BSA324, animal expressions research, 19 March, 2017

Timmy Time! (2011)

Jackie Cockle: creator, producer and director (also created Bob the Builder)

stop motion animation produced by Ardman Animations and is a spinoff of their Shaun the Sheep series.

How It's Made 2011

The Stories

Each Episode will follow a day in the life of Timmy and his friends in Nursery. The daily routine is usually disrupted when Timmy or one of the class is naughty, or over inquisitive, or sibling rivalry erupts. For the young animals it's all in the day to day experience of learning about life, friendship and trial and error.

Timmy is the central character and the stories revolve around him. Storylines are strong but simple enough to be told without dialogue using a unique combination of expressive character animation, gesture and reactions, comedy and slapstick, Baahs, quacks and oinks etc.

Timmy can be a bit of a handful only because he's eager and enthusiastic. In each Episode he will learn something about himself and his friends as well as the days' activities

This show has a good way of showing expression changes on an animal with a long face and a semi-hidden jaw.  The "lips" might pop our on top, to the side, or under where the upper jaw is supposed to be.  As a result, they never have to tip back the character's face so far that the eyes are obscured.They also change out eyelids to change expression, too.

 Timmy Time has a variety of animal characters but brings design consistency by giving all of them the white ping pong ball with black center eye style.

When Timmy imagines something, his fantasy world is in a white box.  This marks a sharp contrast from the bright colours of his real world and helps kids understand that this is what he's thinking, wishing, or dreaming.

Through following a thread through Timmy Time, I came across this show, Bing and Friends (2014).  It's 3D animation and made by Acamar Films and is based on the books by Ted Dewan.  Ardman is their global distribution partner and made broadcasting deals with networks worldwide on their behalf.  Ardman has a division that develops brand deals for themselves and properties they work with.  A short video of what they do can be found here.  

Here's a great idea:  A page invites you to meet Bing and His Friends and each pic has a link to a video showing a series of nice moments for that character.  Bing also has a cohesive eye strategy but gets around the difference in facial anatomy between the animals by keeping their eyes large and expressive and their noses and lips small, like human babies.