This is one of four films produced to highlight the excellent work of the Law Centres. We made two of the films (the other one will feature on the blog and on our YouTube page eventually). The other two films were made by top illustrator Chris Haughton. You can see his film Maureen's Story at the Law Centres YouTube channel.
ITV is to launch a dedicated preschool strand hosted by animated ‘acorn-like’ creatures to differentiate it from the main CITV brand, which will now target older kids.
Mini CITV will target under fives from 9.25am to 3pm on term-time weekdays, while CITV shows aimed at five-to 10-year-olds will run at weekends or during school holidays.
ITV will introduce new logos for both strands plus interstitials for Mini CITV featuring the Minis characters, which live alongside live-action children playing and solving problems.
They were designed in-house and animated by The Brothers McLeod.
The move to separate the age groups follows research which suggested viewers found the CITV brand confusing.
ITV controller of digital channels Emma Tennant said: “Parents tended to think of it as an afterschool brand because that’s what it was when they were younger.”
I don’t want to go on about the BAFTA thing (yeah! BAFTA BAFTA BAFTA), but while at the 2009 film BAFTAs, when we were nominated for a BAFTA at the BAFTAs, we met fellow BAFTA nominees (and former BAFTA winners) Marc Craste and Sue Goffe from the amazing BAFTA winning studio aka.
This year wasn’t our year because the legendary Nick Park was out and about and claimed the gong for Wallace and Gromit. But it did mean we’d got to commiserate with Marc and Sue and a little while later they asked to work with them on a project.
The Law Centres Federation runs centres around the UK which are not-for-profit legal practices providing free legal advice and representation to disadvantaged people. They wanted four short animations to explain what they did in a short and engaging way. So we worked on two of them and the very talented illustrator Chris Haughton worked on the others (you can see one on his YouTube channel).
We made one of the films in a style similar to our short film Codswallop. But for the other, we thought we’d have a go at something new. We’d had an idea about animating some fabric models and so, once we'd picked our story - about a family man overcoming a drug addition and volunteering at a law centre to get his life back on track - Greg starting sketching.
We then brought in friend and designer Asia Werbel of Colourspace to turn the sketches and illustrations into fabric models. She also created a fabric background complete with patchwork houses and button trees.
The finished models and background look fantastic and personally I think it creates a magical looking animated film. You can buy some of Asia’s handmade plushes and other designs on Etsy or at Uneeka.
The rest of the crew included the very talented animator Tom Evans, Paul Johnston from Rhythm Studios and the voiceovers for all the films came from Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty.
So it’s a new year and a new decade. We’ve just finished our new short film The Moon Bird and here we are twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do. Er… or not.
Among the projects we have on the go is one we created from scratch ourselves. We’re producing a short series for BBC Comedy Extra called Sticks.
Sticks first came about a couple of years ago when Greg (the illustrator-animator half of The Brothers McLeod) drew some characters on the coffee stirrers our Dad supplies at Ripplecups.com.
We had the idea of trying to do some ad lib stuff using the sticks as puppets. We recorded a bunch of off-the-cuff sketches onto our naff video camera and tried to make each other laugh. A lot of it was incomprehensible, but some funny characters did emerge. Our favourites were a collection of bungling Cockney coppers and some ridiculous French private detectives.
So last year we put together a proposal for some scripted episodes, featuring the policemen, and sent them off to Martin Trickey and Simon Lupton at BBC Comedy. They were good enough to press the big red GO button and now we’re in production. We’ll be blogging about the production process so watch out for more.
There are already three existing Sticks animations that show the potential for this kind of animation. They feature a man whose house is set on fire, some ghostly cowboys and a tragic bear. You can watch them here:
Download the PRESS RELEASE and hi res images in this zipped folder.
Sticks is a slice-of-life detective comedy series for BBC Comedy about Detective Inspector Plank and his bungling crew that includes Constable Witch, Constable Sergeant and Sergeant Constable. It has a unique design; most of the characters are drawn on coffee stirrers, but the series also features a yeti on a spatula, a zombie on a pastry baster, and an evil pencil sharpener.
The voices are supplied by a team of five voice actors including Shakespearian actor Sam Troughton (Robin Hood) who is currently appearing as Romeo at the RSC, Rachel Ferjani (Torchwood), David Holt (A Town Called Panic) and the series creators Myles and Greg McLeod.
The series was commissioned by BBC Comedy’s Martin Trickey and Simon Lupton. The series of 2 x 4 minute, 6 x 1 minute animations will appear on the BBC Comedy website and YouTube channel.
We were commisioned to produce some wall panels for McKechnies Independent Coffee Shop home of my favourite cuppa. Here's a sample - you can view the rest on our flickr stream or in person in the coffee shop.
The first longer episode (four whole minutes) of our online BBC Comedy series Sticks has gone live and so now it's really time to start shouting about it!So here is some shouting.
WATCH STICKS! YEAH STICKS! WAHHOO! STICKS!
Here are links to the first four episodes... please watch them and pass them on via Twitter, Facebook or good old fashioned talking!
So James Cameron has pushed back the boundaries of animation technology with his 3D juggernaut about giant blue marmosets versus the forces of intergalactic tree surgeons. That’s almost exactly what we – The Brothers McLeod – are doing for animation too, except with coffee stirrers, conkers, felt tip pens and crayons.
Sticks is a slice-of-life detective comedy series about Detective Inspector Plank and his bungling crew that includes Constable Witch, Constable Sergeant and Sergeant Constable. And it’s all animated using various wooden bits of cutlery. Most of the characters are drawn on coffee stirrers, but we also have a yeti on a spatula, a zombie on a pastry baster, and an evil pencil sharpener. Oh yes. Beat that Mister Cameron.
The idea for Sticks first came about a couple of years ago when Greg (the illustrator-animator half of The Brothers McLeod) drew some characters on the coffee stirrers (as you do) and we had the idea of trying to do some ad-lib stuff using them as puppets. We recorded a bunch of off-the-cuff sketches onto our naff video camera and tried to make each other laugh. A lot of it was incomprehensible, but some funny characters did emerge. Our favourites were a collection of bungling Cockney coppers and some ridiculous French private detectives.
So we set to work getting to know our characters and writing some stories for them. They include DI Plank whose more paranoid than a coke addict in a hall of mirrors, Constable Sergeant who’s as green as oak; there’s Sergeant Constable – as cunning as he is lazy, and Constable Witch who has some unorthodox police methods.
Fast forward to now and we’ve delivered eight shiny episodes of Sticks which are filtering out on BBC Comedy online. The sticks have all been hand drawn, based on Greg’s designs, by illustrator and comic artist Lizz Lunney (whose own creations include the brilliant Depressed Cat and Dungaree Lion). These have been scanned into the computer and animated in Flash by animator Tom Evans (whose credits include BAFTA nominated animations for the Tate!)
The voices are supplied by a team of five voice artists including Shakespearian actor Sam Troughton (Robin Hood), Rachel Ferjani (Torchwood), David Holt (A Town Called Panic) and yours truly.
We were planning to do the whole thing in 3D with some helicopters, spaceships and sparkly jellyfish, but we decided that would be a bit over the top.
I don’t want to go on about the BAFTA thing (yeah! BAFTA BAFTA BAFTA), but while at the 2009 film BAFTAs, when we were nominated for a BAFTA at the BAFTAs, we met fellow BAFTA nominees (and former BAFTA winners) Marc Craste and Sue Goffe from the amazing BAFTA winning 
We had the idea of trying to do some ad lib stuff using the sticks as puppets. We recorded a bunch of off-the-cuff sketches onto our naff video camera and tried to make each other laugh. A lot of it was incomprehensible, but some funny characters did emerge. Our favourites were a collection of bungling Cockney coppers and some ridiculous French private detectives.
The first longer episode (four whole minutes) of our online 
