The Secret of Kells

A little while ago at work I saw a screening of the Irish animated film "The Secret of Kells" and also a presentation on how the film's style had evolved. I enjoyed both the film and the presentation very much. The filmmakers are longtime fans of "The Thief and the Cobbler". The Thief inspired them to start working on their own feature film 10 years ago while they were still in college studying animation. Their film has very much it's own style and story, but you can see how they embraced and emphasized the flat nature of their artwork in a way that was inspired by what Dick and Roy did on the Thief.Very inspiring also the stories about how they worked on "Kells" initially on the side for several years, while working on commercials and other things at the studio they founded in 1999 in Kilkenny: Cartoon Saloon. Just a few years ago (2005) the project gained momentum and independent financing and was finished by several teams in Ireland, Belgium, Hungary and Brazil. The amazing thing is that it looks as if it was done in one place. I was happy to see that my old Iron Giant friends Marcello and Jean de Moura were involved through the Lightstar studio in Brazil.

links to: blog and website.

What's going on with the DVD poll?

A few weeks ago the number of people who had voted in the DVD poll did reach 210. Over the last few days the number has been declining. Today it's at 185. Very strange. Please leave a comment if you know why that could happen. I appreciate the interest so far and had planned to keep the poll open, but that makes no sense if it's unreliable.

UPDATE: I removed the poll because it appears that after 6 months votes started to expire, which caused inaccurate results (see comments). Thanks again for everybody who participated during the last 6 months. More than 200 people expressed interest in an official Thief DVD.

These were the 2 options:
A lot of us wish for an official DVD release with all the Williams footage of the THIEF. It would be good to know how many people would buy such a DVD. Please vote for one of these 2 options:
1. Yes, I would buy such a DVD, but only if the film gets properly finished.
2. Yes, a high quality version of the workprint, with storyboards. Plus documentaries etc.
(LINK)
Around 87% voted for option 2.

This is the online petition that inspired our poll and it's still open: (LINK)

Dig into the archives...

Sorry for the lack of updates. I can't promise when the next new post will come, hopefully soon. I'm glad that our stats show that a lot of people still visit the blog. I just wanted to remind new visitors to dig into the "blog archive" and read the "tips for new readers". Both can be found in the sidebar on the right.