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This weekend saw the second Irish Visual Effects and Animation Summit take place at the Science Gallery, featuring master classes, talks and screenings, situating Irish companies and creatives on the global stage of animation and visual effects. Whether you were an experienced animator wanting to try your hand at some new software, or looking to be enlightened about the vast and varied world of digital film, it was a very interesting few days.

One of the aims of the summit was to showcase the range of backgrounds, interests and talents the industry caters to. It kicked off with a screening of Interstellar on Friday evening, and the first speaker the following day was one of the film’s CG supervisors, Eugénie von Tunzelmann, part of hugely successful visual effects company Double Negative. In charge of configuring the science of Christopher Nolan’s visually stunning space-scape, von Tunzelmann’s degree in engineering from Oxford and a passion for hypercubes meant she was perfect for the job. (For the less mathematically minded of us, a hypercube is a cube with four or more dimensions. Von Tunzelmann has one tattooed on her arm.) Despite the complexity of both the physics and visual effects, she did a great job of explaining the artistic and scientific balance of, for example, actualising director Nolan’s desire to convey time as a physical dimension. No easy feat.

Also on the Saturday was a talk from Paul Young, co-founder of Kilkenny based studio, Cartoon Saloon. Young discussed their upcoming animated feature, Song of the Sea, featuring Brendan Gleeson and Lisa Hannigan, and directed by Young’s partner Tom Moore. Cartoon Saloon’s style stands out from the at times homogenous look of animation aimed at children, and the clips we were shown from Song of the Sea promised a gorgeous, idiosyncratic aesthetic. Song of the Sea looks like it will share in that nostalgia at the heart of Mayazki’s Studio Ghbili films (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) – a yearning for an innocent past in the context of urbanization, capitalism and mechanized warfare, appealing to adults and children alike.

As with Interstellar, an animated movie like Song of the Sea draws on an amazing range of skill sets and individuals, from textual artists to graphic designers, with forty to fifty people working on it at a given moment, across many years and numerous countries. Young mentioned the rise in women working on such projects in the last couple of decades, which was also the topic of the closing event, the Women in Animation Panel. The panel takes its name from a global organization that seeks to support women in the animation world, with bases in Dublin, LA and Montreal, among others. Evidently there are many more women entering the field, and successfully so. At the event itself however, there was only a spattering of female attendees.

Eamonn Butler, Irish born director of animation at London based studio Cinesite, led another fantastic discussion. This year Cinesite have animated films of such epic proportions as Hercules and 300:Rise of an Empire. Pretty impressive when you’re working with tight schedules and vague pitches from producers. For something that is conceptually uninhibited by physical reality animating is, obviously, incredibly technically rigorous. Places like London and LA, hubs for animation and visual effects, have managed to remain at the top of their game despite competitive prices from new companies in India and alike. This is because of their assurance of quality, something you risk compromising if you opt for a cheaper vendor. That said, rent prices in London are making it an increasingly unfeasible place for a studio to be based, but Ireland, on the other hand, is somewhat lacking in training infrastructure.

The VFX summit was a great weekend, for meeting those working in animation and visual effects in Ireland and gaining some insight from those at the top of their game. As befitting an industry so reliant on collaboration, there was a real positivity about the community; what it has achieved and where it’s headed – there is clearly no shortage of talent, or demand for this talent. It was also a lot of fun: the unlimited imaginative potential and constant developments in technology makes digital film feel very exciting, in the sense of unchartered territory and endless possibilities it has to offer. Time for a career rethink, perhaps?

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly described Eugénie von Tunzelmann as head of animation for Interstellar. In fact, von Tunzelmann was one of two CG supervisors for the film.