Aoife Rhatigan’s whimsical animations have a crayon-esque fuzziness and watercolour smears

Aoife Rhatigan is part of It’s Nice That’s Ones to Watch 2025 – a curated list of next generation creative talent from across the globe. Discover all 65 creatives in our directory, here.

Aoife Rhatigan is an Irish artist from Kilkenny and a recent alumni from Limerick School of Art and Design with a BA in Animation and Motion Design. As well as doing an internship as an animation content creator for clothing company Goodies Sportive in Porto, Portugal, Aoife makes work that reflects her life – a process of chaotically and organically “hurtling towards an end product”. Focusing on storytelling through animation and illustration, she captures the essence of epiphanies in all their crayon-esque fuzziness and watercolour smears.

“I use Procreate Dreams for my animations, even though it is quite limited, I find the immediacy and intuitiveness really appealing,” says Aoife. “Other than that I work almost 100 per cent traditionally, usually pencil, watercolor, oil paint and pastels. Usually I just draw and draw and make and make until something good comes out.” Aoife’s illustrations centre the human body, animals and her fascination with limbs, as well as her fondness for “little beings” – metaphorical representations of humans over the “actual fact of them”. Inspired by 70s Soviet animations and Ryan Larkin, as well as old puppet television shows such as Fraggle Rock, Aoife mines the whimsy out of them and channels them into her original worlds where anything goes: giant stars, vampires and nature floating off a phone screen. “I’m inspired by life, listening to music on the train, visiting my family, laughing with my friends etc,” says Aoife – and it shows! These illustrations are daydreams incarnate.