blog about animation too much. So, I’m thinking that maybe that ought to change. Now I’m not saying I’m never going to blog about anything else ever again…I’ll still be taking photographs and moaning about Eircom and boring you with stories about Eve…but expect to see a little bit more about the animation stuff. Just a little heads up.

Now, on a whim, I decided to go searching for other Irish animators who are blogging. I expected to find loads because there are just so many Irish animators all over the place. You’d be hard pressed to find an animation or games studio anywhere in the world that didn’t employ at least one Irish person. Thanks to wonderful colleges like Ballyfermot and Dun Laoghaire Irish animators have a pretty good reputation. So, I was a little disappointed when I didn’t find as many as I’d thought I would. Anyway, I’ve put together a little list of those I did find and if anyone can point me to any that I’ve missed please let me know because I’d love to add them.

Donnachada Daly
This one was an easy find since he’s been on my Blogroll for a good while now. He’s an animator at Dreamworks and has worked on Shrek, Madagascar, Over the Hedge and Flushed Away. I visit his blog pretty much daily to see his latest drawings of those wonderful curvy ladies.

Conánn Fitzpatrick
Although he’s not in animation anymore he did work for Sullivan Bluth back in the day. He has some amazing paintings on his site of Irish seascapes. As well as some other work that show his animation roots.

Aiden McAteer
Aiden is another animator who’s left Ireland for pastures greener this time in London. He did work on one of my favourite cartoons, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends while he was living here though. His blog hasn’t been updated in awhile which is a pity since I was really enjoying his sketches.

Dermot O’Connor
Dermot hails from Arklow and was another Bluth animator who left to find his animation fortune in the States. He’s a Flash animator nowadays and has some really clever games on his site. I remember playing his Gulf War game a few years back but I had no idea it was created by an Irish guy.

Garrett O’Donoghue
A fellow ex-Ballyfermot student Garrett’s got some wonderful doodles on his blog, he’s more into the layout/storyboarding side of things but it’s still the animation business. He was down in Limerick until recently and is now over in New York. It’s sad but so many of the animators I managed to locate aren’t in Ireland anymore.

Fran Power
Well, strictly speaking Fran has a blog but so far he hasn’t gotten past the first post which is a pity because I love the animation I’ve seen on the main site in particular Santa’s Kingdom (must be the time of year).

And that’s all I could find. Great blogs but just nowhere near as many as I’d hoped and not a single female among them. In fact I couldn’t find any indication that any of the 7 girls I graduated with are still in the animation business. Mind you, it’s harder to find girls because we have a bad habit of changing our names.

There were a few more animators who had News pages that they update occasionally but I didn’t think they were strictly blogs so I haven’t included them. One blog I follow isn’t by an Irish animator but I want to mention it because it’s about the making of the Cartoon Saloon‘s first feature animated film, Brendan and the Secret of Kells, which is happening down in Kilkenny. I drool over the character designs on a regular basis and this is a film I can’t wait to see when it comes out: The Blog of Kells

As for the Irish Animators I’d love to see with a blog, (or even a webpage in the case of the first three)…on my wishlist would be:

Jason Ryan
Eamonn Butler
Richard Baneham
Niall O’Loughlin

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Update: Ask And You Shall Receive

I got an email from Niall O’Louglin this morning and it seems he has just started blogging! I definitely need to start wishing for more stuff. So I can now add Niall to my list:

Niall O’Loughlin
You may already know of Niall through his hilarious and uncanny caricatures of celebrities. He’s been on the Late Late Show and his work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers. But he’s also been an animator since he worked with Sullivan Bluth back in the late 80’s. So go check out his new blog and leave him a comment. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he posts.