Teletubbies Archive

Between 1996 and 1998 I was employed by Ragdoll Productions UK as a Storyboard Artist on a new children’s television series called ‘Teletubbies.’

I was fresh out of Film School and relocated to Stratford–upon-Avon from London, where I was deposited in a porter cabin and then later my own green caravan at the back of the set within the lovely Warwickshire countryside.

I worked directly with the show’s co-creator and writer Andrew Davenport to visualize the scripts and establish a new visual grammar aimed purely at pre-school children.  Each frame is carefully designed to engage the attention of the very young.  When I think back it does seem strange that I worked with the writer instead of the show’s various directors, but Andy was driving the show and had a very clear vision of how the show should look, with input from co-creator Anne Wood.

Hard at work using a light box made by the art department, which used to emit the heat of a small sun.

Due to the fast paced nature of continuous shooting and the fact that we rarely had a buffer of scripts prior to the start of production, pre-production effectively ran side-by-side with production.  As such my drawing style became very simplistic and cartoony in nature as I tried to convey the energy of the performance as well as keeping in mind the strict positioning of objects and characters within the frame.

 

Post it note king; singles frames showing the simple cartoony style.

I developed a process whereby I would draw on post-it notes and stick them to the Live TV show formatted scripts; this was so that corrections could be made quickly on site after a brief meeting with Andy.

Here are some examples of Andy’s directions for me.

A copy of the first five pages of the shooting script for 'Little Lamb.'

When my employment came to an end with Ragdoll I had worked on ninety, thirty minute scripts and enjoyed every minute of what was a very unique period in my life which I always look back on with great affection.

The wall of reference.

Me on set complete with dodgy 90s hair style and a poor attempt at a goatee beard. 

One Night in Turin

Based on the book 'All Played Out' by Pete Davies, James Erskine's film 'One Night in Turin' re-visits the Italia '90 World Cup.

This feature length docu-drama combined documentary footage with new scenes to tell the story of the England team during the tournament in 1990 during a time when the country's reputation for hooliganism was at an all time high. 

However Sir Bobby Robson and his team set about uniting the nation as they played their way to the World Cup semi-finals.

I used a huge amount of research material when working on this project, sifting through footage of the games and an archive of photographs from the tournament. With the World Cup once again proving to be the greatest show on earth, I thought this would be a good time to post this trip down memory lane.

MOVIE POSTER ART

My first post of 2018 and it’s already March!  Continuing with the second year of The Stanley Vasco Case files, I have decided to have a little fun with the set dressing by placing a few Easter eggs in the background.

The following pieces of art are my attempt at low budget 1950s B-Movie posters, which incorporate a few characters from the comics I used to draw with my friends as a teenager.

I have always enjoyed good movie poster art and have collected a number of books of the artists, such as Drew Struzan.

With the level of detail that goes into computer game environments, including posters, magazines and product designs I thought I would indulge myself too with art pieces that will probably have been missed by the reader!