ABOUT

James Kearsley // JUMPKICK STUDIOS

James was asked by Platform Post and Retort to help out on a new childrens science based edu-comedy for CBBC and tasked with creating a CGI sidekick to one of the show’s main characters, Archie. The brief was to come up with a floating robot orb, called ‘Olivia’. Olivia would need to easily transform into other ‘devices’, such as a viewing screen to present the shows educational content, a stereo system, a scary monster, a ghost and many more.

James worked closely with the team on-set at Teddington Studios to come up with a functional design that would be realistic, appealing to children, transformable and most importantly – could express a great deal of character, emotion and be visibly seen to ‘communicate’. View the development of Olivia’s character below – with explanations of the important design considerations, together with a selection of some of the 140+ shots we created for the show.

After the design for Olivia was established, James began working on concepts for a teleportation device and futuristic environment for the shows first episode. This shot was important to establish the fact that Archie was a time-traveller from the future, and he was taking a journey back in time with Olivia to the present. After coming up with a concept that all of the crew loved, James set about putting together the CG elements and live action footage. The actor Sy Thomas, who played Archie, was filmed against a green screen so he could be composited into the pod for the teleportation sequence. Following this, over 140 shots of Olivia had to be set up, animated, lit and rendered, before being composited onto the live action plates.