This year’s Animation Ireland summit heard studio executives reveal how collaboration and innovation are key to overcoming a kids’ content commissioning crisis.

This year’s industry summit Animation Ireland Meitheal was appropriately named – meitheal being an old Irish word denoting a co-operative labour system or a neighbour-helps-neighbour approach.

It neatly captures the spirit of the Emerald Isle’s cartoon industry, which is by nature collaborative and collegial.

Those themes were certainly prevalent at the second annual event, held in scenic Galway Bay on the Wild Atlantic Way.

Conor Harrington

Irish producers, executives and creatives are currently supporting each other through a commissioning crisis in kids’ content.

The last 12- to 18-months have seen many US OTT platforms effectively abandon the family programming space, resulting in some of Ireland’s biggest animation studios being forced to cut their workforces to survive.

Conor Harrington, producer at Dublin-based Trinity Pictures, said during a panel session at the event: “The over-reliance on [work from] the streamers for the last five years means that people in Ireland must work out how we can move forward. Otherwise, we’re just a service studio which will at some point fail.

“There’s a massive contraction happening, with the amount of shows being produced down to about 25% of what it was just two years ago.”

However, with their backs against the wall, Irish studios are coming out fighting: putting their heads together to find new ways to finance projects, formulate copro pacts and tap into underserved markets.

Kavaleer Productions boasts a 100-strong creative team based in Dublin, with plans to launch sister company Kavaleer UK, to be headquartered in Manchester, later this year.

Gary Timpson

The studio produces content such as Pablo (CBeebies, RTÉjr), Alba’s World (RTÉjr, Sky Kids) and Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese (BBC, RTÉ, DeAKids, Gulli).

“Funding projects has gotten difficult in the last year or so,” Gary Timpson, owner and MD of Kavaleer, told C21 in Galway. “What is the endgame and when are we going to get out of this situation?

“At Kavaleer we had to change our model knowing that potentially we weren’t going to get those big shows again. We’re collaborating and working with other studios, as well as partnering with very strong coproducers in countries like the UK, France and Canada. Can we work with territories that have good tax credits like Spain or the Canary Islands?

“There’ll always be room for traditional 52×11’ series, but we’re looking at producing shorter run series. We also want to focus on targeting pre-pre-school kids, because children at even earlier ages are now drifting away from TV to things like YouTube, TikTok, Fortnite and Roblox. We want to address that gap in the market, because the streamers are certainly looking at it.”

With the migration of kids to digital media, it seems there is no longer room in the market for traditional forms of animation such as 2D.

Despite Irish studios such as Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon winning multiple awards for beautifully drawn features like The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, buyers are only interested in CGI animation, the event heard.

Tania Pinto Da Cunha

Tania Pinto Da Cunha, VP and partner at Montreal- and Madrid-based sales house Pink Parrot Media, said: “I love 2D animation, but unfortunately it’s hard to sell internationally.

CGI animation is fine because that’s seen by buyers as being commercial, while 2D tends to be viewed as more artistic.

“If buyers see 2D titles in a sales catalogue, they just say, ‘No, what else do you have for me?’”

No TV industry conference is complete these days without the obligatory debate about AI.

At a ‘Human and Machine’ panel session, Lupus Films’ joint MD Camilla Deakin argued that public service broadcasters (PSBs) must act as guardians to protect kids from shoddy AI-created content.

“There could be a huge flood of cheap and nasty AI content coming from China, India or even the US, where it might not be regulated. We may end up with a load of crap and we’re going to have to rely on the broadcasters not to buy that stuff,” she said.

“I would hope that PSBs, which are funded with taxpayers’ money or licence fees, would have a responsibility to support content from their own territories and not just buy things that are entirely computer generated.”

Camilla Deakin

Technology can be a friend as well as a foe, as a case study session featuring Aidan O’Donovan and Colm Tobin, co-founders of Dublin-based studio Turnip + Duck (Maddie + Triggs), proved.

The creative partners adapted their preschool science toon Atom Town into an interactive app, with the help of Belfast-headquartered gaming specialists Whitepot Studios.

By taking a 360-degree view of its own in-house IP, Turnip + Duck was able to create new revenue streams and open the door to similar multimedia collaborations in the future.

“When we were told we could double our money, my eyes lit up,” said Tobin.

Although the halcyon days of the streamer-led commissioning frenzy may never return, Ireland’s resilient and innovative studios are already pivoting to meet the new challenges they face, together. The concept of meitheal is very much alive and kicking.

As Timpson told C21: “It’s not all doom and gloom. People are going to diversify and change their habits. It’s happened before and we’ll get through it. I think things will come back around by the latter part of 2025.”