The Argus - News, Sport, Brighton and Hove Albion and Entertainment for Brighton, Hove and Sussex

Animator's TV creation gets the travel bug

From the archive, first published Tuesday 11th Jul 2006.

A small animation company has emerged as the creative force behind a quirky television advert for a travel company.

AnimNation, based at the Brighton Media Centre in Middle Street, Brighton, created the 30-second advert for holiday search engine Henoo.

The firm, whose clients include MTV and the UK Film Council, was told to come up with a "friendly but wise" character to front the brand.

The advert, which has been aired on Channel 4, shows an old woman pulling Henoo, an odd fish-like creature with paws, on a lead down the street.

An old man suggests possible uses for the creature until the old woman finally tells him it is Henoo's job to trawl the internet for holidays.

Anim-Nation director Sarah Bird, who moved from London to Brighton last year, said the techniques she used meant the advert took just 15 days to complete.

Although the cartoon is two dimensional, like The Simpsons or Futurama, Sarah used three-dimensional software that created animations such as Shrek or Toy Story.

She said: "It's so much quicker and there's no dip in quality. It means you don't have to hand-draw every scene, which would take forever. It's more cost-effective.

"I have worked on many animation projects for companies such as Nick-Toons in this way and you can achieve an amazing end product."

Sarah, 26, used to be the lead animator for Blue-Zoo animations in London. Her work has been shown at international film festivals and on various children's channels.

Often she is presented with complete characters and a script and just has to turn them into animation but Henoo gave her the freedom to devise her own storyboard.

She said: "It was a fantastic project to work on. I love creating quirky new characters from scratch and bringing them to life, it gives me much more creative freedom."

Sarah launched AnimNation two years ago in Soho, but moved to Brighton because she was fed up of London and wanted somewhere nicer to live.

She said: "There is a growing realisation in the industry that you don't have to work in London, and moving from Soho to Brighton has not caused any problems at all.

"There are so many freelance animators and web-designers in Brighton so there is no problem finding people for work. There's a good pool of talent."

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

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