Kilkenny based animation studio looking to upskill artists in the region

Cartoon Saloon are planning to start their own courses to train up a new generation of animators.

The four time Oscar-nominated Kilkenny based team thinks there’s a lot of local artistic talent that might want to develop digital skills.

It could set someone up to get a job in the studio that brought us the Book of Kells and the Song of the Sea.

Their new feature Wolfwalkers is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend.

Operations Manager Catherine Roycroft has been explaining on KCLR why they are planning to run these courses noting “There was probably a lot of people living in the areas, we were wondering why we hadn’t heard from them, like artists that must be living in the region and what it was, that missing link I suppose, that we weren’t getting applications from them when we were advertising for jobs and through a little bit of research with a couple of different agencies that we work with we recognised that there was probably a lot more traditionally skilled artists in the area than digitally skilled”.

She says they train candidates up to work in their particular style “We can teach the skills that are needed and simply offer employment to go alongside it and that’s rare enough in animation”.

Added to that Ms Roycroft says they want to see if there’s artists living local that could be helped to move into the digital medium pointing out “For example someone who’s a very talented artist but maybe never used their talents in a digital way we’re hoping to teach them the softwares that converts their skills I suppose which could lead to an opportunity to work in animation so we’re really excited about that & hopeful that we’ll get a lot of interest because what we’re at now is gathering up the level of interest that’s in the region”.

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