Children’s Emmy: ‘Nice surprise’ for BCFE Alumni

BCFE (Ballyfermot College of Further Education) alumni Declan O’Connor has accomplished something many of us can only strive for, as he has received a Children’s Emmy for his work on ‘Ada Twist, Scientist’ through Brown Bag Films, reports Ryan Butler.

Chris Nee created and serves as showrunner of ‘Ada Twist, Scientist,’ an animated preschool series based on the book series of the same name by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts.

Declan contributed to the win for ‘Outstanding Preschool Animated Series’ through his work with Brown Bag Films, a CGI and computer-animation production studio based in Dublin.

According to Seamus McGrenery, co-ordinator of the Visual Effects and 3D Technology course in BCFE that Declan did, the course was set up to give people skills in 3D modeling and “all the tasks around adding digital elements to scenes in films.”

Declan arrived at the college as an animator who already had experience under his belt but wanted to try his hand at 3D animation and who was hard-working and easy to get along with.

A notable example of his work in IFX includes a short film called ‘Robots Need Not Apply’ where he had a cameo as well as doing the planning and effects.

Seamus described him as “always likely to do well” due to his combined experience and optimistic outlook.

He goes on to say that it was a “very nice surprise when we saw that he had won” and he hopes this encourages other people to work in children’s animation.