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.
