Armchair & Rocket
- Open roles
- 0
- Founded
- 2018
- Employees
- 1-10
- Offices
- 1
About Armchair & Rocket
Armchair & Rocket is an independent creative production and animation studio founded in Belfast in 2018 by filmmaker and director Stephen Pierce and writer-producer Michael O’Neill. Its work spans film, television, commercial advertising and educational content, combining traditional storytelling with practical and digital production techniques.
The studio brings together live-action filmmaking, 2D and 3D animation, stop-motion, puppetry, motion capture and virtual production. Its production services extend from concepts, scripts and storyboards through animation, practical puppet fabrication, filming, editing and post-production collaboration. It also creates screen graphics and interfaces for film and episodic television, and develops original intellectual property.
Commercial and educational production
Armchair & Rocket works with agencies and public-sector organisations on commercial campaigns and public information films. Its projects include puppet-led sustainability advertising for Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, road safety commercials for CRASH Services, and campaigns for Co-Ownership NI, the Northern Ireland Department of Justice and the Department for the Economy’s Assured Skills Academies. These productions draw on its combination of character animation, practical performance and live-action production.
For BBC Bitesize, the studio has produced more than eight hours of short-form educational animation. Productions include Extreme Physics, Skeetchtooler’s School for Aliens, Wanda Wonder and Quintin Question & Frank the Fax Machine. This educational work sits alongside its advertising output and independent narrative projects.
Original stories
The studio’s short films include the surreal dark comedy Back in Five, the virtual production film The Flight of Ulick Underhill, and C'est Moi dans la Poubelle, which imagines a meeting between Samuel Beckett and Ezra Pound. Its films have screened at festivals in the United Kingdom, Ireland, continental Europe and the United States.
Armchair & Rocket is also developing its debut 3D animated family feature, Fairies Don't Exist, adapted from the picture book written by Michael O’Neill and illustrated by Stephen Pierce. Its wider publishing activity includes Happenstance, an art and literature publication celebrating Brian Ballard and Ciaran Carson.
More about Armchair & Rocket
Leadership and operating model
Stephen Pierce and Michael O’Neill are listed as company directors. The studio operates with a small core team, regular creative collaborator Jude Sharvin and project-based crews.
Production collaborations
The studio regularly collaborates with agency Navigator Blue. Its 14-minute short The Flight of Ulick Underhill was set entirely inside a lift and made using virtual production at UU Screen Belfast. The research also identifies Outpost Belfast as a production and post-production partner.
Recognition
Back in Five (2021) won Best NI Short at the UK Short Film Awards and was produced with support from Northern Ireland Screen. The award belongs to the film; the report does not specify the award year.
Background and public activity
The studio describes its name as pairing the armchair’s association with imagination and classic storytelling with the rocket as a vehicle for taking ideas into unexpected realms. The picture book Fairies Don't Exist featured in World Book Day 2020 with a reading by Adrian Dunbar. The studio gifted its publication Happenstance to the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
Notable credits
14 creditsOffices
Where Armchair & Rocket is based
- Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Belfast offices
HeadquartersAbout this office
**Belfast Studio** Status: active Headquarters Address: The Baths, 18 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2 8HS Phone: +44 7759 348212 / +44 7724 908134 Primary operational production premises and company headquarters. --- **Belfast Registered Corporate Office** Status: active Address: 680 Saintfield Road, Belfast, BT8 8BU Statutory registered office; the operational production premises are separate.
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