The Hive animate BBC comedians for Christmas

Soho effects and animation studio The Hive have animated a host of the BBC’s most popular comedy characters and television personalities to promote BBC comedy programming this Christmas.
Commissioned by BBC Broadcast, The Hive harnessed their 3D animation talents to create a 60-second promotional featuring exaggerated CG caricatures of Jonathan Ross, Del Boy and Rodney, Ummi Kumar from 'The Kumars At No 42', Nick from 'My Family', Ralph Little’s character Johnny from 'Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps', plus Alastair McGowan and Ronni Ancona impersonating ‘Posh and Becks’.
The characters are at a lively, all-star festive lunch, where they swap wisecracks and catchphrases, and behave badly with the Brussels sprouts, before introducing clips from different comedy specials screening on the BBC this Christmas. At the end of the trailer Jonathan Ross’ voiceover declares: “We’ve got the whole family over this year. Christmas comedy on the BBC.”
The Hive pitched for and won the project on the strength of creative designs by Nathan Laud, its director of animation, and an animation team comprising Jonny Grew, Chris Lumsdale, Jamie Franks and Julie Goacher. The project employs a comical ‘cardboard-cut-out’ style, where facial features are exaggerated and then skewed in the manner of a Picasso portrait.
Honing the style involved several stages of design and animation. Freelance caricature artist Rob Machin was commissioned by The Hive to develop a set of detailed sketches of each character. These were imported into Photoshop, where expressions and features were exaggerated and manipulated to fit the desired style. The resulting images were then used as references from which the animators sculpted and animated the final models using Lightwave.
To perfect the timing and lip synch of each performance, The Hive created an animatic of the trailer working from a script provided by BBC Broadcast. Each artist used the animatic as visual guide when recording their voiceovers.
Due to the differing availability of each contributing performer, voiceovers were supplied throughout the course of the project, which was completed during eight weeks.
“We couldn’t ask for a better or bigger advert for The Hive,” said managing director David Southwood. “The successful conclusion of the project all about people, skilled artists and animators, combining as a team.”
(GB)