The Briefing Room

Stop Motion Pro is working closely with the team of Academy Award® winning animators at Aardman Animations Ltd in creating a new animated TV series.

Timmy marks Aardman’s foray into television for preschoolers and combines the production company’s award-winning stop-motion animation style with the colorful simplicity of animation for kids age 2-5. The short-form series stars a charming little sheep, 3-year-old Timmy, a character based on sketches by Academy Award-winner Nick Park (”Wallace & Gromit in a Close Shave”) and introduced on the award-winning series “Shaun the Sheep” airing on Disney Channels around the world.

Production of Timmy is being undertaken using the Stop Motion Pro software interface and Blackmagic Design Decklink HD Extreme capture cards.

“Filming stop motion animation with HD video cameras means the animators can see what they are filming in very high quality, this speeds up the animation process enormously. With the integration of Stop Motion Pro and Blackmagic technology, we are able to roll out a common standard of animation production across the company. Our animators can move between productions, using either digital SLR cameras or HD video cameras.” said Ian Fleming, Head Of Production Technology at Aardman.

“Working closely with the team at Aardman has given us great insights into the requirements of world leading animators,” says Paul Howell from Stop Motion Pro. “We are proud to be working on such an exciting production, creating world leading technology that will benefit the stop motion animation industry. Integrating Blackmagic Design technology means we can provide an uncompressed, HD video capture solution that fits the fast work-flow requirements in current and future stop motion animation productions.”

Timmy is scheduled for transmission in 2009. The 52 x 10-minute animated series has already been pre-bought by Disney Channels Worldwide, including the US and has also been pre-bought by CBeebies in the UK.

About Stop Motion Pro

Stop Motion Pro (www.stopmotionpro.com) was founded in 1999 by Ross Garner and Paul Howell, producing world leading software for stop motion animation production. Stop Motion Pro has become a standard tool for teaching animation techniques in schools and universities around the world. Animation studios have also embraced Stop Motion Pro, with feature films, television series and commercials in production around the world in 2008.

About Blackmagic Design Inc.

Blackmagic Design Inc. manufactures the world’s highest quality video editing products, converters and routers for the post-production and television broadcast industries. The Multibridge, DeckLink and Intensity family of products have revolutionized the post production industry and made HDTV and film editing more affordable. Founded by the world’s leading editors and engineers from the post production industry, this knowledge is constantly fed back into our products. Blackmagic Design has operations in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia.

If you’d like more information about Stop Motion Pro, or to schedule an interview with Paul Howell or Ross Garner, please call +61 03 8080 1695 or e-mail Paul at phowell@stopmotionpro.com . For more information about Blackmagic Design, please visit www.blackmagic-design.com or contact info@blackmagic-design.com.