Government organization Screen Ireland and trade agency Animation Ireland have selected studios Cartoon Saloon and Little Moon to receive some funding from a pool of nearly US$450,000 (€430,000) earmarked to support innovative animation projects. 

In total, the two Irish entities chose eight projects to back, and three of them are kid focused. The companies behind the projects will receive funding from the 2024/2025 Animation Innovation and Immersive Development Fund, which invests in projects across tech fields such as VR, AR and app development. 

Cartoon Saloon’s funding is going towards Silly Sundays: The Experience—a project aimed at turning 2D animation into assets that can be used in virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality (collectively known as extended reality) experiences. The Kilkenny-based studio will use Silly Sundays (pictured, its preschool series for Cartoonito) to develop a workflow for turning the show’s 2D animation into content for extended reality. The broader aim is to expand creative and commercial opportunities for the 2D animation industry as a whole. 

Jumping on the Roblox bandwagon, Dublin’s Little Moon Animation (RTÉjr’s Fia’s Fairies) is using its funding to design an animation production pipeline that can be integrated with Roblox, with the goal of reaching wider audiences with its own properties.

Little Moon previously received money from the fund in December 2023 to build a virtual puppetry pipeline that would make puppet-led content faster and cheaper. 

The other winning project that’s focused on kids is AnamoLABS’ Signal Flair, which records Irish Sign Language using motion-capture technology, then animates the hand and face movements in kids programming. The Cork-based research and tech company will also explore whether its mocap techniques will work for other sign languages.