'Timba is gentle and Lula is funny'.

So rhymes the gentle lyrics of the new Bearbums soundtrack.
And indeed they would have to be; they're destined to appeal
to the most demanding of audiences: kids!

Timba and Lula inhabit a world imagined by their creator Natalie Munro,
who for five years has been filling their world with delightful watecolor works in books.

With plans for a toy, as well as a clothing range,
the move to an animated world to complete the picture, was a natural one...

Concepts were based, in large part, on Natalies sketches in the book. Jason Olivier and Mark Chittenden derived further concepts, these being a lot more 3D animation friendly.

At the same time Brad Stilwell was charged with translating the 2D sketches into a 3D environment without losing the style. feel and charm of the original work. He was given one month to R&D NPR (Non-photorealistic) techniques to find a solution.

Once the concepts had been approved by Natalie and Christine Lundy, the producer, the digital modelling and rigging began.
Zoy Rautenbach and Hayley Olivier modelled Timba and Lula respectively while Colus Havenga handled rigging and animation setup.
A large part of the teams effort was directed at the textures of the characters and the props. Under Mark's direction Jason Olivier together with Nic Smal, Rob Pita, Zoy Rautenbach, Hayley Smuts & Colus Havenga, all contributed to the considerable task of painting watercolor style textures for the characters and props.

Sunrise uses Autodesk Maya as their animation system of choice.
Being a small team we used Maya's referencing system to full effect. This allows us to work and manage client and art changes from the top down.
At one point, we experienced a delay in a couple of character approval issues but were able to absorb these into the animation schedule as we had all our shots inheriting assets from a master repository.

Under the guiding hand of director Brent Dawes animation came off relatively painlessly despite only having 5 animators. Again, Maya was integral in achieving this.

Dailies were posted out as quicktimes and assembled in editorial by Matthew Gair using Final Cut Pro. This 'story reel' was updated with any changes to shots, leading the client and director along a smooth path to the final version of the production.

Bearbums was rendered using Maya's software renderer with much of the watercolour colour style coming from a combination of hand painted textures combined with maya's toon shaders and outlines.
Shots were rendered out in layers and composited in After-Effects to add the final soft treatment.

Music was written and performed by Graham Murray.

The job took 3 months, from concept to final delivery, to complete and the client was very pleased with the result.

Here's to episode 2

Click to see the clip.