EVA THE OWLET

Apple TV+/Scholastic/Brown Bag Films.

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Eva the owlet is based on the book property 'Owl Diaries'. To Bring authors Rebecca Elliott's beautiful 2d illustrations to life in CGI had many challenges. The client and Director wanted a full 3d world that Eva and her friends could fly around without restrictions, on top of that the creators and director wanted the series to be set at night, high in the treetops. So how could we make a show that was bright, cheerful and engaging for our young audience and set it mostly at night? The answer was to use theatrical spotlighting, using warm colours to brighten the key area's and keep the backgrounds mostly in the cool blues and purples. As they flew to different locations the characters appeared warm against the cool backgrounds. All interior shots were treated with normal indoor lighting. I wanted the characters to feel tactile and avoid smooth surfaces so we added a handmade paper texture to the characters and used enlarged textures for the sets, for example a burlap material on the house roofs. We didn't want the tree canopies and bush leaf motifs to distort around the 3d shapes so working closely with the series Art Director Kirsten Shiel we used projected textures where possible to make them appear graphically flat. 

All images  Copyrighted by Apple TV+/Scholastic/Brown Bag Films.

Get Rolling with Otis

Apple TV+/Brown Bag Films

PRODUCTION DESIGNER & EPISODIC DIRECTOR 2021

Get Rolling with Otis is a preschool series based on the bestselling books by Lauren Long which was produced for Apple TV+ by brown Bag films.   In a crowded landscape of vehicle and tractor shows, the goal was to make Otis stand out with its own distinctive look and feel. Otis and the other vehicles were designed to resemble die-cast toy models, featuring reflective metal surfaces and lightly scratched paint—just enough wear to show that Otis is a hardworking farm tractor. The world Otis inhabits was designed to feel like a miniature model set, with a subtle stop-motion sensibility. To achieve this I sculpted & painted by hand all the hero textures—rocks, trees, dirt roads, riverbeds, and grass.  High-resolution photographs of these sculpts and were masterly applied by our texture under the keen eye of our series Art Director Phil Mc Darby,  giving the entire world a tactile, handcrafted quality.

All image are Copyrighted by  Apple TV+/Brown Bag Films

ADA TWIST

Netflix series/Higher ground/Brown Bag Films.

PRODUCTION DESIGNER & C0-DIRECTOR 2022

Ada Twist is an Emmy & Annie award winning series based on the book series 'Ada Twist Scientist' by Andrea Beaty & illustration from David Roberts. Even though it was a CGI series we wanted to keep the look of the wonderful painterly illustrations by Robert's. This can be a tricky thing in CGI animation to achieve. We digitally painted all the textures with custom brushes to make them more painterly ,showing the brushstrokes. The highlights were also painted onto the objects and the characters to keep that illustrated feel. We relied on simple CG lighting just to help create a three-dimensional form and to cast shadows onto the ground.

All images are Copyrighted by Netflix/Higher ground/Brown Bag Films.

Noddy in Toyland

Chorion UK /Brown Bag Films.

PRODUCTION DESIGNER & SERIES DIRECTOR 

There have been many adaptations of Enid Blyton's beloved books over the years—from stop-motion versions in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s to a flatter, glossy CGI series in the 2000s. Over time, the property felt as though it had lost its way. My goal was to return to the spirit of the original books by setting the series in a tactile toy world—one that felt handcrafted and made for play.

For the Art direction/production design of the series I designed to celebrate a world where toys of all kinds coexist. Noddy himself has a tactile fabric texture on his hat and clothes topped off with his iconic shiny bell on his hat, while the Skittle family were constructed from brightly coloured wood. We also leaned into a retro aesthetic: some vehicles and the train were inspired by vintage printed tin toys, and the mouse character features a visible wind-up mechanism on his back. Tessie Bear was designed with soft, plush teddy-bear fur, while Jumbo the Elephant was made of felt, complete with visible stitching along the edges of his ears. The doll's house was reimagined as a cardboard pop-up book, with the dolls inside modelled as flat cardboard figures. Noddy's house and the town-hall were constructed from brightly coloured wooden bricks, reinforcing the tactile, toy-like nature of the world.

All image are Copyrighted by Chorion UK /Brown Bag Films.

Olivia

Chorion UK /Brown Bag Films/ for Nickelodeon USA

ART DIRECTOR

Bringing Olivia to the television screen presented several challenges. In Ian Falconer's original books, Olivia often appeared against white or solid-color backgrounds. However, Nickelodeon, the commissioning network, wanted a colourful show rather than one that relied on black-and-white or limited palettes. Falconer was initially resistant to adding colour, but with some gentle coaxing we gradually introduced it—starting with Olivia's bedroom, where we added striped pink wallpaper, and then expanding colour into the street and the wider world she inhabited.

Throughout the process, our goal was to preserve the quality of Ian's illustrations, so we chose a painterly style with soft, painterly highlights, a look that was not commonly used in television animation at the time. To distinguish Olivia's real world from her fantasy sequences, we used more photorealistic sets—such as the ballroom and the television studio—which were more heavily rendered and lit using global illumination.

Falconer had a distinctive way of drawing Olivia's eyes, using a tiny line which proved challenging to animate from different camera angles. To address this, we developed a rig so when Olivia faced the camera her eyes appeared straight, and when she turned to the side, they shifted to a slanted angled position.

All image are Copyrighted by Chorion UK /Brown Bag Films.

The Island of Inis Cool

PRODUCTION DESIGNER, DIRECTOR,CREATOR & PRODUCER 

For the production design of Inis Cool, I wanted the entire series to have a nostalgic stop-motion feel. To achieve this, I built miniature sets for the main village building exteriors and interiors, and enlisted the help of other model makers for some of the exterior sets and landscapes. Leaning towards a more 2D pipeline, we photographed the miniatures and composited them with the CGI characters. All set lighting was done practically, using live-action lighting setups. Where needed, backgrounds were enhanced with digital photographs of skies, seawater, and other textures.

For the characters, each one was individually sculpted in clay and hand-painted to appear worn and weathered. They were then scanned in 3D using a photographic process to create fully textured CGI models. This approach gave the characters a tactile quality that matched the miniature sets. The models were rigged with CGI skeletons, and facial expressions were added using blend shapes. This process was particularly challenging in 2006, given the limitations of the technology at the time, but we were able to make it work.

All image are Copyrighted by David Mc Camley