My Father’s Dragon Wins Big at 2023 Irish Animation Awards

The 2023 Irish Animation Awards winners were unveiled, with Cartoon Saloon’s animated fantasy film My Father’s Dragon garnering five wins, including best Irish feature.

Sixteen South’s preschool series Odo bagged two awards, including for best writer for preschool animation and best Irish IP. Other awarded programs include Monster Entertainment’s Fia’s Fairies and 9 Story Media Group’s Karma’s World, which won the kids choice preschool award and the best director of an animated series award, respectively.

The most awarded program, My Father’s Dragon, won best Irish feature, best music, best editing, best storyboarding and best VFX.

Best animated preschool series went to Kavaleer Productions and Wyndley Animation’s Circle Square, while best animated kids’ series for 6+ was presented to Igloo Animations and Trevor Courtney’s Tales from Dún Draíochta. The kids choice for 6+ went to Lighthouse Studios’ The Cuphead Show!

“It has been yet another superb and record-breaking year for Irish animation with 53 productions nominated,” said Ronan McCabe, chief executive of Animation Ireland. “The sector is continuing to power ahead both in terms of the quality of the work being produced, which you can certainly see from the awards ceremony and the number of productions being delivered. The Irish Animation Awards is a wonderful occasion to celebrate the hard work, dedication, talent and outstanding creativity we have here in Ireland.”

Ronan continued, “Animation Ireland puts a huge emphasis on education and training and helping the next generation of animators to thrive, so it was amazing to see so many fantastic entries for best student film, which was won by Avery Angle for Small Makings of a Storm. Thanks very much to our sponsors for their support, all twenty-seven of them! The response from the industry has been overwhelming and whilst our headline sponsors are RTÉ and Screen Ireland, we could not have run this event without all of them, and in this instance, they are truly too numerous to mention!”