HOW STUDIO DISTRACT DEVELOPED ITS FIRST INTERNAL KID’S TV PROPERTY
The Show
Little Animals is an inhouse developed property. It’s funny where ideas come from, this one came following a conference about managing diverse personalities within a team environment. Moral of the story – what seems like a boring day could in fact inspire many fun filled creative days!
The five temperaments – Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic and Supine. These inspired an idea that could resonate with people of all ages but held within it a concept for children understanding their place in the world.
We developed a child friendly method of portraying the different character temperaments in a pre-school property. Building on the concept of kids dressing up as animals, this being a form of uniform that represents their character traits. Leonard the Lion is a brave and confident leader, accompanied by 4 different but equally special friends.
A magical show that teaches pre-schoolers about social interaction and working together.
From their playroom the Little Animals enter the world of their imaginations, using the objects around them to create magical environments and adventures.
The show is about children working together to achieve a goal. Teaching children that everyone has a part to play in society. You may not be good at everything, but that’s okay, what you are good at is just as important as what someone else is good at. By interacting with people with other skills and interests you will learn from them. Nobody should be isolated.
Project Responsibilties
For this project we created everything from character designs and storyboards through to rendering and audio treatment.
Early Environment Concept Work
From day one we explored all possible directions, looking at environments inspired from culture around the world.
Character Concepts
Once we have defined the general look for all of our characters we illustrate them in a range of poses and situations to further explore their personalities.
Property Branding
Working with a TV budget we needed to be efficient with character modelling costs. We achieved this by creating a single rig that could be accessorised with additional 3D elements and textured to look produce a range of characters.
Designing the characters in this way is also a bonus further down the timeline when merchandising comes into play.
Character Turntables
Working with a TV budget we needed to be efficient with character modelling costs. We achieved this by creating a single rig that could be accessorised with additional 3D elements and textured to look produce a range of characters.
Designing the characters in this way is also a bonus further down the timeline when merchandising comes into play.
A Little Animation Sample
Here is a little animated dialogue sample that the studio created to test out the face rigs of the characters.
We had to be sure that our unique method for rigging the characters eyes was actually user friendly for our animators and that all of the rigged elements of the face and body didn’t malfunction.
This shot is set within a creche/kid’s bedroom environment that we created as a home for our characters.
Our First Pilot
Initially we wanted to create a visual style that encouraged children to focus on story elements rather than rich environments. We designed the show to only feature objects and items on screen that were there to help tell the story.
However, feedback from broadcasters made us reassess this. We went back to the drawing board and created a visual style that married substantial environments with more sparing environments where necessary.
We commissioned a new writer and started again from scratch. From this new script we storyboarded a complete episode which can be seen below.
Starting Again From Scratch
We also took onboard feedback from broadcasters that narrator driven shows were not popular and would ‘age-down’ the property.
The characters now exchange dialogue with each other, this did indeed age the property up and made for more interesting stories.
Environment Design
Below are some still renders of our real-world environment for Little Animals. We significantly reduced render time within this scene by faking the ambient occlusion result. This also helped us solve the problem with interior final-gather flickering.
