Richard Shaw's Media

C&T Theatre Company (www.candt.org) required a short animation as the framing context for an early years drama project, exploring characters from a McDonalds style kid's meal box.

The children would receive a real box and set of characters with which to create their own adventures, so the animated versions had to match their real world counterparts.

The cardboard characters were particularly challenging. They had already been designed based on real world printing limitations, but I was allowed to make a few minor modifications to make animation easier.

I took inspiration from the fantastic "Paper Doll" Sure adverts:

http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA6273

and rigged the characters to have as limited movement as real card or paper (though did use a little artistic licence).

My niece, Melissa Shaw, is the little girl and also voiced the female cardboard character. The two boys on the see-saw are my nephews, Harry and Louis. My nephew Brandon Shaw is the skateboarder and also voiced the male character.

Apart from the initial character designs, I created all of the visuals, from photography and image editing, to modeling, animation, lip sync and editing. I also sourced and added the sound effects and music.

Sound effects: http://www.freesound.org/

Music: "Sing Along with Jim" by Kevin MacLeod - http://incompetech.com/