France

Perpignan by night 

Beautiful surroundings of serges place in the mountains near Perpignan 

Art director Adrien Merigeau and Jennifer Evans in Paris .

The library in the Irish cultural centre where we did interviews.

Song of the sea books in sale at salon du livres on Sunday where I had a signing session with Nolwenn.

The Paris premiere audience 

Liselott and Adrien as seals 

Outside the cinema where we had the French premiere 

From Paris to Perpignan this week - I'm busy with the imminent release here - our French producers and distributors , super prod and haut et court have been doing a great job with the publicity prior to the release here next week. Our star voice actor and singer Nolwenn LeRoy has been extremely kind in promoting Somg of the Sea on her many media appearances recently and I had a few fun interviews with her in the Irish cultural centre on Monday and Tuesday. 

The premiere on Sunday was a great success in a beautiful cinema on the champs élysées and we had a lovely appreciative crowd of both kids and adults in attendance as well as many of our French crew.

Today I'm in Perpignan with serge UME our Belgian partner who is living here now and starting a new studio here. We have a screening tonight for studios of the region and students and family's from Perpignan. The first day i landed here the jetlag caught up to me and with the quiet and peace of the French countryside instead of the usual hubbub of cities outside my window I slept almost 18 hours! 

Song of the Sea on the Champs Elysses 

Nolwenn at the Irish cultural centre 

Evidence of Machas owls - Irish cultural centre 

Joint interview at the library - I had to paint a picture for nolwenn on camera - no pressure

The chapel in the Irish cultural centre 

Nolwenn in the telly talking about le chant de la mer

Veronique and Serge Ume with me at the lidem animation school industry conference in Perpignan 

Promotional artwork on the doors of a cinema in Paris 

Serge the Seal and Tomm the Seal will star in the prequel/ spinoff TV series beginning of the franchise planned for release next year. (Sarcasm)

Exhibition in the cinema in Perpignan 

La blurry

Not just la though - the past few weeks have been a lovely blur of friends old and new and I travelled around the various studios and screenings in California , at Pixar, pdi , Sony, titmouse, Nickelodeon,dreamworks and Laika plus various asifa and academy screenings ! It was a blast over all and I met so many animation superstars it's hard to mention them all - the fellow fans out there will recognise the greats in the selfies below.

A special shout out to the fearless Jamie kezlarian Bolio   who took good care of me the whole trip , driving around and introducing me to all these fine folks.

We recently heard we were honoured with no less than 7 Annie nominations so it seems like a posse of is will be out California way again in the new year ;-) 

LA Story

I've been here only a week and it's been just amazing so far. We had a great US premiere in the Egyptian Theatre yesterday , so fun - and another screening at Manns Chinese Theatre on Wednesday at 6.45 - tickets are free and available on the Afi website so please do join us if you are in the area :-)

I was part of a Hollywood Reporter Rond table with Jorge Gutierrez and Travis Knight ,Bonnie Arnold , Dan Lin and Don Hall. It was good fun and really an honour to be at the table with such seasoned and talented filmmakers. I am always tickled by the fact that our budgets are so far apart - for example - Jorges beautiful Book of Life is considered low budget at 50 million ! That's almost ten times the budget of Song of the Sea - so it's really special to be counted as part of the top oscar contenders despite that disparity .

I was at the Academy's Governors awards ceremony as well where I was amazed to have the chance to shake hands with Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki! I met so many other great animation directors and filmmakers  as well -John Lasseter , Pete Docter and Dean DeBlois graham annabelle and Anthony Satchi , Phil Lord and Chris Miller as well as Don Hall and Chris Williams - but meeting Miyazaki will be a lifetime  highlight for me I think , I was so glad to get chance to thank him for his films and all the inspiration he has given us .

Here's a selfie from the night - 

There were loads of movie stars and stuff there too but honestly who cares about that when you are in the presence of a legend like Miyazaki.

 Paul and I said to John Lasseter how great it was to see beautiful 2d animation celebrated by the academy and he just responded by giving us both a high five 

;-)

What a night! 

London calling

After a great North American premiere in Toronto we have the European premiere in London this weekend.

I'm really looking looking forward to it as some of the cat will be there and it will be in Great to watch it with a more local audience ... The reviews so far from Toronto have been encouraging so I'm hopeful uk audiences and critics will enjoy it as much as the North American audiences. 

Here's me in Toronto ... I'll be on the road soon promoting and screening the film across North America and France as well as planned screenings in Doha , New Zealand , Rome and more ! This is the time we all worked towards and it's hard to believe it's finally here ! 

Cartoon Saloon Hits SoCal...

Thanks for the intro, Tomm!

Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Kezlarian Bolio -- Cartoon Saloon's Representative in the US for Business Development, PR and Marketing...

I have been working with the guys since the very beginning of  the grassroots movement & promotion of KELLS in 2009 -- and was beyond thrilled to be offered an official gig with The Saloon about this time last year.
(Hooray!)

I am happy to help Tomm out with his blog  --  so below please find a post about our great trip to Comic-Con and around Los Angeles at the end of this past July.

Cartoon Saloon Hits SoCal with Sneak Peeks and Book Signings...

Cartoon Saloon co-founders, Tomm Moore & Paul Young came to SoCal last week for a whirlwind of events at Comic-Con and in Los Angeles.

Tomm (Director - THE SECRET OF KELLS, SONG OF THE SEA) & Paul (Producer - THE SECRET OF KELLS, SONG OF THE SEA) arrived on the 23rd of July - just in time for us to head off for a full 4 days at Comic-Con (& meet a friend for margaritas!).

From Thursday thru Saturday, the guys had book signings at Stuart Ng's booth - and each day, the line had to be capped in order to get through all of the patrons...

  And inscribe each book with a little drawing.

We even had a lovely Aisling cosplayer...

And a load of very special, highly gifted guests who came by to purchase a book...

(D'Oh!)

Friday, we also had a panel - a sneak peek of Cartoon Saloon's next film, SONG OF THE SEA (due for release later in the year).

A full house!

So many friends and colleagues came by to catch the panel...

Thank you to Stuart Ng and his merry band of outstanding helpers...

And to Comic-Con (and Laura J.)  for helping make our time in San Diego run smoothly and efficiently.
We had a brilliant time...!!

We returned to LA on Sunday for a host of events...

Monday we had another great signing & reception at The Animation Guild in Burbank...

We had lovely fruit & pasteries from PORTO's and displayed some of Cartoon Saloon's custom-framed SECRET OF KELLS limited edition prints...

(...which can be purchased via Cartoon Saloon's link below.)
http://www.secretofkellsstore.com/collections/limited-edition-print-gallery

At each event, Tomm got started on the drawings hours in advance to try and get ahead of the line.

Each person continued receiving beautiful drawings from both Tomm & Paul...

And the guys appreciated the time they spent with each new friend...

There was even a group who started lining up at 2pm - we were so happy to have them...

We also had some old friends stop by...
Pam helped us out on KELLS and she and her sons (pictured here with Tomm) are such huge supporters of The Saloon.
Was great to see her.

And a lovely young girl named Nicole whose wonderful dad took the day off of work to drive up from San Diego to have her book signed...(!!XO!!)

As she is a minor, I thought twice about posting their photo - but we were incredibly thrilled to meet them.  Thank you both for your support and tenacity!

We are so grateful to The Animation Guild for permitting us to use the meeting room.
http://animationguild.org/

On Tuesday we had yet another panel, book signing and a reception hosted by ASIFA-Hollywood and Woodbury University.

 More delicious Porto's (Uncle Ed's and nutjustacookie.com for the vegans)!

And more great talent came out to see us...!!

If you haven't had a chance to see MOONE BOY - it is a fantastic series out of Ireland which you can see on HULU. One of its very gifted writers, Kilkenny-native Nick Murphy (L), came by to lend his support & say hello... The series has animation done by Cartoon Saloon and stars (creator & co-writer) Chris O Dowd and (one of the stars of SONG OF THE SEA) David Rawle. Check out the series - it is HYSTERICAL!   

Everyone was so very patient - as Tomm & Paul continued to do such wonderful drawings in each book...

If you weren't able to join us (we will soon repost the broadcast via the Cartoon Saloon site), you may purchase DESIGNING THE SECRET OF KELLS directly from Stuart Ng Books: http://stuartngbooks.com/designing-the-secret-of-kells.html

Thank you to ASIFA-Hollywood, Stuart Ng Books, Woodbury University, Woodbury's IT Dept (Brandon & crew) - and Jonathan at Cartoon Saloon for helping us live-stream the event -- and to all of the ASIFA chapters worldwide and to the fans of Cartoon Saloon for joining us during the live broadcast...!!

[Dori, Woodbury's Chair of Animation (L) & Steven Ng of Stuart Ng books]

[Brandon, Woodbury's IT]

And a special thanks to the Woodbury students (Christian, Emily & Zare) who helped out - and to our dear Emma Claire.
[SONG OF THE SEA'S Consulting Editor, Darren Holmes & Emma Claire]

We were so lucky to have you all.

On Wednesday we were invited to DreamWorks to share the sneak peek with both the Glendale campus and the Redwood City campus at PDI...

And sign books for their amazing crew including Donnachada Daly, Marek Kochout, Kevin Lima, Dominique Louis, Christophe Lautrette and Cinzia Angelini.

What a treat it was for us...

Thank you for always welcoming us, DreamWorks...!!

We headed off to meet some other tremendously gifted Irish friends at Lightstorm, working on AVATAR [Colbert Fennelly (L) and Richie Baneham (C)].
We really appreciate that they squeezed us in...
HOLY MOLY -- what an incredibly inspiring afternoon!  

We topped the last evening off with a truly lovely, peaceful vegan meal with our dear friend Roger (THE LION KING, KAHLIL GIBRAN'S THE PROPHET).

The perfect end to a really great (crazy, busy) week...
It is amazing how quickly these 8 days have gone...

We thank all of our friends, colleagues, and Cartoon Saloon fans who came out to see us...

We had a truly wonderful time...