iKITMovie Blog

Drawn animation and to some lesser extent CG animation is alive and well in my native Ireland. There are a number of very successful Irish companies based in Ireland and abroad making significant contributions to the world of animation. Here is a sample listing of those in business in Ireland.

Animation – Irish Companies

http://www.caboom.ie/

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/

http://www.brownbagfilms.com/

http://www.monsteranimation.ie/

http://www.bouldermedia.tv

http://www.jammedia.ie/

http://www.kavaleer.com/

http://www.abumedia.com/

http://www.magmaworld.com

http://www.rocketanimation.com/

http://www.telegael.com/

http://www.thestation.ie/

http://www.boxcreative.net/

http://www.pricklypearproductions.ie/

The recent launch in 2005 of the Irish School of Animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education has three courses on offer, A BA in Animation, a HND (Diploma) and a course called Animation Drawing Studies. According to their website their emphasis in on drawn (2D) animation..

The core of the Irish School of Animation is a focus on animation drawing and character animation coupled with an emphasis on strong visual design.

Browsing their students filmreels is testament to that emphasis. There are some exceptions. “Ben Harper” , a recent graduate of the school displays some of his CG work on his showreel below.

Showreel from Ben Harper on Vimeo.

It is a pity there isn’t much evidence of Stop Motion work at the school. or at least none that I can find. But hey..there work is top quality and it’s still creative and enjoyable.

I’ve been thinking of starting a blog for sometime now but never seemed to have the time or inclination at the end of a very busy day. But, today is different. Today everybody seems happy and two customers in California and one in New York seem to be particularly happy. Got some great feedback on iKitMovie, actually we have been getting very positive feedback since we launched it last Winter but three in 12 hours is particularly nice.


Let me introduce myself. My name is Siobhan O’ Reilly and together with my husband and now business partner Diarmuid Brennan,we developed an idea our then 10 year old son had ie,an all encompassing stopmotion software program. Like I said it was my son’s idea. He was a crazy stopmotion enthuaist /animator back then 2006/2007, but after 18 frustrating months trying and buying everything he could find on the Web, he decided he needed to develop his own software that would allow him to make a complete stopmotion animation movie, with all kinds of sound effects and editing capabilities. So he gave us a list of what he wanted  and here we are now in 2009 with iKitMovie, what he considers the ultimate stopmotiion movie making software product for 8-14 year olds.


Now iKITMovie has been tried and tested by a whole bunch of kids since the first beta version came back from the developers. everything from the variety of  “Farts” in the sound effects section to the blue and yellow interface to “Cecil” our cute guy who pops up now and then on the website has been chosen by kids. At  times I thought it looked a little “young”, that something more neutral would be more appealing but I was always overruled and reminded that now I’m on the wrong side of forty “I know nothing”.


As I said earlier, this whole enterprise  which has now turned into a full time business was my son’s idea. The only trouble is he turned 13 last November and stopmotion animation no longer takes priority, but his new found rock buddies and his rock band “The Vision Project”. Check out his Youtube channel, Matthew Brennan and subscribe.

So here I am “the reluctant company director” writing my first blog, and thinking its been a crazy 2 years, a massively steep learning curve but most of all very gratifying to know that we’ve got something in iKITMovie that kids and adults too, get a kick out of.