Tom Moore, born in Kilkenny, is an animation director and a co founder of Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon. He recalls how early exposure to Don Bluth’s Dublin studio made animation feel possible, even if the industry later disappeared and forced his generation to create its own path.

Cartoon Saloon began as a student experiment and became, in his words, the studio they wanted to work in all along. Moore describes how each feature starts with drawing: images, characters, and a rough story that is shaped into a screenplay with collaborators. He admits the blank page is still the hardest moment, full of doubt and resistance, and that leadership can pull him away from the pure joy of animating.

What steadies him is teamwork, and the way collaboration can make the work freer and better than any single vision. He chooses co productions and lower budgets to keep creative control and to take risks that big money often avoids.

Inspired by young people in his life and by folklore across cultures, he sees animation as a waking dream that can carry emotion, belief, and imagination in one breath.