WINNER,V&AILLUSTRATOROFTHEYEAR 2020
ann
kierNaN
You studied “classical animation”. What did that entail?
It is old school, analogue animation. It was all on paper,
flipping 24 drawings a second. There was a studio set up in
Ireland called Sullivan Bluth, they made An American Tale
and All Dogs Go to Heaven. They set up an animation
course in a local school and I applied for that back in- I’m not young when it comes to being discovered
as an illustrator, but in my mind I’m 19, so, you know...
What prompted your move to Berlin?
After the crash in 2008, there was very little work. A film
company set up near me and they wanted an animator
who also had an eye for illustration. The film I worked on
brought me to Berlin and I hit it off with a filmmaker.
Berlin felt very familiar from the start.Was the language barrier an issue?
I can order stuff, I can kind of understand conversation at
a slow and low level, but I really don’t speak the language.
The majority of my work happens outside Germany though
and, of course, Google translate is brilliant.Your studio sounds amazing. Can you tell us about that?
It’s a super cool place. My window looks out into the
former Stasi prison, the notorious Hohenschönhausen.
There were 25,000 prisoners incarcerated here between
1961 and 1989. The building that I am in is the former
intelligence department. There are 250 studios here.Has working there affected your style?
I think it has, especially the type of work I have a tendency
to be asked to make now. I have a contract with an NGO
that does a lot of exposing of wrongdoings and through
them I’ve got quite a bit of work. I do draw inspiration from
the stories that I hear and the historical imaginings that
I have in this studio.Your work is full of lovely washes and textures. Is that
something you felt was lacking in illustration?LEFTAnnKiernan,
Cultivatea Healthy
Mind, 2018