Meet Patrick O’Mahony | Stop-motion Animator & Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Patrick O’Mahony and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Patrick, is there a quote or affirmation that’s meaningful to you?
When I first started down the road of becoming an animator I was growing up in a small town in Ireland. At the time the concept of animation, let alone stop-motion animation was an unheard of career to follow and during my time at school I had to continue to reassure people I could make it work. My parents were and are still completely supportive. When the option arose to move away from home to Cork city to begin studying, they were behind me all the way.

In Cork I was taught by a puppeteer by the name of Cliff Doliver. An Australian who had started up Dowtcha Puppets in the heart of the city. With stop-motion being my main passion, live action puppetry was a close second so these classes were where I really got to enjoy myself. I honestly wasn’t very good back then in terms of ability but what I learned in that first year carried on with me through the rest of it. I ended up working at a events and parades with Cliffs company and after three years I was given the opportunity of completing my degree in London after failing to secure a place in Dublin.

Even though I was up for the adventure and barely had time to consider the pros and cons before the flight was booked and accommodation sorted, it was a big change that could have gone one of two ways. I remember speaking to Cliff at length about my worries going forward and my regrets of what I was leaving behind. Considering how he had moved away and what he had managed to achieve his response was insightfully reassuring.

“Sometimes you have to make it away, to be taken seriously at home”.

This quote capsulated my feelings over the previous years about weather or not I was doing the right thing. It helped me understand that when opportunities present themselves, they should be chased no matter the distance if truly desired. I understood then that there was a place in the world for what I wished to achieve and If I could do it there, I could do it anywhere and upon returning home with a handful of short films and several anecdotes about life in the big city I could help everyone else understand too. I spent 10 years in London working to make it on many different projects and teaching at various universities. In the time I was away Animation in Ireland became an incredibly successful industry of award-winning films, tv shows and companies and now I’ve come back to too with a handful of short films and way more anecdotes than I could have imagined.

I’m not sure if Cliff remembers the quote from that day or if it was originally attributed to someone else. I do believe he returned to Australia around the same time I returned to Ireland however so let’s hope people don’t take us too seriously. After all, our job is to play with puppets.

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
Looking back, one of the more frustrating elements when I first started to draw as a passion was trying to discover my style, or a style that I was comfortable with. I was around 14 when I really started to discover my love for filmmaking and illustrating and around that time Hellboy (directed by Guillermo del Toro) had just come out in cinema and completely taken over my subconscious. It was everything I loved growing up all rolled into one. Monsters, antiheroes, cool effects, big fight scenes, it had a big impact. I immediately bought the comic it was based off and that alone opened the flood gates to numerous other comic books which I used as both something to enjoy but also to study. Comic book artists became my inspiration but that in turn led me to believe that if I couldn’t draw exactly like them, I wasn’t good enough to draw. Over the years I started to emulate them, tracing panels and then trying to draw them from memory, and it was an incredibly frustrating experience that I, for some reason, forced upon myself but couldn’t help not doing. Everything that I drew or designed that was unique to me was drawn in the style of Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy). I could draw Homer Simpson perfectly but page after page of Simpson characters in a sketch book had no substance at all.

Within the creative world the idea of a ‘style’ is prevalent in comic books, paintings, film making, construction etc and back when I started out it completely overshadowed the piece itself. A movie with big explosions these days is sometimes referred to as a Michael Bay style film because he did explosions in some of his. It’s this train of thought that locked me in a loop for years trying to be comfortable with drawing things how I see them and not trying to match a quality seen elsewhere.

After three years of college studying Animation and Illustration and then two years of University doing the same it wasn’t until my final year of uni that something clicked in my head. In those years I’d found other comic artists to copy from but as I began to focus more on creating stop-motion films the need to draw took on a new use. The characters in my films needed to be designed before being realised as puppets. When I started this process, the illustrations took on many qualities of the artists I admired plus elements I had started to use but once transferring them to a practical model that had limitations based on the materials used, the size of the puppet and my own building ability I would go back and redesign these characters with an understanding of 3D space. This process completely refined my drawing ability to incorporate a practical standpoint but also began to form what I would now consider ‘my style’. Elements that I had once refused to not include were gone and every element from the dimensions to the colouring had changed considerably. It really was as if a light had been switched one which was ironic at the time as my first short film was a stop-motion about a Victorian lamp lighter.

It was a long process to get to where I am now and not a path every artist will take.

Some people I’ve worked besides have had amazing unique styles from day one and others have never locked themselves into one but for me it really was the wall to get over to make my work not only enjoyable to create but also comfortable to look at.

When I was teaching, I would try to reinforce on my students the power of necessity.

By adding restrictions or having to change things based on limitations you can create something far beyond what your own mind was originally capable of and most of the time it truly works out for the best. For example, when making my film Under The Weather I designed all the characters to have big expressive eyes similar to the character in my film LAMPS where I would use the eye lids to express emotion. In the years since making LAMPS I had discovered new materials and gotten slightly better at building so when it came to actually making the puppets I found the size of the head couldn’t comfortably fit these large eyes. I made all the characters have dots for eyes and gave them eye-brows to express that emotion instead. The necessity of this meant I could focus more on animating the mouths as the eyebrows helped sell the emotions of the eyes almost far better than I was able to do before. It’s not something I would have originally set out to do or what I considered ‘my style’ but that limitation on creating something in real life made the puppets unique to my other work and take on a life of their own.

Small moments like this in the design process has continued to help me look at my own abilities in a new way and now instead of being trapped in a self-made loop I’ve been able to think outside the box a little more each time.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The biggest shoutout has to go to my parents. Along the road there have been some incredible people I’ve met who have given their time to advise me, support me and allow me opportunities but from day one it was my parents who were happy and willing to follow me down the rabbit hole of a career in animation and they have fully supported me all the way. From exhibitions to film festivals, they’ve been there and have even represented me when I couldn’t.

I once asked my mother “when I was a child when did I become interested in drawing and model making” and she responded, “Star Wars and Power Rangers” So thank you for letting me borrow your best tablecloth all those years ago to wear as a Jedi cape and for allowing me to run around pretending to fight monsters.

I have never stopped pretending, but you both made it real.

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