Watch out Hollywood, you better get extra security as your red carpet is going to be full of those notorious party animals - Irish animators, thanks to the multitude of nominations you’ve given them in this years Oscars.

It’s a real pat on the back for the success of the Animation Dept of my Alma Mater Senior College Ballyfermot as all the nominees are graduates of their animation programme.

Nominated in the Best Feature Animation is Cartoon Saloon’s ‘The Secret Of Kells’. The Tomm Moore-directed ‘The Secret of Kells’, which features the voices of Brendan Gleeson and Mick Lally, is nominated in the Best Animated Film category along with ‘Coraline’, ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, ‘The Princess and the Frog’ and ‘Up’. Here is the trailer…

Also check out the great production blog that was really interesting reading while the movie was being made.

Nominated in Best Animated Short Film is Brown Bag Films ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’ from Director Nicky Phelan and producer Darragh O’Connell, written and performed by comic Kathleen O’Rourke. Here is the complete film…

For his work as Animation Supervisor on Avator is Dubliner Richard Baneham who is among the Oscar nominees in the Best Visual Effects category. here is a Hollywood Dailies interview with Richard.

Best to luck to all of you and well done on your outstanding work!

In their yearly round-up, the Wallpaper* Design Awards features many interesting articles and videos on the freshest creative work happening in all corners of the globe. Of particular note are the city shorts, especially the NYC one. Man, I want to be back in Manhattan sipping a Manhattan and watching Manhattan right now…

You wait for ages for an awards event and nigh on a billion come at the same time. This time it’s a little closer to home with ICAD’s call for entries just being announced. For more details on how you could get your hands on some heavy metal bells click here. God speed.

Well it’s the new year so that means we are entering awards season again. Here are a list of upcoming deadlines for design, illustration and photography submissions. This is by no means comprehensive but we will endeavour to add more over the next while. Please send in any you think we should know about.

Grafik Magazine Design Awards (Graphic Design - UK entries only)
American Illustration 29 (Illustration - International entries)
American Photography 26 (Photography - International entries)
Communication Arts Magazine (Illustration - International entries)

With 20,000 submissions judged the annual D&AD awards has to be one of the most regarded of all creative competitions in the world. Awards come in the form of nominations, of which there were a record 174 this year, and yellow and black pencils, of which there was only 50 and 4 respectively. One such person who won a elusive black pencil was Matt Dent for his stunning redesign of the UK’s coinage above. Art + Com also picked up a black for their kinetic sculpture for BMW below and Droga5 picked up the final 2 for the short below and the Million project (see case studies here). Creative Review’s blog goes in to a little more detail on some of the winners here so get clicking.

The Short List for the 2009 Bisto Children’s Book of the Year have been announced. The great news is that our friends  Oliver Jeffers and PJ Lynch’s books The Great Paper Caper and The Gift Of The Magi have been both nominated. Well done Oliver and PJ, great work as usual and the best of luck.

Full details of the Short List can be found on the CBI website here.