Every Tuesday evening in Brown Bag we like to have a training course outside of any training we might do as part of the day job. We finished our life drawing course, taught by Niall Laverty, and that was really enjoyed by everyone.
For the next course, we decided to do a ten week Sculpture course which was given by the talented Una Kavanagh. This has been really popular and it’s great to see the diversity of Brown Baggers doing this course; from sound engineers to production staff as well as digital artists.
The first couple of weeks started off teaching us to sculpt a life model using only paper. Then there was Still Life with mixed media, and on then to sculpture inspired by creative literature. The most popular - and messiest - was working in clay. Different styles are beginning to emerge from everyone, and I wanted to share some of the images from the course. … read more
Earlier this year I was asked by the Irish charity Concern to join their newly established development board. Contributing ideas to an NGO like Concern seemed light years away from my day-to-day job in Brown Bag Films, but on understanding the remit of this new development board, I was genuinely honoured to accept.
Concern has worked in over 50 countries and employ 3,200 full time staff. Their remit is to work with the poorest people of the poorest countries. Typically, this means assisting people living on a ‘dollar a day’. In the year 2010, no one should be blogging about child malunitrition as a problem but sadly it will take generations to solve the problems of hunger and malunitrition in Africa.
Its worth taking some time to visit Concern’s website, and they update news frequently through their blogs and Twitter feed.
One of the first tasks of the Development Board was to visit some programmes that Concern undertake in the Republic of Kenya. I went to Kenya for four days not quite sure what to expect. Like most of us, we get desensitised to hardship from watching too much television so I was apprehensive about trip, not really knowing what to expect.
I was recently in Shanghai for a week as part of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year annual retreat. I was nominated last year and as one of the alumni I attended the World Expo in Shanghai with over 70 Irish business people, and spent some time meeting local businesses and networking with each other.
Last Saturday, the Lord Mayor, Councilor Emer Costello invited Brown Bag Films to the Mansion House for a reception in our honour. This was a moment we were deeply proud of and almost 70 Brown Baggers enjoyed the evening at the Lord Mayor’s historic residence on Dawson Street.
Nicky,Cathal and Doc with Lord Mayor Emer Costello and Joe Costello
It really has been a manic week in here with the Oscar nomination. I don’t want to call such brilliant news ‘a distraction’ but It was also the week we launched HAROLD, our in house Intranet. This is a portal where we centralise all internal communication and try and make the move from existing over dependence on email as the central communication tool. The theory is that we will discuss issues on our internal blog and when decisions are made, we move to our Wiki which is like an encyclopaedia, keeping all the information you need from what how to light the interior of Olivia’s classroom to information about holiday entitlements. Thanks to the talents of Arekibo for a nice job on the interface design … read more
The Animation CEO Forum believe that RTÉ are not fulfilling their role as a Public Service Broadcaster by failing to support, develop and fund the Animation sector in Ireland. In the context of the two Academy Award® nominations received this week by Irish animation studios, the Animation CEO Forum RTÉ have spent just €300,000 a year for the past 3 years on animated programmes. This represents less than 1% of the RTÉ spend on independent commissioned programmes. … read more
Last night saw the premiere of Disney’s Princess and the Frog in the Savoy cinema. In attendance were the film’s directors Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid) and John Musker (Aladdin). Also there on the night was supervising animator Andreas Deja, producer Peter del Vecho, and Anika Noni Rose who provides the voice of Princess Tiana in the film.
What happens when Granny O’Grimm gets too old to tell stories? Well she now has some competition from a young girl called Astrid who is looking to take second place as the world’s scariest bedtime storyteller!
Well done Astrid, you made me laugh out loud this morning. Maybe we should have a competition for the best Junior Granny?
The Laura Lynn Hospice is not yet operational but they hope to have the doors open in 2011 for what will be the first and only children’s hospice in Ireland. Fundraising is vital for them and we were very pleased to have been in a position of support for them this year.
Today saw the launch of the IBEC Film & Television production report 2009. I sat on the committee and was representing the animation sector. Below is the text from my summary of the Irish Animation Sector in 2008 and you can download the full report from www.ibec.ie
