Midlands on display in new Irish comic
“I was expecting maybe 20 or 30 people to like the post,” says Derry Luttrell, an animation student in Athlone IT about the recent release of his comic ‘Kilscully Paranormal Club.’ “For over 2000 people to interact with it and comment was such a surprise.”
Originally from Kildare, Derry has been working on the comic for over nine months, and its release last week on Reddit has been a hit online.
“I had the idea in my head for a short animation, but decided to turn it into a comic and I have been working on it since last December.
It takes about a week to create one page, so I wanted to have a buffer where I could release a few at the start and then the pressure wouldn’t be as intense to update it every week if I had a busy week in college or whatever.”
Kilscully Paranormal Club follows the adventures of two paranormal investigators, Niamh O’Neill and Colm McCormack in a quiet, rural town in the midlands of Ireland.
As they begin looking for banshees, púcaí and more, they begin to find out that there’s more going on in the sleepy town of Kilscully than meets the eye.
“I wanted to make it distinctly Irish,” Derry says. “Growing up I used to read Captain Underpants and other stories that have very vague settings. They’re written and drawn to make them appear as they could be set it America or England, and I’ve written some of that in my past. Everyone knows an O’Neill or a McCormack.”
Cartoon Saloon, an Irish animation studio behind the Oscar-nominated ‘Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea’ have changed the Irish animation landscape as far as Derry is concerned.
“I never thought there was that much of a market for comic books in Ireland. Will Sliney from Cork has written for the Spiderman comics, but that was all I ever really knew of.
"So for Cartoon Saloon to come along and make these Irish films to huge success, and for my comic to receive the reaction it did online shows that there is an interest here for home-grown animation.”
Derry is in his final year of a course on animation at Athlone IT, and says that for a long time he considered art as something he would do as a hobby: “I thought I would do science or something like that in college, but then when it came to it I had to do something I loved.”
“Entering an art course you think you know everything about art, until you realise that you know nothing at all about it!” he jokes.
“There is far more to it than you would think, such as perspective and composition, and there are still things that I don’t quite understand.”
As for job prospects, Derry is confident that future of animation in Ireland is bright: “There are small, independent studios popping up all over the country. It’s very competitive, but there are positions out there. Anybody who says there’s no future in it is talking rubbish.”
“If I wanted to take this story further the best way to do that would probably be through a Kickstarter online, and then go the self-publishing route,” he said.
“There are pitching contests in Ireland that take open submissions as well that can lead to international exposure. And these days, Netflix are a great option for animators.”
Kilscully Paranmoral Club is updated every Thursday and can be read on tapas.io.