Luxembourg premiere and Paris presentation

Yesterday I did a cross European international multi site super trip ;-) it was actually pretty fun - I went to Luxembourg early in the morning where I met Stefan Roelants , Raul Garcia and many old friends from the crew there for the lux premiere , then as soon as the movie started I jumped back on a train to Paris where I was met at the station by Laure from haut et court - very James Bond style we ran straight into a metro and jumped out at Les Halles to rush to Le Forum Du Images , where the making of presentation had already begun thanks to the kind help of Marion Roussel and Ornelie Prioule and of course Jeremie and Clement of Superprod , as it worked out the lights were down when I arrived and the trailer was playing, I snuck up to the table where the guys were presenting and Tadah! I was there for the second part of the presentation. It was a lot of fun and I met some lovely people afterwards as well. The evening was rounded off by a very nice quiet meal with some animation friends at Michel Ocelots lovely studio and appartment . this morning I did my last interview for French TV Tf1 here in the Irish Cultural centre. As I walk around Paris it seems "le chant de la mer" is everywhere , on posters and so on even in the metro , the books and soundtrack CDs are in shops , there's his been plenty of really lovely reviews and press - of course Nolwenn has been on TV and a great ambassador for the film - I feel all the ground work has been really well done for opening day on Wednesday. Now we can only hope that the audience shows up and enjoys the film we all worked so hard on the past few years .

Meanwhile we had a lovely series of reports from writer Will Collins who represented the film at the Doha film festival in Qatar and from ace animators alessandra Sorrentino and Alfredo Cassano who represented the film in Italy ! It's been great to have the team willing to promote and present the film these past few weeks .

Cd in shops in Paris now!

Luxembourg Background supervisor Pascal made a lovely exhibition for the Lux premiere. I would have loved to have stayed to catch the crews responses afterwards - I hope they enjoyed it.

Stefan and I hijack some obscure American studios marketing material to advertise Song of the Sea. It's from a little movie about a lost fish and vegetarian sharks or something- you probably never heard of it.

Me and victor ens  one of the great animators in Luxembourg who worked on the 2d animation there.

Some of the Luxembourg teams scenes from Rough to clean to final colour.

The impressively moustachioed Raul Garcia was in town as he and Stefan just finished their feature based on Edgar Allen Poe after 8 years ! 

studio 352 had a great trailer playing before the movie showing their work process on the film and some photos from our research trips in Sligo .

Then every thing looked like this for a bit while I rushed back to Paris to join the presentation at Forum du Images. 

Hooray! Always so surreal to see our work suddenly public and part of the visual environment ...

Lovely Liselott 

-the posters by night are all lit up ;-) 

In the metro! 

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 ;-)