Brick by brick, young Irish animator James builds films out of Lego

James Morgan, 13,  has won awards  for his stop-motion shorts, and this weekend, his conversation with a Cartoon Saloon artist accompanies his newest work at the Nenagh Children’s Film Festival

Filmmaker James Morgan: brings Lego to life with painstaking stop-motion animation

The artform of animation has undergone huge changes in the past few decades, expanding from hand-drawn children’s diversion to adult sitcoms, and major movie productions; while the lines between live action and animation have been blurred by the advent of CGI and motion capture technology.

It’s an interesting time, then, for young film-maker and animator James Morgan, from Co Dublin, to pick up and develop a body of work in the evergreen field of stop-motion animation, as popularised by Aardman Animation’s Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep series.

At 13 years old, he’s entering this weekend’s Nenagh Children’s Film Festival, happening online, with his latest short film, Lego Rocks - but his passion has been with him from an even younger age.

“When I first started making them, when I was around five years old, they were very basic. It was just cars driving across the kitchen table, in very choppy motion. And then as I went on, I started making people move, and progressively got smoother at taking the pictures.” 

Posing and setting a scene is all part of creating a stop-motion short.

Stop-motion animation is a pain-staking process that sees film-makers create physical sets and pose figures on a frame-by-frame basis, animating them with each incremental change.

It’s been a learning curve for Morgan, who’s accomplishing some impressive things with the medium.

“I went from taking about five pictures for each second (of screen time), to now, for every second of video, you're seeing 15 pictures per second. I also started watching tutorials on YouTube, on how to make things look more realistic.

 “I feel that every new video is a tiny bit better than the last one, and I'm always improving.” 

Two years ago, James started posting shorts on his YouTube channel, JAM Studios. Sharing his work online was another step up, but it’s one that’s started garnering him viewers from outside of Ireland.

“There’s been a lot of positive feedback - I've actually got up to around 125 subscribers now, which is cool. People are in the comments sections, they sound like they really like it.”

Last year, James entered the Nenagh Children’s Film Festival’s Next Gen Animators running with What to Wear?!, a short about a young man going through his wardrobe, that later got second-place at Fresh International Film Festival’s Junior Young Filmmaker of the Year category.

While Covid-19 meant the buzz of entering a film festival and getting screened was very different, it was still a huge experience for the young animator.

“I was really excited to feel that I could be part of a festival, where there was competition. And I never thought it would actually win an award, but it did, which was really cool.”

 This year, he’s back in Next Gen Animators contention with Lego Rocks, a short that sees a musician daydream about rejoining his friends onstage after the Covid-19 crisis.

But in as big a moment for James, he also got to talk with Gráinne Rose Fordham, layout artist at Kilkenny’s Cartoon Saloon, fresh off their Oscar-nomination for historical fantasy tale  Wolfwalkers, which will be streaming this weekend as part of festivities.

“It was really interesting to talk to someone who's achieved so much. She was the layout artist on Wolfwalkers, which was Oscar nominated. And just knowing that, I was like, 'oh, my god, she's, like, a big person in animation'.

“She asked me a couple of questions at the end as well, like how I got into it, and what the channel's called.” 

Despite his young age, James has been at this for a good few years now - and is looking firmly toward a career in animation as he gets older.

“I’d love to continue doing it. It'd be cool to try new styles of animation, even. I'd like to continue with it, going into college and stuff.” 

• Lego Rocks is part of this year’s Next Gen Animators category at the Nenagh Children’s Film Festival, streaming at 5pm tomorrow, while his interview with Gráinne Rose Fordham streams at 6pm on Saturday. 
• Nenagh Children's Film Festival is happening online this weekend, July 11-13. For more information and streaming tickets, visit nenagharts.com