Alumni Stories - Maria Elena Doyle
"What I loved about NCAD is we were encouraged to trust the flow of ideas that come into your head and the brainstorming process, writing and noting everything in a notebook. To this day, I allow images to come to me and I don’t discard anything."
Name: Maria-Elena Doyle
Current Career: Creative Director, Artist filmmaker, Motion Graphics Designer
Graduation Year: 1995
Discipline: Communication Design
Location: Bray Co. Wicklow
What career path did you want to follow as a child?
I loved art as a child. There wasn’t a day that went by without me painting or drawing. I enjoyed creating up stories and making up games with my friends to take them on visual journeys. I was also into contemporary and modern dance. I was interested in the environment. I liked National Geographic. Nature documentaries and TV programmes like David Attenborough’s wildlife, and Tomorrow's World, were family staples at home. But, I always knew I wanted to study something connected with art
Why did you decide to study at National College of Art & Design?
My teacher in secondary school Ms Bond had gone to NCAD. She told me it was the best but most difficult art college to get into in Ireland. It always has been really competitive to get in, but I was dead set on it. Many thanks to Ms Bond for all her portfolio guidance. Her wonderful advice and help were just what I needed. Even then, I was very determined and extremely focused. I started my portfolio at the beginning of my 6th Year at school. During that year, I applied to NCAD and was offered a place. Months later, I was still only sixteen years old, straight out of school but starting my creative career at NCAD.
How did you develop your career towards your current job / practice?
Following graduation from NCAD, I decided I wanted to pursue a career in motion graphics or VFX. (VFX is the process of combining computer-generated (CG) sequences with live-action footage to create scenes that cannot be filmed in real life) My final year design degree portfolio gave me the opportunity to work at Screen Scene. They are a leading full-service post-production company creating TV, films & drama, commercials & using VFX who are based in Dublin. I worked there for 6 months before leaving to work in RTE. I worked at RTE for 7 years as an opening titles designer/director.
RTE was great. Working there was a very similar experience to my time in NCAD. I was given the freedom to experiment when designing and directing opening titles. At the time, RTE had good budgets to do green-screen live-action shoots. We had access to the costume department, the props department, and most of the studios at RTE. There were also reasonable budgets to do post-production work in post-houses like Screen Scene and Windmill Lane. As my RTE career progressed, I started art-directing big opening titles and Channel idents, working with the renowned Ian Jacobs and Hubert Montage. It was an exciting opportunity and to think I was only twenty-two years old.
I also worked a lot with dancers, spending a lot of time generating in camera VFX in the RTE Rostrum room. I would then digitally manipulate and integrate the VFX into the opening titles. All these experiences were similar to my time in NCAD because it was a great time of experimentation and of honing skills and developing my unique style.
Hungry for more than a 20 second opening title, I made a significant move to live and work in New Zealand. I studied digital animation there and also continued to work in VFX. During a decade living in New Zealand I directed a series of short films, “Rain” "Meniscus," and "Inorganic." This was the start of my career as a filmmaker. I did all the 2d and 3d animation and compositing on my first film Rain and Meniscus. These captivating works drew inspiration from the rich tapestry of indigenous Maori culture, the breathtaking New Zealand landscape, and the profound verses of Maori poet Hone Tuwhare. As a testament to their artistic merit, these films received widespread acclaim, garnering prestigious awards and earning coveted screenings at renowned international film festivals. Rain won the Moondance International Film Festival in LA 2007. From Rain I got funding from Creative New Zealand to make my second film Meniscus. Meniscus won the AFTA Award in 2011, the Australian New Zealand TV and Film awards and also won an award for best International short film at the EcoFilm Festival in Mexico 2013.
I am passionate about the natural environment. I often explore themes of human nature, our connection with nature, and the cycle of death and rebirth in my work.
I returned to Ireland in 2014. I worked as a director for a prominent production company. Later I was a shadow director on several television series, including the Netflix Winx Saga and Red Rock series. In 2019, I completed an MA in screenwriting, winning the IADT Writer Guild Ireland Award 2019 for my feature screenplay.
My time in NCAD gave me confidence to experiment. Over the last two decades, I have built-up experience and understanding of the whole VFX post process, but I also still love shooting old school In-camera effects. I try as much as possible to generate effects in-camera, as there is an authenticity you can feel. From my time in NCAD and RTE. I'm not afraid to experiment and try new things. It’s part of my whole process. I love it and trust it.
Since returning to Ireland in 2014, I have made Goodbye Darling, as part of the After ’16 shorts programme funded by Screen Ireland. Goodbye Darling went on to win the Aerlingus filmmaker Award and screened at festivals internationally, as well as being screened on all Aer Lingus transatlantic flights for a year
Mycelium is my latest film funded by the Arts Council completed in 2023 it has just started its festival journey. So far Mycelium has been in competition in the Galway film Fleadh, Hollyshorts Film Festival LA, and will screen at the Cork International Film Festival, the Kerry International Film Festival and the Aesthetica Film Festival York, UK . Mycelium is proof of concept for my feature screenplay Ground Beneath Her Feet, which I hope to further develop and direct in the near future.
What is the one experience during your time at NCAD that has informed you most in your career / work to date?
At NCAD, I learned that the concept is king. Let the concept or idea come first and then be open to how that idea might manifest itself into reality. I work intuitively. When I was given a brief during my time studying at NCAD, I trusted the images that came into my mind. I never dismissed an image or idea that came to mind. I trusted the process, and that it would make sense when I would later go back to look through my notebook.
Since the 1990’s, I still get very upset by the disenfranchisement of indigenous people. As a seventeen year old I was very concerned and still am about climate change, specifically the loss of habitat and the extinction of species as a result of deforestation of the Amazon. The loss of the knowledge and the loss of what is to be a human, one that is fully connected and in-tune, living in the wisdom of mother nature, still concerns me. It was and still is the inspiration for all my work.
I chose to study Visual Communication (now called Communication Design) at NCAD. I was and still am very driven by the need to say something with my work. As a student, I didn’t know I wanted to work in the medium of film or moving image, but it was the work itself that led me in that direction. In 1995, for my final year degree exhibition I did a series of posters consisting of large format photographic prints. The work called “Give Us this Day” was an awareness campaign for Trocaire. In this series, I wanted to get away from the desensitizing imagery of starving people to create more empathetic artwork that inspired behavioural change. I created a human figure that when duplicated fitted together perfectly like jigsaw puzzle pieces. In one piece, I moulded these figures in ice. I then photographed them in different natural environments. I used the same shape several times but used different mediums. In another artwork, I created what looked like a tapestry of human figures, all the same shape and size and jig-sawed them together. The components were made of bread. The bread was toasted at different lengths of time so they appeared as different skins tones. My approach to this work underlines my need to experiment using different materials and then capture them in photographs. But, the concept was always the driving force - always.
It was only at my end of year show that I thought, if only these photographs had sound and could move. That’s when the idea of going into moving image and film making began for me.
What I loved about NCAD is we were encouraged to trust the flow of ideas that come into your head and the brainstorming process, writing and noting everything in a notebook. To this day, I allow images to come to me and I don’t discard anything. I believe all creatives have this kind of superpower. We have the ability and sensitivity to tap into the zeitgeist of a time and bring ideas/concepts from out there. Maybe they come from a universal consciousness or the ether, almost like channelling something and then birthing it into existence through our work. It has always been my desire to use these skills for good and to make a difference with my work.
There was a lot of freedom to go into different departments in NCAD. I’d suggest you use all the facilities while you can. When we’d get a brief I was more inspired by fine artists, photography, sculpture, glass, ceramic, and painting than I was by graphic design. To be honest, I didn’t find typography very inspiring. I was more interested in making powerful emotive imagery first and then to add a tagline, statement/copy in Helvetica afterwards. I’d go into the different departments like glass and ceramics to find off-cut materials to make stuff to bring into the photography studio. I’d photograph them. I’d do things like bringing random stuff like raw meat into the READS shop on Nassau Street to colour-scan them before bringing them in Photoshop to work on. The idea/concept would inform the medium it would be realised in. Then I would capture it in a photo. This was always part of the process. I guess it continues to be.
If you were chatting with current NCAD students today what is the one piece of advice you would offer?
Forget about what everyone else is doing and do you. You are unique. So, be yourself. Trust your intuition. You are at NCAD for a reason.
