CBBC/ Locomotion Little Howard highlights reel

CBBC Flash animated childrens series featuring Howard Read and his eponymous sidekick. Post Produced at Locomotion.

Locomotion rocks CBBC’s BAMZOOKi Street Rules

Locomotion has delivered another fantastic CBBC series for the BBC.

Bamzooki Street Rules (13 x 28 min) presented by Barney Harwood and Gemma Hunt features four teams of three contestants competing with their Zooks in tests of speed, strength and agility.  What’s a Zook you ask?  Zooks are virtual creatures created by the contestants using 3-D primitives designed by Gameware Development.  Fans can download the Zook kit from the CBBC website to create their own Zooks, competing to enter the leagues and gallery of most viewed and downloaded Zooks.

Locomotion worked closely with the CBBC team bring to life this new twist on this hugely popular children’s series which started in 2004 as an in-studio virtual Robot Wars.  Now into its fourth series, ‘Bamzooki Street Rules’ pumps up the scale of the Zooks and increases the stakes for the competitors by taking their virtual creatures to outdoor as well as indoor challenges.

During game-play, the contestants shout commands to their Zooks to control their creatures as they battle it out for glory.  The competition starts with an outdoor street race that shows off the augmented reality element of this clever kid’s series. Locomotion’s editors created picture-in-picture effects to help viewers keep track of the action and tie-in the identity of each zook with its team.  Once the Zooks cross the finish line, the teams enter the secret Bamzooki headquarters to compete in progressive levels of challenges like sumo bouts, capture the flag, obstacle courses, elimination rounds and a final roof top race.

Bamzooki Street Rules was filmed at Pinewood Studios in it’s mixed reality studio which enabled virtual reality game play to be recorded in camera.  The show also features dramatic intros, outdoor scenes, CGI fly-throughs, celebrity cameos and interviews with the house Zooks by Zook expert, Dr. Vigo.

Locomotion edited, graded and composited together the many, varied components to enhance the augmented reality experience for viewers.

Bamzooki Street Rules is on CBBC Wednesdays at 17:15 and Saturdays at 9:30 through February 2010 and BBC iPlayer

Credits:
Editors: Miland Suman, Graham Carr
Online and finishing: Alex Hare, Miland Suman, Lee Bamsey
Series Producer: Rupert Harris
Producer: Lucy Youngman
Director: Jason Garbett
Executive Producer for Locomotion: Danny Coster
Line Producer for Locomotion: Jen Reznick

Locomotion pioneers a new format for CBBC

Now you have a great reason to watch TV on Thursday afternoons!

Little Howard’s Big Question, a new BBC Childrens TV show premieres tonight, 8th January, at 4.30  on BBC1 and brings comedy live act Big Howard and Little Howard to the small screen with a unique blend of animation and live action.

The 13 x 28 minute programmes feature the cheeky 2D character of Little Howard as he interacts with people and places in his quest to find answers to his questions.

Little Howard’s Big Question examines the questions that children most want answered such as ‘could the dinosaurs ever return?’, ‘how will I know when I’ve fallen in love?’ and ‘can I believe my eyes?’. The show takes the form of a road movie in which Big Howard played by Howard Read is accompanied in the real world by his animated side kick, six-year old Little Howard. The production uses Flash to animate Howard’s 2D characters which are then composited into live action sequences filmed on location.

With responsibility for post production, animation and visual effects, Locomotion worked closely with comedian and animator Howard Read and the CBBC Production team to create the 2D  character of Little Howard in Flash and bring him to life.

Locomotion beat numerous  other post houses to the ambitious project and won on the strength of the team’s technical expertise, capabilites, workflow and enthusiasm for the project.

Post Production Producer and MD, Danny Coster, and Editors Anuree  De Silva  and Scott Flyger, worked with Read to develop the character and each programme features 20-25 minutes of animation. Under supervision Locomotion’s VFX Director Lars Magnus Holmgren, the team of animators and compositors developed the 2D animations in Flash, After Effects, Shake and Boujou.

Shot in DVCam, Locomotion ingested all footage using their 4 Gb SAN network at broadcast resolution, enabling the compositors and editors to work in tandem at online quality throughout the project.

Says Peter Davies, Executive Producer at the CBBC, ‘Producing Little Howard for CBBC has meant breaking new ground from inception to delivery. We’ve had to write the manual from scratch for how to make a live action factual comedy featuring a six year old animated boy. We couldn’t have done this without a facility house with unique skills’.

Credits
The series is written by Howard Read and Chris Chantler.
Peter Davies – Executive Producer BBC Children’s
Vanessa Frances – Series Producer
Dermot Canterbury and Bruce Webb – Directors

Locomotion – Post Production Partner
Dan Coster – Post Production & VFX Supervisor
Lars Holmgren – VFX Supervisor
Jen Reznick – Line Producer
Petria Whelan – Flash Animator
Scott Flyger and Anuree De Silva – Off-line Editors
Lee Bamsey, Miland Suman, Alex Hare and Martin Macdonald – Compositing, Grading and On-line Editing