Stephen Fagan of Studio Meala explains how edgy animation is all about struggle, something you just can’t get from generative AI.
According to Screen Ireland, the animation sector has skyrocketed in Ireland in recent years, but you can more than likely tell that from the increasing Irish presence at awards ceremonies like the Oscars and the BAFTAs. But it’s not all about awards.
The astronomical success is also evident in the following stat: ten years ago, the number of people employed by the animation sector in Ireland was 70. Today, that number has soared to 1,600 – a twenty-fold increase.
A small percentage of that number is based in the somewhat unlikely location of Boyle in Co Roscommon. Boyle is a small town in the west of Ireland – hardly what first pops into your head when you think of a stereotypical animation studio. (A massive, multi-storey glass-fronted building in the middle of the concrete jungle surrounded by hipsters might be more like it).
As is often the case with stereotypes, the notion of animators being confined to cities is not 100pc accurate. Certainly not in Ireland.
The beginning thread
Studio Meala is headquartered in a Connected Hub in Boyle in a building called The Spool Factory. The five-year-old company is entering an exciting new phase in its development; it is about to launch its own intellectual property (IP), a hand-drawn animation called Doodle Girl. The show will air in October on RTÉ and is a collaboration between Studio Meala and Belfast-based animation studio Alt Animation.
But there might not be a Studio Meala if it weren’t for Boyle and The Spool Factory. Studio Meala’s managing director and co-founder Stephen Fagan spoke to SiliconRepublic.com about why working in Boyle beats the big city in every way.
First of all, the big benefit is flexibility. Fagan is a Dubliner originally; he moved to Leitrim to set up a home there before a chance conversation with a friend about needing a space to work in led him to The Spool Factory.
Part of the national co-working network called Connected Hubs, The Spool Factory came with a high recommendation for decent internet and hot-desking facilities. It was just what Fagan and his co-founders needed to get Studio Meala off the ground without being wiped out by city overheads.
‘Remote by design’
Unlike a lot of businesses that converted to remote during the pandemic, Fagan and his co-founders were always remote-first. He described the company’s model as “remote by design” – a necessity because one co-founder (financial director Jerry Twomey) was based in Galway and the other (creative director Sean Cunningham) was based in Kildare.
“We’ve always been remote by design, it was a choice to be remote. It wasn’t a reaction to the pandemic … and the reason for that is there was a lot of talent based in Ireland that we are working with and they’re spread all over the country.”
Initially, Studio Meala had hot desking only, but now the company occupies the whole top floor of The Spool Factory. From that vista, its 10 employees collaborate with people from all over the world.
‘The artists that have relocated to Boyle are seeing it in their pockets as well. They’re getting paid the Dublin rates but are living in the northwest of Ireland’
“There’s a lot of talent internationally and they’d be working remotely anyway so it made sense,” said Fagan of the set up. “Now that we’re working with so many clients in the UK, the US, Europe and Asia now as well, it doesn’t really matter where we’re based.”
Studio Meala has produced projects for international heavy-hitters like Disney Plus and Netflix as well as on the more familiar turf of RTÉ.
Boyle is better for the bottom line … and people’s pockets
“If we’re working with foreign clients on projects – and animation projects can scale from anything to the tens of thousands to the millions, right – in Dublin, that’s a drop in the ocean but in a smaller town that can make a massive difference in terms of driving the local economy.”
Fagan was thinking about impact back then, and he is clearly happy with the decision today. “We’re bringing foreign direct investment for our business but that money is also being spent in local shops so it’s a circular economy thing where we’re bringing the money in.
“There’s a win-win because obviously the cost of living is less here. The artists that have relocated to Boyle are seeing it in their pockets as well. They’re getting paid the Dublin rates but are living in the northwest of Ireland so they have a distinct advantage,” said Fagan.
“And being in a place where our overheads aren’t as high means we can make bigger, bolder movies. It made a massive difference because it meant we could take on projects we wanted to take on as opposed to taking on projects that we had to take on.”
As a businessperson, Fagan is pragmatic about things like cost and convenience, but he also cares very much about the type of environment the artists have. He’s a trained animator himself, but he focuses mostly on production because he feels that’s where his strengths lie.
Dancing to their own ‘toon
“I’m so proud of the team and the talent and the diversity … the artwork is so good now that I wouldn’t dare try and compete,” he told us. The company works with a lot of up-and-comers but the key differentiator between someone they want to work with and someone they don’t tends to be attitude to the art form.
Throughout our interview, Fagan emphasised that Studio Meala’s work is all hand-drawn – and the artists are constantly experimenting with different boundary-pushing styles. He likened animation to pre-historic cave drawings in that both are art forms that tell stories. Of course, the method has changed somewhat in the intervening years; for one thing, there is a lot more tech involved.
‘There is a primal quality to hand-drawn that the likes of generative AI just doesn’t get’
“I think animation is at a really interesting point where the cost of production is wavering but there’s a movement from that classical style of animation to being more punk or edgy and frenetic, playing with frames and space and that’s what we try to do – and the technology is facilitating that,” said Fagan, quipping that his co-founders might tease him for invoking the word ‘punk’.
“We use a mix of different tools to create different effects.” That’s not to say they use no tech. Far from it. When Fagan says ‘hand-drawn’ he means hand-drawn on a digital screen. The animators use tools like Cintiq, Unreal Engine, Blender and TV Paint to name a few.
But these tools so far don’t extend to generative AI, which Fagan has strong feelings about. “When we look at what’s being done in animation with generative AI, it’s almost pastiche, it doesn’t look real because there’s no struggle to it. There’s no artistic work. There is a primal quality to hand-drawn that the likes of generative AI just doesn’t get.”
Plus, too much automation takes the fun out of it. “The act of production is all about collaboration and a collection of human beings working together to create something. So, that’s what we’re about, we’re more about building a culture, a positive environment for people to thrive in.”
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