…Is there anything in particular that people really want to know about when making a short film?

If you do have any questions please post them in the comments below and hopefully I can either answer them with either a quick response or it could also inspire a new post to discuss the issue in greater depth.

Disney Junior was introduced as a programming block on Disney Channel last February to excellent ratings, and now the new channel will provide 24 hour programming for kids aged 2 to 7. Doc McStuffins is the first brand new series to premiere on the channel.

Doc McStuffins and her Disney pals

From Disney’s press release:

“Doc McStuffins” – an animated series about a six-year-old girl who communicates with and heals stuffed animals and toys in her backyard clinic. Under the consultancy of the Hollywood Health & Society division of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, the series will highlight the importance of taking care of oneself and others, while showcasing the hallmarks of great Disney storytelling – fantasy and wish fulfillment.

Emmy Award-winning writer/producer Chris Nee (”Little Bill” and “Deadliest Catch: Crab Fishing in Alaska”) is the creator and executive producer, and Emmy Award-winning Norton Virgien (”Rugrats”) is the director. “Doc McStuffins” is a production of the Dublin, Ireland-based Brown Bag Films (two time Academy Award nominee for “Granny O’Grimm” and “Give Up Yer Aul Sins”).

DisneyJunior.com will debut a “Doc McStuffins” supersite featuring an interactive clinic where kids can assist Doc in nurturing toys back to health.

We can’t wait to share the show with you and see what you think!

The Pigeon designs for ‘Bird Food’ were always going to be difficult.

We wanted to create something that stood out as being original, but as there have been so many animated version of our feathered friends it was always going to be a challenge.

The first thing that you should always look at when designing a character that is based on an existing creature is to research how it is in the real form.

By studying the mechanics and its mannerisms you will be able to get a better understanding of how it works and what are the most important things that define it.

Once all of this information is taken on board and preliminary sketches are made then it’s time to look at the script again and see if it can be improved by any of your discoveries.

Here are some exploratory designs Andrew Crotty did…

As I mentioned in the previous post about the process of designing The Man, these pigeon designs changed just as much. Nicky Phelan and I went through a good few pages just scribbling every different type of shape we could think of that still made it look like an actual pigeon.

Their colours and marking, especially around their necks, make them easily distinguishable as pigeons. The other major thing that you always associate with pigeons is their necks. This gives them their characteristic walk which looks increasingly amusing the more you watch them, especially when they start moving a little faster. But what would happen if we removed their necks from the designs? Would they still look like pigeons?

With the man being rectangular we wanted the other characters to follow this type of shape association. Circular shapes are soft and pleasing to the eye. They are generally regarded as a safe shape as they have no points to hurt yourself on.

Pixar’s UP was a very good example of the use of shape association in its design, and this was explained in a ‘making of’ presentation at Gnomon School of Visual Effect in Hollywood…

Keeping this in mind you may ask why would we choose this round shape for the pigeons since they are “the villains” of the piece?  Well there are a few very good reasons for this…

1. Aesthetically they are adorable and like true predators they use their cute demeanour as an advantage to lure in their prey so they will get the food they long for.
2. They have gotten so fat after eating so much they basically have no neck anymore.
3. I had never seen a pigeon design like this and thought it was wonderful!

So here is what the final design looks like…

…you can see what I mean by cute!

So with these final designs of our doughball pigeons I went back to the script and looked at how the characters’ movement is described.

After reading through it again I realised I could remove the use of flight from the pigeons and that this would make it even funnier. They are too big to fly so they simply waddle around like water balloons on toothpicks!

‘Bird Food’ was always meant to be an animator’s delight with the key being movement and emotion. With these funny possibilities for movement of the pigeons I really think it will be a joy to animate and we all can’t wait to start making them move!

As we start the New Year we have really turned up the pressure on the production and you will be seeing a lot more “making of…” posts, so please stay tuned and keep your comments coming because your support is greatly appreciated and inspiring.

PS – Oh and finally, don’t they also fit nicely into a logo…?

“The Happy Hugglemonsters” is a brand new CG animated series for pre-schoolers about five year old Henry Hugglemonster and his loving and rambunctious monster family.  Brown Bag Films developed the series from the book “I’m A Happy Hugglewug” created by award-winning Irish author and illustrator Niamh Sharkey, published by Walker Books.

It is the latest series to be developed and produced by Disney’s London based production hub, and will premiere on Disney Junior blocks from Autumn 2012, airing in over 150 countries worldwide. The 52 x 11 minute series will be produced in Brown Bag Films’ Dublin-based studio.

Cathal Gaffney, co-founder and CEO of Brown Bag Films said, “We are delighted to announce the production of this series, it is great to work with home grown talent like Niamh Sharkey and to bring an original idea like this to a global Disney Junior audience is hugely satisfying for all involved.”

Beth Gardiner, Vice President, Production & Development, Disney Junior EMEA added, “We are thrilled to welcome The Happy Hugglemonsters to the Disney Junior fold. Seen through our five year old hero Henry Hugglemonster’s eyes, the series delivers comedic and emotional storytelling with a monstery twist that pre-schoolers can really relate to; perfect for Disney Junior.”

Henry, the star of “The Happy Hugglemonsters”, is a young monster growing up in a bustling house with three siblings; older brother Cobby, slightly older sister Summer, and baby brother Ivor. ­ Henry knows a lot about the emotional ups and downs that preschoolers face in their daily lives, and in “The Happy Hugglemonsters” he is your guide to preschool life, monster-style.

Author Niamh Sharkey, whose illustrated picturebook ‘I’m A Happy Hugglewug’ was published in 2006, says, “I am thrilled to be working with Brown Bag Films to bring my characters to life; the creativity, enthusiasm and care they bring to the project is mind blowing. Making this show for Disney Channel is a dream come true, and to be able to create this show in Ireland together is the icing on the cake. I know my monster family is in safe hands!”

“The Happy Hugglemonsters” was developed with support from the Irish Film Board/Bórd Scannán na hEireann

To download the full press release from The Walt Disney Company, including press contact information, please click here.

Apologies for the lack of making-of posts recently but as you will read we have been very busy and lots of things have been checked off our extensive to-do list…

In the last post we saw how the Man’s design was being redesigned for the better by Nicky Phelan. Well now we can reveal the final version of the man!

Here he is in lovely 2D…

Oh but wait that’s not all!

You also have the privilege to be the first to see him in glorious 3D!

Massive thanks have to go to Eoin Kavanagh for the modelling, and Rahul Mishra for the fantastic rig.

As you can see we really stuck to the gorgeous 2D design while modelling, and as it moves onto texturing we will still be keeping this 2D feel. The textures will be flat like the 2D image and we will be doing some shading and compositing tricks to try and also keep the line quality.

Andrew Hamilton is currently doing the textures for the Man so I will be hopefully posting images of that soon. Design of the pigeons will also  follow very shortly with new posters.

In other news…

We have received all of the fantastic storyboards from Andy Kelly and I have finalised editing  them. The boards that Andy did are truly amazing and I will have to do a post about them in the future.

So now I need to send that finished animatic to the Irish Film Board for approval this week and hopefully we can crack on with animation before Christmas!

PROGRESS  IS  GOOD!!!

Sticky Pictures, Kyla May Productions and Brown Bag Films have today announced they will co-develop and co-produce the animated tween comedy series Dream Factory (52 x 12’).

Dream Factory is a comedy series that follows the adventures of apprentice-dream maker Tommy Winks in the Dream Factory, a magical dream-making studio in the clouds. As an apprentice to the mythical Sandman, Tommy is learning to master the art of dream making. It’s not just about extraordinary ingredients and getting the recipe right; every night Tommy has to put on a showstopper that puts his audience to sleep – and keeps the Bogeyman at bay.

Dream Factory is designed and created by prolific creative director, brand creator and designer Kyla May (Smirk, Flea-Bitten, Kyla May Missbehaves, SheZow). It will be produced by Australia’s Sticky Pictures (Me & My Monsters, Pearlie, Dennis & Gnasher) and award-winning Irish animation studio Brown Bag Films (The Octonauts, Olivia, Noddy in Toyland)

Donna Andrews, CEO & Executive Producer, Sticky Pictures said: “Sticky is thrilled to be working with Brown Bag Films on Dream Factory. The concept has a delicious mix of mischief-making, magic and mayhem. Combined with Brown Bag’s impressive track record in stunning design and production, Dream Factory will be a visual feast and wonderfully entertaining.”

Jennie Stacey, Development Executive, Brown Bag Films added: “We were instantly drawn to the fantastical comedy setting of Dream Factory and are very excited about working with Sticky Pictures to bring these great characters and magical stories to life onscreen.”

The Dream Factory has been developed with the assistance of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

Click here for more press information about Brown Bag Films, Sticky Pictures and Kyla May Productions.

Octonauts, let’s do this!

Dr Jim Mountjoy

Jim is currently involved in a non-executive capacity with a number of technology companies and is a Board member of the Abbey Theatre and of the children’s’ charity Barnardos, a Director of the Science Foundation of Ireland and was previously the chairman of computer games company Havok. He founded Euristix which became a market leader in advanced network management software and was sold to Fore Systems for US $80 million in February 1999, a value that increased to US$175 million in two months when Fore Systems was acquired by Marconi. Dr Mountjoy brings over 30 years of business and commercial experience in the Telecom software industry and acts as Non-executive Director in a number of companies in the technology sector

Established in 1994 Brown Bag Films® is an award-winning animation studio, producing high quality computer animation with offices in Dublin and Los Angeles. The twice Oscar® nominated studio have worked with the world’s biggest entertainment brands to produce high profile international television series. Recent productions include Chorion’s ‘Olivia’ for Nickelodeon US, Enid Blyton’s ‘Noddy in Toyland’ for Chorion/FIVE UK and ‘The Octonauts’ for CBeebies. Current productions include ‘Doc McStuffins’ for Disney Junior.

Just like a script is never complete on the first draft, the same goes for the character designs. To get to the final version you will always do designs and redesigns until you are happy with them.

The starting point of designing the character is always to read the script. This will give you all of the clues you need to start going about creating a character. The design needs to match the descriptions of the character in the script but also take note of the actions they are doing, as it will inform you how they will need to move etc.

The main character of “Bird Food” is described in the script as:

“A BUSINESS MAN with his sleeves rolled up and his briefcase in hand, walks along a path under trees whistling with the birds. He is a tall, skinny man in his early thirties with 50’s styled brown hair. His tie is slightly undone and he walks with a swagger, happy to be in the sun.”

These lines give us a lot of information about how the character looks and also it starts to give an idea on how the character will move.

Once the script was completed I gave it to several artists to explore possible designs.

I wanted this short to have a real 2D feel to it even though it will be made in 3D. One of the designers I looked at for reference of possible styles was Nate Wragg. I loved his graphic style but as our designs progressed they went away from this stylised look into something more “life-like”.

Here are examples of the design work from Derek Horan, Andrew Crotty and myself.

Derek Horan Designs

Andrew Crotty Designs

Andrew Crotty Designs

Andrew Crotty Pose Designs

Andrew Crotty Expressions Design

Richard Keane Design

At this point we were very happy with the design of the man and submitted this in our pitch to the  Irish Film Board.

An important thing to remember when designing characters for any project is that they need to work together. In this short we needed the man’s designs to fit in with the pigeons. This was thought about from the start but after reviewing the pigeon designs we just felt that we were going over old ground with the pigeons and we wanted to come up with a new style and design that people hadn’t seen before. This meant we had to go back to the start with the designs of the man.

I asked Nicky Phelan to have a look at the designs and he went through them again. We decided to go back to the graphic style that I wanted from the start and design the characters using simple geometric shapes. The man would be a rectangle and the Pigeons would be circles.

Here are some of the exploration work that Nicky did.

Nicky Phelan Design Explorations

Nicky Phelan Design Explorations

At this point we were definitely onto something and we went back and explored the pigeons again. Once we locked down the pigeon designs (I will do a post on this at a later date) we knew exactly what was required to do to finalise the design of the man…

…and this is where I leave you with an Adam West’s Batman style ending.

So stay tuned to find out how the final design of the Man turned out!

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