Much more studio

Here is a photo from one of the shelves in the back studio. Here you can see some early trees and bushes from Driver Dan's Story Train. These were made out of cardboard and paper to figure out how things would work before they are made in the computer.

Quick Character Design

Hi all. Here is a picture of the rough character drawings for a very small job we did a while ago. Then the finished characters in colour on the right. These were drawn and animated by Mr Phil.

Mr Pauls Room

Continuing the photo's from around the studio here is a pic of Mr Pauls collectables. If you see photo's from inside animation studios you always see a mass collection of merchandise and toys. Not a lot of that here as we never get anything for free (sad face). So we have to collect things by ourselves. So here is Mr Paul's shelf in his room. It is much more impressive than mine. (jealous face).

Pillows!

Here is a picture of where we are keeping the actual pillows for the title sequence for Driver Dan's Story Train. In the garage on top of the classic Volvo. These pillows have also been to Abu Dhabi for when the Arabic version of the show was filmed. Each one was made by Miss Rebecca. I helped on one of the pillows, I wanted to join in and Miss Rebecca let me.

Another Rubbish Sheet

Here is another Character Sheet from Rubbish King of the Jumble.

Another studio pic

Here is a shot of Mr Matt's desk. He is working away on a Tallulah scene for Driver Dan's Story Train. We are using 3Dstudio for this series.

Prof. Chicken

Here is a pencil frame from one of the Amazing Animals episodes. They were from the animated inserts for a live action kids wildlife program on the Disney Channel.
Here you can see the match lines in Red - So in clean up you had to make sure the lines matched those of the time machine he was sitting in (you couldn't just put him on a level below because his hands over lap the front of the windscreen).
The green line was to be clear that it is his coat. It just makes things a little clearer when passing on your work to an assistant or clean up artist. If you look closer you can see how the picture has been adjusted around the face area to make it better or animate right.

Aladdin Still

Hello. This is a still from Arnold Adlers cut out theatre from Dog and Duck. This was traditional 2D and layered in After effects.
It was quite weird as near the same time we also did an Aladdin special for OUP and you can see the character designs I posted for them earlier (click on the OUP link on the right)

Another Frank BG

Here is another Frankenstein's cat Background. These are the steps up to the castle. It's quite a simple one compared to the other BG's but I love it.

Action Network

I managed to post up a picture today then. Thing is, I just finished editing a small reel of relevant clips for a perspective client and now I'm thinking I should have included a clip of this! Dagnabit. (I love that word)
This is a still for the Action Network ad's for the BBC. Mr Paul did them all by himself. The design is his too, based on the Action Network tree logo.

Pictures?

I can not upload pictures this morning. Well that's a bit boring isn't it?
I will try again later.

Captain Sarcastic

Here is a still from Captain Sarcastic. It was a short made by Mr Peter in our studio with the help from Mr Tim. This was made in Flash before we started using it widely.

Another Rubbish Sheeet

Morning. Here is another model sheet from the info pack for animators on Rubbish King of the Jumble. It has some extra information about construction and size relation than found on other sheets.

Dog and Duck

Yes I know this isn't a picture of a dog and a duck. It is a still which was captured from a VHS (cant remember why) hence the quality. This is from Arnold Adlers cut out theatre. Which was in the attic of Dog and Ducks house. We would do the Arnold Adler section, his theatre was CG with a 2D Arnold and when we watched the story it was all done in 2d then layered in After effects so we get the shadows of every section because it was a cut out theatre you see! This still is of the owl and the pussy cat. Just in case you didn't realise.

Old BG

Here is another old BG from Town and Country Mouse. I have been asked to put more old BG's up so here is one. I think I shall brave it and venture up into the loft this afternoon to look for more gems. It hasn't got easy access you see. I will try my best. Just for you.

Line Test

Here is a line test image from before the pilot we did for Dusty and Musty. This was quite some time ago now so when the client asked us to animate the mummy over a CG background we said of course we can. They wanted a test done of him walking down some stairs whilst carefully holding his canopic jar (it contains his insides) and at the same time Dusty (the dinosaur) is running around him trying to put him off. No problem we said. So we sent them 4 different panning speeds of the stairs to choose from and wouldn't you know, they wanted it the slowest speed but double as slow as we had it. What that meant is a lot more drawings and I dont remember the specific amount but it was over 600 drawings just for this character as he had a few levels and we had to animate it on 1's and didn't have any cycles (due to the acting).
When we did the series we animated it in Flash.

Expressions

Here is one of the expression sheets from Rubbish King of the Jumble. This was to give some reference to the animators of how he could look in different situations. My favourite is the cheek squash top right. Watch the title sequence here.

Sandcastle

Here is a sand castle concept painting for the series Boo! from Miss Rebecca. The same Miss Rebecca from Driver Dan's Story Train.

Encounters 07 stills

Here are some stills from the trailer for encounters that Mr Paul did in 2007. He did all of this himself the clever fella.... except for the music. That was Mr James.

Anniversary

Extra bonus post today! I almost forgot a little milestone. I have been here for 14 years today! Yayy me. That's all I'm getting. Back to work Miss Jane.

Town Mouse BG

Here is another BG from Town and Country Mouse. This was on two layers so we could have passing traffic behind the foreground buildings. I havent put the front level high enough so you can see the shoddy line on the back buildings on the left. This BG is all water colour and the animation for the project was all done traditionally in 2D on paper.

Rubbish Stamp

Morning. This is the original drawing for the stamp used for everything to do with Rubbish King of the Jumble. Dope sheets, scene folders etc. Look at the lovely pencil line! Lovely.

A Goat Run Cycle

Here is another goat run cycle from Mr Phil.

Kids Sound Record

Here are Miss Georgie and Miss Soraya in action in the booth.

Kids Sound Record

Here is a view through to the booth from the mix desk. Mr Stan is there with Master Jacob and Master Dheeran.

Kids Sound Record

Here is a pic from the penultimate kids sound record we did today for Driver Dan's Story Train. That's just half of the mixing desk. All our sessions for the kids voices on Story Train were recorded at 'Films at 59' in Bristol.

Mr Rex

Good day to you. Here is Mr Rex. He was one of the many characters from the series Amazing Animals for the Disney Channel. Amazing Animals was a live action series with a CG computer lizard as it's host. Every episode there was 4 times 40second 2D shorts in it which we did the animation. Mr Rex was one of the recurring characters. He was my favourite as we made him into a little softy really.
Oh as a side note, the pegs were at the top as he was a panning level (which the BG panned through shot behind him on bottom pegs). When we would animate the pegs would always be at the bottom of a page. It makes flicking the pages easer.

Encounters 2009 still

Morning. Here is another still from the 2009 Encounters Trailer. Mr Paul is soon to start the 2010 trailer. Have a look at the Encounters website where you can see previous trailers and how they are using Mr Paul's character as the new brand. Are you going to enter something? Go on.

Simo

Morning. Here are some images from an old pilot we did a while ago. All traditional.

Absolute Balderdash

Here are some stills from an advert we did many many years ago (about 13) for the board game. It was all traditionally animated. Mr Nigel did most of this, I did some assisting but my main contribution was drawing the pack shot which you can see in the top panel. This was before computers so it had to be drawn by hand. The picture is low rez so I can't see but I remember one of the letters being a bit dodgy and I cringed every time I watched it on TV when it was broadcast.

Teddy's Trains

Here are some images from I pilot we did quite some years ago based on the Teddy's Trains children's books. Funny thing is, we did all this traditionally as it was before we started to use Flash. It would have been so easy to do in Flash and not have to thicken all the lines individually in Animo. Mr Tim did say at the time Flash would be easier but none of us knew how to use it. Plus there were no computers in the building apart from the Animo system. Now all we have is computers in the building and a render farm that is heating the street!

City

Morning, here is an areal shot of a CG city that was built (by Miss Monica) for a pilot for Scratch and Sniff. This is quite a bit old now though so if your seeing a similarity with Handy Manny then it isn't as this pre dates it.

Stop-Motion

What a lovely morning it is here in Bristol. Here are some images from a trailer we did for the Disney Channel back in 2002. It was stop motion with a CG BG. They were basically on a roller coaster ride. The models are still in the studio but they are looking a little worse for wear now.

Old Page

Morning. Here is the original page from our old website in which the game was placed. Have you played the game? 35 is now my top score. Click here to play.

Warp

Morning! Here are some stills from a pilot we did for Tell-Tale a few years ago. It was about 2003 I think. It was both traditional and CG. We did the traditional bits. I haven't shown you any of the CG bits. Because we didn't do it. Funnily enough.

Billy Stills

Here are some stills from the Billy Goats Gruff short we did for OUP. I posted some animation drawings for the baby goat recently. I have a few more of the same to put up soon. Now you can see how they were finished. This was all traditional. Drawn characters and drawn BG's.

Cineman

Here are some poses for the character designed by Mr Paul for the 08 Encounters Trailer (which he also Directed). They liked it so much they asked us to use the same concept for last years trailer and now they are using him as a brand for the Encounters Short Film Festival.....the Character I mean not Mr Paul. That would be silly.

A Tweenie shot

Hi, I'm back so I may leave a few posts today to make up for none last week.
Here is a still from The Tweenies. We did all the animation in it and compositing them into new environments or creating fantasy characters that Milo, Bella, Fizz and Jake interacted with over the years.

Byeeeee ....(just for a week)

Double post today! Just wanted to let you know I am on holiday next week so no posts. Come back though wont you? ..Please. I'll bring cookies! x

Ballon Patterns

Here are some more patterns from Miss Rebecca for Driver Dan's Story Train. These were for some balloons.

A Run Cycle

Here is a run cycle of a baby goat from a OUP short we did of Billy Goats Gruff. This was from Mr Phil. He is having a tidy up around his desk and found these. Look at the construction and clean up and the over lapping action of the ears. Nice.

BigFoot BG

Here is another Franks Cat background. This was from the Bigfoot Burglar episode.

Old Card

As it's now May, here is an old Christmas card design using our old logo design. If you click on the logo tab you can see it. Old post.
Mr Paul dug some old things out of his draw for the blog as I still haven't had time to dig around the attic for new 'old' things to show.

Gary Spangle

Here are some designs for Gary Spangle from Mr Warwick. He was the crass host for the animation night on Channel 4 back in 1998 or 1999, we can't quite remember the date. I do remember watching the night with a load of friends, seeing the links we all so loveingly animated. Then the disapointment as chanel 4 splurged their big square box 4 logo over 2/3rds of the picture covering the funny bits on about half of the links at the end of them. Oh well ay?

Ghost Dogs

Here are some ghost dogs from Franks Cat. For the final design we had to remove the drool to make them a little less rabid. This was from the Halloween episode.

Designs

Morning. Here is another Mr Curtis design for Frankenstein's Cat. I will post the finished Flash models of these tomorrow. On another note, cold sausages are yummy in the morning!

More Painting

Afternoon! Continuing the Story Train theme, here are some more Miss Rebecca paintings. These were for the actual storybook covers, before the decision to have each storybook to have it's own special cover in each episode.

Twinkle Friday

Hi Here is a picture of Miss Twinkle.

Corrections

Morning. Here is a picture to show corrections on some artwork. Top left you can see Mr Curtis scetch of the character Woodward D Edwards from the show Frankenstein's Cat. The colour positions show the built in Flash turnaround designs made by Mr James. The red scribbles are made by the Director showing how he wants the drawings adjusted.

Part of a picture

Here is a partial scan (I've been meaning to get the rest of it done as this is larger than A3) of a painting to get the feel to an environment for the series Boo! Using these style guide paintings the CG guys (normally skilfully led by Mr Duncan) would then construct the 3D world.
This is painted by Miss Rebecca who designed all of Boo!