Thomas, Bob Take CGI Route

LONDON, June 9: After
extensive focus-group research, HIT Entertainment has announced plans to
produce two of its signature brands, Thomas & Friends and Bob the Builder, in CGI.

Christopher Skala,
executive producer and senior VP of production and programming at HIT, tells World
Screen Newsflash that research on
the two preschool hits started about a year and a half ago. “I wanted to find
out how the shows were connecting with their audiences,” Skala says. “On both
properties it brought up some fascinating questions, finds and issues.”

With Thomas, which celebrates its 65th anniversary in 2010,
Skala notes that “it’s shot traditionally in live action and there is a very
limited range of emotions that you can communicate with fixed faces. We showed
a test where the faces moved and spoke and that was such a revelation for the
focus group. Even the parents who before we showed them the test said, no, you
can’t change anything, Thomas
is an institution, [changed their minds]. It was really about trying to engage
with the audience in a more direct and dynamic way.”

Preproduction has begun on
the CGI series in partnership with Nitrogen Studios, a Canadian-based
production company that worked on the latest season of the show, which
introduced CGI elements to the live-action format. The CGI Thomas is slated to launch in late 2009 on Five’s Milkshake! and on PBS KIDS in the U.S., among other
broadcasters.

Bob the Builder, airing in more than 240 territories, is moving to
CGI from stop-frame animation. HIT is working with the Los Angeles-based
production company SD Entertainment on the CGI season, which is in pre-production
for a late 2009 delivery to CBeebies in the U.K. and PBS KIDS in the U.S. (HOT
Animation, HIT Entertainment’s wholly owned animation studio in the U.K., will
continue to produce Bob the Builder: On Site, a new direct-to-DVD series of live action and
stop-frame animated specials.)

“For Bob, the issue really had to do with communicating the
emotional content with the stories we were telling,” Skala says. “In stop-frame
animation, you can’t really go in for close-up at the right moments, at that
point in the script when you want your audience to go, ‘oh no!’ In close up
with stop-frame, you’re going to start seeing the stitching. Secondly, we
couldn’t do lip-sync with the vehicles. Engaging with your audience directly in
a more dynamic way is quite hard in stop-frame. We found that [with CGI] the
grasp of the overall world and the characters was much stronger.”

The new series will be
accompanied by refreshed style guides for licensing partners. Peter Byrne, the
executive VP of consumer products worldwide at HIT, said: “We are really
excited about Bob and Thomas moving to CGI as it heralds a new generation of
consumer products for our licensing partners, in particular a new range of
Talking Thomas products. With new style guides in 2009, we look forward to
bringing new lines of consumer product to market throughout the year.”

—By Mansha Daswani