Established 15 years ago, Piranha Bar boast a diverse family of in-house talents including our roster of directors, animators, VFX artists, motion designers, and our stable of award winning editors. Our unique hybrid production company creates highly visual short and long-form branded content including MyaGo, our first animated series now in production with Director Alan Foley and Sam Morrison (Peppa Pig, Ben & Holly) leading the writing team.
Piranha Bar is now actively developing it’s own original content with production partners around the world. Our current development slate includes animated film and episodic series.
Currently in development: Monsta Trucks, a 3D animated children’s series; and Doom Newt, a subversively humorous comedy series featuring an extraordinary character with ordinary problems, where we animate a CG character in a live action world. These ambitious projects will harness the expertise and talent in the studio to its fullest potential.
Shows & Films:
Last Hijack, Emmy award wining animated feature documentary. LAST HIJACK is a true tale of survival in Somalia told from the pirate’s perspective. Combining animation with documentary storytelling, the film takes an innovative hybrid approach to explore how one Somali pirate, Mohamed, came to live such a brutal and dangerous existence. This was a co-production between Ireland (Still Films/Piranha Bar), TheNetherlands (Submarine), Germany (Razor Films) and Belgium (Savage Films). For more info, visit Last Hijack on Vimeo.
MyaGo preschool series (104 x 5.5 min). Co-production between Ireland, Spain and Catalan, funded by IFB, RTE, BAI, RTVE, TV3, Catalonia. See more of MyGo here.
Avatar Days, is a portrait of four online gamers in Dublin whose daily lives contrast with their virtual identities. (4 mins). Watch Avatar Days here.
Awards
Last Hijack, EMMY Award Winner 2015; Best online production (non-fiction)
Irish Creative Advertising and Design Awards.
International Advertising Awards, Kinsale.
Institute of Designers Ireland Awards.
Avatar Days, Soho Shorts Award; European Independent Film Award
Last Hijack, Digital Emmy Award for Best Non Fiction Production 2015
Tommy, Best animation Award; Irish animation awards 2015
Last Hijack, Prix Europa 2014, Online Award
Clients
Biographies:
Nicky Gogan has had a highly prolific career across many roles in the film industry working as producer, director, editor, development executive, festival programmer and founder of the Darklight Film Festival, she also worked as the exhibition curator of art and technology at The Digital Hub.
Through her production company Still Films she has produced several acclaimed award-winning documentaries and short films, including “Seaview” (2008 – also dir), “Build Something Modern” (2011 – also dir), “Pyjama Girls” (2010) and the Emmy award winning documentary “Last Hijack” (2014). Her latest documentary as producer, “Lost in France” (2017 – also co-editor) premiered to much acclaim in Edinburgh and Galway and was released in UK & Ireland cinemas by Curzon Artificial Eye. Having executive produced “Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect” (2017) she is now working at Piranha Bar in Dublin producing the animated kids series “Myago”. Nicky is also head of development there across a slate of animation and hybrid series, where she combines her ongoing passion for innovation in creative technology and producing.
Nicky is frequently invited to participate on panels, run workshops, sit on juries and evaluate projects, both internationally and in Ireland.
Dave Burke is the CEO and Executive Producer at Piranha Bar, Dublin. He began his career in the early eighties, working in various areas of production before becoming a sought after editor.
By the early nineties he was senior editor and company director at one of Ireland’s top post production houses Picture Company.
During this time there he was heavily involved in the design and build of what was at the time Ireland’s most advanced post production facility.
In 2001 Dave orchestrated an MBO of Picture Company and partnered with Gavin Kelly, Vernon Crowley and Marc Long to set up Piranha Bar, a boutique VFX and animation studio that melds high end digital image technology with artist-led creative vision.
Dave has overseen the studio’s growth from a small facility of 8 people to a thriving studio of 35 editors, designers, animators and directors, producing memorable campaigns for Ireland’s top brands and broadcasters along the way. In 2012, the studio opened a new production wing and Dave became a live action producer on commercials, shooting domestically and internationally, as far afield as Jamaica and South Africa. His attention to detail and legendary problem solving abilities are well known among Dave’s broad client base.
Dave continues to manage the development of Piranha Bar’s portfolio of creative work, charting a course into longer form content and animation. Having managed the production and post production of 20 minutes of animation for the internationally acclaimed feature length documentary ‘Last Hijack’ and the multi award winning and much admired ‘Tommy McCanary’ Carbon Monoxide commercials (winner Best Irish Animation), Dave is executive producer on the beautiful MyaGo a pre school series of 104 x 5min alongside Director Alan Foley. With a number of projects in development Dave looks forward to new challenges in the ever evolving landscape of animation production.