How do you make an animated TV series? - Blue Zoo reveal the secrets

Q Pootle 5 by Blue Zoo

Last week Bucks New University students went to the Blue GFX Expo at London's South Bank - a treasure trove of visual effects industry lectures and workshops. Among the excellent presentations was a talk by Adam Shaw of London's Blue Zoo, who created the animated TV series Q Pootle 5. In effect, his lecture was a fully-fledged workshop in how to put a TV series together from start to finish. So, if you have ever wondered - how do you get your own TV series off the ground? - here's how they pulled it off.

The series was based on books by writer and illustrator Nick Butterworth, who was looking for a production house to bring his hand-drawn characters to life. Nick came in just as Blue Zoo had begun looking for children’s book properties - so the timing was perfect for both partners.

To get started, and to show potential broadcasters that they were serious, Blue Zoo made a fully animated teaser, which they took to Cartoon Forum in 2009, to pitch their idea in front of European broadcasters and distributors. At this point of course they had to spend their own money, in order to get the project off the ground - development of this sort is always a risky enterprise.

Cartoon Forum - the place to pitch animated TV series

The teaser only involved two characters, which was cheaper than animating the full cast, but it "gave a flavour of the show". What they needed to do was "make the broadcasters confident" in the look and feel of the project. They managed to get Martin Freeman to do the voice of Pootle, though due to a conflict with another show he ended up not doing the series.

The key to the cast is that they are all strongly contrasting characters. The stories are about the everyday things they get up to; in effect they are kids pretending to be adults.

Small black eyes are a challenge for eye expressions

To find the look of the series, they had to turn Nick Butterworth’s illustrations into 3D characters, as the series was to be a 3D project. They began by doing 2D expression sheets based on Nick's designs. One of the challenges was that the characters are all designed with black dots for eyes. This can make it more of a challenge to get expressions out of them, so they did 3D expression sheets to make sure they could get a full range of emotion, and also added some whites to the eyes for side glances.

They also had to design the universe, and create a full digital map of the planet that the characters live on. Nicks’ world felt "as if it was made by British Leyland many years ago - as if everything was tired and used, and didn’t quite work. It is very retro - things put together by hand but not quite fitting". This vintage feel "makes the alien world feel familiar, warm and friendly. The colour palette also is muted and aged, and a bit washed out".

British Leyland Austin Cambridge. Photo: Wikipedia

The landscapes were inspired by California, and the American West. Blue Zoo built a full digital map of the set; all the parts of the set fit together in hexagons like a honeycomb. They built the whole set so they would always be able to be consistent about locations and the relative positions of all the elements.

To render it they used Mental Ray, using Final Gather. They had a number of difficulties, especially aliasing problems with the grasses.

The production is all made in the UK in London, there is no outsourcing to Asia. One advantage of this is great communication between the departments - nothing gets lost in translation. They had a very diverse cast, which they were able to record ensemble in the sound booth in Soho - which really helped to get a great performance from the voice talent.

Redboard - storyboards and 3D previs combined into one process

They used Redboard for 3D previsualisation. They created 3D models as low resolution digital assets, imported onto Redboard. Then, they sketched expressions over the top, to make the characters and expressions stronger. In effect, they combined the process of storyboard and layout by going straight to 3D layout - which saved them the work of a whole extra 3D layout process after storyboards. It also helped them to makes big changes early on with relative ease. The only disadvantage is that it tends to restrict the performance of the board artists somewhat, but by using the drawing tools on top of the 3D models they were able to make the characters look more dynamic.

In terms of the overall pipeline, they had three animation teams going at once. At the top of the pyramid was the director, below him three animation directors (one for each team) and three post production supervisors to oversee the technical process.

At the end of the talk I asked a few questions, such as how much work was each animator asked to produce every week? They had five animators on each show, working over 3 weeks to produce the whole episode. Each episode is ten minutes long, so that's two minutes per animator. That works out at around 40 seconds a week per animator, or 8 seconds a day. That is a ton of work. But, on the plus side, with smaller teams, you get more ownership by each individual artist. And, frankly, we're lucky these jobs are staying in the UK, and not going overseas.

(Editor's note: For more on Blue gfx, check out our post here. Also, to see more about Blue Zoo, click here.  To read about how you might pitch a TV series at Cartoon Forum, read this article, and for the equivalent event to pitch movie ideas at Cartoon Movie, see this post. )

Meet Blue Zoo - Britain's largest TV Animation Company

At the recent BlueGFX Expo at London's National Film Museum on the South Bank, Blue Zoo founders Tom Box and Adam Shaw gave an excellent presentation about their BAFTA-winning young company - now the biggest TV animation co. in the UK.

Tom and Adam were very enthusiastic presenters, clearly excited about their company and about the future of TV animation in Britain. They also offered some excellent insights into how animation graduates might go about getting a job with their fast-growing studio. Below is a rough transcript of their talk, plus some of the questions they answered at the end.

Blue Zoo are based in London's Soho. From small beginnings, they now employ 120 people, though as with most studios this goes up and down according to the flow of work. They have also won multiple awards – including a slew of BAFTAs.

They are a privately owned company, which offers their owners a huge degree of creative control over what they do. Unlike many of their bigger rivals, their business structure allows them to plough their profits not into shareholders pockets but into the animation, ensuring high levels of quality and a strong creative agenda.

Tom and Adam studied at the NCCA in Bournemouth. In 2000 they founded Blue Zoo, even before they had graduated. To finance their small start-up, they got a loan from a family friend to buy the kit they needed to get up and running. Their timing was fortunate; they were looking to develop new ideas just as the BBC was setting up CBeebies. 

Initially they specialised in low cost content, starting their first studio in a garage in Southend.When they began they had very basic equipment, and they had to hardware render all their shots (ie render them on their computer hard drives) since they could not afford a render farm (a so-called "farm" of computers, networked together to render out beautiful images, typically overnight).

Soon they moved to London and got themselves a single room in Regent St - their first studio, boasting four computers crammed into a tiny room. In 2003 they expanded, moved to bigger offices in Soho, and began to do more polished work. Soon they were making their own TV shows, doing 26 three minute episodes.

Stitch-Up Showdown. Deadly knitwear

One of the first was Stitch Up Showdown – starring knitted characters which kill each other in hideous ways. It was a success, but the broadcaster was a bit panicked when the material was first delivered. They had to cut some especially controversial parts, and they never did get US distribiution. But Blue Zoo soon moved on to new things - they pride themselves on doing work in different styles, not settling in to any particular house style.

In 2010 they got even bigger offices. They did Olive, Get Scribbling, and lots more adverts. In 2012 they won a BAFTA for the Best Independent Production Co. Today, the company has three main areas, which overlap and interconnect.

The first area is Creative services, which is mainly advertising. This is the most profitable part of the company. But, there is seldom time to fully develop the material, and advertising deadlines are relentless. The second part of the company is Long Form production, which offers more time to develop stories, but is less profitable. Adam Shaw is in charge of this division, which helps to develop the overall Blue Zoo production pipeline. The third main area of the company is Intellectual Property (IP) Development. This division generates new work, and develops new ideas and properties which the company owns directly. All three parts of the company inter-relate and inter-connect.

Blue Zoo do their editorial work in Avid, Final Cut and Premiere. It all depends on what the client wants, as the client will often want delivery of the raw editable files, so that they can make their own adjustments. To track their productions, and the progress of all the shots, Blue Zoo use Google Apps for production tracking. It’s free! And it works!

After the presentation, I asked them a few questions about recruitment. Specifically, What do they look for in animators?

The answer was, in a way, obvious. They want quality demo reels. And nowadays, they only look at online submissions. So don't mail in a portfolio - it will only get lost. Wannabe animators have to fill out an online form. And they say a personal statement helps – Blue Zoo want passionate people who really want to do the work, so a graduate who sounds really excited about animation - and about Blue Zoo - might just get noticed. However, they get literally thousands of applications each month, so the competition is tough.

So how do they weed out the reels they like? Well, it seems they don't look for long. They can usually tell “within the first 10-15 seconds” if they like a student's demo reel. That's not a long time to make a great impression.

My third question was - where do they hire from? Any particular schools?

The answer was - anywhere that produces great animators. They mentioned the NCCA, Teeside, Ravensbourne, and also overseas - they particularly like French students. Plus, they are closely working with Creative Skillset so they have something of a bias towards Skillset approved courses. But, in the end, they take the artists they like, regardless of where they come from. Also, they added, knowing someone at Blue Zoo helps. They like the "personal touch". If someone inside the company can vouch for you, it can be a huge help.

Finally I asked them how much an animator might be expected to produce on a TV series? The answer is, about 7 seconds a day, or 35 seconds a week. That's a lot of work. But then, they aren't outsourcing their shows to Asia, they are keeping the animation work here in the UK. We should be grateful for good quality jobs that aren't going overseas.

More power to their pencil (and pixels).

---Alex

(Editor's Note: For more on creating a successful demo reel, check out our post on what studios are looking for here, and also the Sony Pictures guide to demo reels here. You might also watch our ten minute video on what goes into a great student demo reel.)