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OK, so the England squad may not have had quite the World Cup presence the nation was hoping for, but there at least one team of plucky Brits maintaining presence in Brazil – the BBC football pundits. Perhaps wisely citing Gary Lineker and co as the long-term stars of the coverage, the Beeb and Red Bee Media tasked Bristol-based animation giants Aardman Animation to create a series of films following the adventures of a band of micro versions.

Combining live action and animation, the story tracks the group of plastic adventurers as they share in the excitement of the nation in the build up to the World Cup, encountering adventures, obstacles and various BBC Sport presenters and pundits along the way. Unlike many promo campaigns, the story is told in a series of five separate episodes; three 60 second launch films followed by two 20 second spots. What's more, the characters continue to appear on all platforms throughout the tournement, helping guide audiences around all the content available across the BBC.

We were delighted by the little-fellas' look, so spoke to Danny Capozzi, director of the campaign, about the influences behind his tiny-trailblazers.


How did you guys get involved in the project?

We were approached by RedBee media to work on a series of trails, which would launch the excitement of Brazil 2014 World Cup for BBC Sport.

What was the goal (pun intended) of the campaign? Who were the Beeb looking to target?

The Beeb were looking to target a much wider audience than usual. They wanted a campaign that all ages could engage with. The trails are charming and have a nostalgic feel with a narrative that viewers aged from 3 – 93 could follow. This is very different from the usual live action football montages that cater for the predominantly male market.



How did you come up with the concept of talking plastic players? Was it a Red Bee idea or did you guys help with the notion?

The credit goes to the team at Redbee Media on this one.

I designed the characters and we collectively decided on the scale of the characters and their personalities and their adventures that lead them to the world cup.

The character design has an adorable 'played-with' feel. What was involved in the design process? Did you get to play a lot of Subbuteo?

When designing the characters we spent a lot of time getting the scale of the details just right, the paint strokes, the scratches and scuffs.

However we did give ourselves some artistic licence with their faces as we discovered upon closer inspection of other miniature models how disfigured and badly painted the faces were. They were just too scary to be painted to that degree, especially as the characters had a lot of dialogue to deliver close up to camera. We had to tone down the wonky paint style and make it a bit cleaner and keep some of the recognisable facial features in place to get the performance out of each character.

Unfortunately there was very little time for play as we had a very short deadline to create the three 60 second trails plus all the additional deliverables.



How was the animation achieved? Was it all stop-motion or are their CG elements?

Believe it or not there is no stop motion at all in the campaign! It's all CGI animated characters composited into live action backgrounds.

How long did the shoot take? Did you encounter any issues?

The project took about 5 months from concept to the finished trails.

A crew of 8 of us went out to Rio to shoot the live action for 10 days and we had a team of 8 to execute the animation over the following four and a half months.

The scale of the characters in their environments and the depth of field was a huge challenge, often having to bend the rules and break away from reality and cheat the depth of field to just look right to the eye.

At times we wanted to have the characters sharp but not miss out on the iconic sites of Brazil beyond. In reality the backgrounds would be a blur so we gave ourselves some flexibility, and did a fair few focus pulls. We also kept the middle ground sharp in the close up shots of the characters and the foreground and backgrounds blurred. This gives you that tilt shift / tiny toy look which works so well for this project.



How were the characters integrated into the live-action plates? Was there anything you wanted to achieve but couldn't?

We had a stellar team getting our little heroes to look like models and sitting pretty into the live action footage. Hours of noodling and tweaking to get the movement and the lighting to be believable.

I think there were some great scenes that we had to cut for timing and narrative reasons but all in all I think we achieved 90% of what we set out to do.

Was the campaign always intended to be episodic? Can you see the characters going on other adventures?

Yes they were always episodic so the trails would unveil a simple little story/Journey that we could follow from UK to Brazil.

We had a scene where the characters get accidentally loaded onto the wrong plane and end up in Iceland so I can definitely see them ending up here there and everywhere. Especially if Sammy the headless player has anything to do with it!



What's up next for you?

Going to be having baby number two in about three weeks so I'll be 'Dadding' it up for a while, then I'm open to suggestions.

Would ideally like to get my series funded and off the ground but do love the challenge of commercials. I'm always trying to push the boundaries with style for commercials and look forward to the next project I'm offered.

Many thanks and enjoy the World Cup!