IRELAND HAS BEEN earning serious stripes in the animation industry in recent years. We’ve just seen short doc Irish Folk Furniture win Best Animation at Sundance; Brown Bag Films have previously been nominated for two Oscar for Granny O’Grimm and Give Up Yer Aul’ Sins; Jam Media’s semi-animated mockumentary ‘Roy’ get its third series on the BBC; the series of Sminky Shorts by a self-taught Cork animator go viral on Youtube.

The Irish Film Board (IFB) has responded with added focus on the animation industry here, major Irish animation studios have grouped together under the Animation Ireland umbrella to promote Ireland as a leader in the sector and over 1,000 technical and creative staff are employed in animation here.

No surprise then that the Irish School of Animation has managed to attract a great line-up of international figures in the world of animation for an event in Dublin this month.

The three-hour event on 15 February (from 7pm in Printworks at the Morrison Hotel) will see the following speakers appear:

• Anatomy consultant Stuart Sunida (Ratatouille and Life of Pi)
• Animation story artist/director Fergal Reilly (The Iron Giant and Hotel Transylvania),
• Motion capture specialist Simon Kay (Total Recall and Iron Man 2)
• Visual effects guru Ciaran Crowley (Inception and The Dark Knight).

Tickets are a pocket-friendly €5 from the admin office at Ballyfermot College of Further Education – and there should be tickets at the door on the night too. The event is called ISA CON 2013 and you can read more about it here.