Cartoon Saloon: Animation as Illumination

I'm not necessarily here for an in-depth analysis, but I wanted to talk about certain elements of these films which have stood out to me. Cartoon Saloon's work occupies a peculiar space in contemporary animation:  rooted in specific cultural traditions, yet speaking a visual language that transcends borders. Their design takes some cues from Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler in its use of flattened perspective, which was itself inspired by the art found in Persian miniatures. This lineage matters. It speaks to a deliberate rejection of the three-dimensional realism that has dominated Western animation since Disney's Snow White. Instead, Cartoon Saloon looks backwards and sideways, finding inspiration in illuminated manuscripts, woodcut prints, and the decorative arts of cultures that never prioritised perspective.

WolfWalkers

Of the four films, WolfWalkers was, to me, the least immediately captivating. Perhaps the aesthetic felt more busy than the previous three, or perhaps it was simply a matter of timing. Yet it repays closer attention, particularly in how it plays with perspective and point of view. Set in Kilkenny, the town that the studio calls home, the film is about integrity, being true to who you are, and celebrating the differences in all of us.

The bird, Merlyn, might be presumed to be a merlin (Falco columbarius), incidentally of no relation to the wizard of Arthurian mythology. Wizard Merlin's name (spellings vary) comes from the Welsh Myrddin, Latinised by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae (12th century) to 'Merlinus' whilst avoiding 'Merdinus' and the unfortunate resemblance to the French word merde ('excrement'). Whereas the merlin the bird comes from the French esmerillon. A small thing, perhaps, but indicative of the care Cartoon Saloon takes with naming and reference.

The Xerox Aesthetic

One Hundred and One Dalmatians pioneered a sketchy, expressive line art style, made possible by the use of Xerox technology. This allowed animators' original drawings (complete with rough, lively pencil lines) to be transferred directly onto the screen, rather than being cleaned up and inked. WolfWalkers, created by Cartoon Saloon, intentionally emulates this sketchy aesthetic. Directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart wanted the animation to retain the feel of hand-drawn pencil lines, with visible construction lines and layered textures.

Both films embrace stylisation over realism. One Hundred and One Dalmatians has angular, mid-century modern backgrounds and stylised characters. WolfWalkers takes this further with flat, woodcut-inspired visuals, especially in the forest scenes, and multiple artistic styles to represent different points of view: the humans versus the wolfwalkers. This film plays more with perspective than Secret of Kells or Song of the Sea, particularly as it explores the wolves' experience of the world, navigating by smell rather than sight. The screen becomes a riot of colour and scent-trails, a synesthetic rendering of animal consciousness.

Shapeshifters and Irish Mythology

I can hardly resist going into a monologue about shapeshifters. Their presence in medieval illuminations has long been an area of great interest to me. And, like many places across the globe, shapeshifters have their own particular place in Irish mythology. WolfWalkers doesn't rely heavily on classic werewolf tropes, but it does engage with them in a unique and poetic way. Instead of following the horror-oriented path of werewolf mythology (cursed transformations, full moon triggers, loss of control), the film reinterprets the concept with a gentler, more mystical lens.

The Laignech Fáelad were said to be men from Ossory (modern-day Kilkenny and Laois area) who had the ability to transform into wolves at will. Unlike modern werewolves, they weren't cursed. Instead, they served as warrior-guardians who protected their people, especially by going into the wilderness to fight enemies or hunt. They could live as wolves for years at a time, then return to human form. This story was written down by Christian monks, who sometimes reframed these people as cursed, but earlier versions suggest a more voluntary, noble transformation.

Gerald of Wales (a 12th-century cleric) recorded a tale in his Topographia Hibernica about a couple from Ossory who could turn into wolves. The wolves retained their human consciousness, could speak, and sought out clergy to give last rites. Gerald was more curious than horrified, treating them as evidence of the strange wonders of Ireland. This is the tradition WolfWalkers draws upon: not the Gothic horror of lycanthropy, but the older, stranger idea of humans who moved between forms as easily as crossing a threshold.

Robyn Goodfellowe and the Shakespearean Echo

Robyn is part of a Puritan society, yet her name is suggestive of fairies. That goes against that society, and not accidentally. Using the name Robyn Goodfellowe isn't just a fun literary reference. It suggests that WolfWalkers is engaging with A Midsummer Night's Dream on a deeper level.

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is a shapeshifter, prankster, and servant to Oberon, the fairy king. He causes chaos but also brings resolution. He lives on the edge between the human and fairy worlds. His name 'Goodfellow' implies cheer or kindness, but also has ironic undertones. It masks his disruptive nature. Robyn Goodfellowe in WolfWalkers is a human girl who transforms into a WolfWalker, literally becoming wild, magical, and free in the forest. Like Puck, she is a bridge between worlds: between the town and the forest, the coloniser and the native, the human and the wolf. Her journey involves breaking rules, sneaking into forbidden spaces, and disrupting authority, especially the Lord Protector.

The forest in both works serves as a liminal space, a threshold between the civilised and the wild, the rational and the magical. In WolfWalkers, the forest is a magical, dangerous, and sacred place that stands in opposition to the controlled, Puritanical town. It's where transformation, freedom, and spiritual connection happen. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the forest outside Athens is also a space of transformation, magic, and misrule. It contrasts with the order of the city and becomes a place where characters discover new aspects of themselves.

Both stories explore how stepping outside of societal norms or expectations (via the forest and magic) can lead to personal transformation. In WolfWalkers, Robyn literally transforms into a WolfWalker, which forces her to confront her identity, loyalties, and moral beliefs. In Shakespeare's play, characters undergo emotional and magical transformations, like Titania being enchanted to love Bottom, leading to self-discovery and a resetting of relationships.

The conflict between authority and nature runs through both works. The Lord Protector in WolfWalkers symbolises authoritarian control, suppressing the wild (the wolves) and trying to 'tame' the land and people. A Midsummer Night's Dream presents a more comic version of this tension, between rigid Athenian law (Theseus, Egeus) and the chaotic freedom of the fairy world (Oberon, Puck). Both works stage a power struggle between the forces of order and control and the forces of nature and magic.

'Bill' is a common nickname for William, and given the heavy allusion to Robin Goodfellow from A Midsummer Night's Dream, it's hard to ignore that naming her father Bill Goodfellowe seems like a deliberate nod to William Shakespeare himself. Robyn and Bill's father-daughter dynamic reflects the central tension in Shakespeare's play between old authority and new freedom. Bill wants to protect Robyn by keeping her in the structured, 'civilised' world of the city (Kilkenny, under English rule). Robyn resists that protection and seeks a wilder, freer existence in the forest, eventually joining the WolfWalkers. This mirrors the conflict between Theseus (Duke of Athens) and the younger lovers in Midsummer, or even between Oberon and Titania, whose quarrels disrupt the balance of nature.

In a subtle way, WolfWalkers invites a reading where Robyn is not just a Puck figure, but also the new generation rewriting the old stories. Bill (William), like Shakespeare, represents the dominant storytelling tradition: the one that's patriarchal, structured, and often aligned with empire. Robyn, his daughter, defies that tradition by entering the forest, embracing shapeshifting magic, and ultimately choosing freedom over obedience. In other words, Robyn rewrites her father's story.

Secret of Kells

The beauty here is the inspiration of the Book of Kells itself. The entire film is structured like a page from that illuminated manuscript. The compositions are flattened, decorative, and filled with intricate knotwork and spirals. Aisling, the forest spirit, is surrounded by circular, organic patterns that seem to grow and breathe. The forest, too, is rendered not as realistic woodland but as a tapestry of interlocking shapes and stylised foliage. It's animation that honours the two-dimensional page rather than attempting depth or realism.

This commitment to pattern and ornamentation is a rejection of the three-dimensional perspective that dominates most Western animation. Instead, Cartoon Saloon draws from the medieval illuminators who saw no need for realistic space. They were illustrating spiritual truths, not physical ones. Secret of Kells does the same. Every frame is an illumination.

The Design of the Northmen

The Viking raiders are rendered in sharp, angular designs that feel almost alien compared to the soft, circular patterns of the Celtic monastery. Their ships cut through the frame like blades, all harsh lines and geometric brutality. This visual distinction isn't merely aesthetic. It's ideological. The Northmen represent a threat not just to lives, but to knowledge, art, and spiritual continuity. Their design language speaks to destruction, to the severing of connections.

What's fascinating is how the film refuses to fully demonise them, even whilst making them visually menacing. They remain forces of nature, storm-like, rather than evil incarnate. The film's sympathy lies with the monks and their illuminated manuscripts, but it acknowledges that history is written in such invasions, that beauty and violence have always coexisted.

Celtic Design

The Celtic knotwork that dominates the film's visual language is more than decoration. It represents continuity, infinity, the interconnection of all things. These patterns have no beginning and no end. They loop back on themselves eternally. In a film about preserving knowledge and culture in the face of destruction, this is deeply symbolic. The Book of Kells survives. The patterns continue. Even when the monastery falls, the illuminations endure.

Song of the Sea

The inspiration of Spirited Away is clear here. Both films deal with a child navigating a magical realm in order to save a family member, and both are steeped in the folklore of their respective cultures. Saoirse, like Chihiro, is quiet, determined, and must find her voice (literally, in Saoirse's case) to break a curse and restore balance. The influence is there in the pacing, too: patient, contemplative, willing to let stillness speak.

But Song of the Sea is unmistakably Irish. The selkie myth at its heart is given the same reverence Miyazaki gives to kami and spirits. The sea is not a backdrop. It is a presence, a character, a mother. The film's colour palette (soft blues, greys, and golds) evokes the Irish coast in a way that feels both realistic and dreamlike.

The Setting of Halloween

The choice to set key scenes during Samhain (Halloween) is inspired. In Irish tradition, this is the time when the veil between worlds is thinnest, when spirits and humans might meet. It's the perfect moment for Saoirse to fully embrace her selkie nature and for Ben to confront the Macha, the owl witch who has been turning emotions to stone.

Halloween here isn't about costumes and sweets. It's about liminality, about standing at the threshold. The film uses this timing to underscore its themes of grief, memory, and letting go. The magical and the mundane overlap, and the audience is invited to believe in both.

Christian Shrines Above Gateways

That any gateway to the other world has a Christian shrine built above it is a quietly brilliant detail. Throughout Ireland, holy wells, fairy forts, and ancient stones were Christianised, often with a saint's name or a small shrine. The film acknowledges this layering of belief systems without judgement. It suggests that the old magic and the new religion coexist, that one hasn't quite erased the other.

For Cartoon Saloon, this is part of a broader project: to reclaim Irish mythology and folklore, not as quaint relics, but as living, breathing stories. The Christian shrines don't cancel the magic. They mark it, remember it, perhaps even protect it.

The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner is set in 2001, during the final years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan before the U.S.-led invasion. The story follows Parvana, an 11-year-old girl living in Kabul, under the oppressive Taliban regime. This is Cartoon Saloon's most politically direct film, and also its most stylistically restrained.

Gone are the decorative flourishes of Celtic knotwork or the soft watercolours of selkie seas. Instead, the animation is more grounded, more muted. The palette is dusty, sun-bleached, ochre and grey. It reflects the harshness of Parvana's world, where beauty must be carefully guarded and survival is a daily negotiation. Yet even here, Cartoon Saloon cannot resist the power of storytelling itself.

Parvana tells a folk tale throughout the film, animated in a different style entirely: cut-paper silhouettes, bold colours, mythic and timeless. These sequences offer her (and us) a momentary escape, but they also give her strength. The story she tells becomes a framework for understanding her own life, her own courage. It's a tale of a boy on a quest to reclaim seeds stolen by the Elephant King, a journey fraught with danger but driven by love and duty. The parallels to Parvana's own situation are clear, but never heavy-handed. The folk tale gives her a language for her fear, her determination, her hope.

The Breadwinner is about resilience, yes, but also about the act of storytelling as resistance. In a regime that sought to erase women from public life, to silence them, Parvana's disguise as a boy allows her to move freely, but her stories allow her to remain herself. The film argues that imagination is not frivolous. It is survival. When everything else can be taken from you, stories remain. They can be hidden, carried, retold. They adapt and endure.

What makes this film remarkable within Cartoon Saloon's oeuvre is its refusal to aestheticise suffering. It doesn't make poverty or oppression beautiful. The streets of Kabul are rendered with a documentary-like attention to detail: the rubble, the dust, the worn faces of people ground down by years of war and repression. But the film does insist that people living under such conditions are still whole, still complex, still deserving of stories that honour their humanity. Parvana is not a victim. She is a hero. She is clever, resourceful, and brave. She finds ways to navigate impossible restrictions. She supports her family. She risks everything to save her father.

The film also quietly acknowledges the complicity of those who enforce oppression. The Taliban soldiers are not cartoon villains. Some are young, uncertain, following orders they may not fully understand. Others are true believers, convinced of their righteousness. The film doesn't excuse them, but it does present them as human, which makes their actions all the more chilling. Oppression is not carried out by monsters. It's carried out by people, which means it can happen anywhere, to anyone.

A Studio Apart

Cartoon Saloon has become a beacon for independent animation, proving that you don't need the budgets of Pixar or Disney to create films of lasting power and beauty. Their work is deeply rooted in place (Ireland, Afghanistan) and in the specific textures of cultural memory, yet it speaks universally. They understand that folklore is not nostalgia. It is a way of seeing the world, of encoding wisdom, of asking questions that don't have easy answers.

What unites these four films is a belief in the transformative power of art and story. Whether it's Brendan illuminating manuscripts, Saoirse singing her selkie song, Robyn running with the wolves, or Parvana telling her tale of the boy and the elephant, each protagonist uses creativity and imagination to navigate a world that seeks to control or silence them. Cartoon Saloon's films are, in this sense, deeply political. They argue that beauty, memory, and storytelling are not luxuries. They are necessities. They are how we remain human in the face of dehumanisation. They are how we remember who we are when the world tells us we must be something else.

And they do it all with a visual language that refuses to conform. Their films look like nothing else in contemporary animation. They are flat where others are deep, patterned where others are smooth, hand-drawn where others are polished. They wear their influences openly (Persian miniatures, Celtic manuscripts, Japanese animation, xerography) but always in service of something new, something their own. Each film feels like a collaboration between past and present, between the illuminators of the Book of Kells and the animators in Kilkenny, between ancient storytellers and modern audiences.

In an industry increasingly dominated by sequels, franchises, and risk-averse corporate decision-making, Cartoon Saloon stands apart. They make films that trust their audience, that believe in the intelligence of children, that refuse to pander or simplify. They tackle difficult subjects: colonisation, grief, oppression, environmental destruction. But they do so with grace, with beauty, and with an abiding faith in the power of stories to change us.

Their films are, quite simply, essential. Not just for what they tell us about Irish folklore or Afghan resilience, but for what they remind us about animation itself: that it need not be realistic to be truthful, that it can be stylised and still deeply felt, that two dimensions can contain infinite depth. Cartoon Saloon has created a body of work that will endure, that will be studied and celebrated long after the latest blockbuster has faded from memory. They have shown us what animation can be when it is made with care, with knowledge, and with love. They have illuminated the path forward by looking back, by honouring the old ways of seeing whilst making something entirely new.