Last updated at 17:09, Tuesday, 23 December 2008

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EVER since Enid Blyton’s Noddy first trundled on to our screens, popular children’s books have always made classic TV.

Although they’ve come a long way since puppets and Plasticine, modern day animation is no less timeless than the old favourites.

A charming adaptation of the best-selling Oliver Jeffers book Lost and Found could be a Christmas classic contender.

The fact that an animator from Barrow played a key role in bringing it to our TV screens adds to its appeal.

Robert Chapman is a computer animation specialist working for Studio aka in Soho, London.

When Studio aka set about adapting Lost and Found into a half-hour film, there was an immediate question mark over one of the films key locations – namely the ocean in which over half of the film takes place.

The solution was found when the film’s director, Philip Hunt enlisted Robert’s help, who had previously animated some water effects for a commercial the studio had created.

After explaining all the necessary scenarios and what the water had to be capable of doing, Robert was given a period of time to develop a programme which would establish just how the water could be achieved in the film.

Lost and Found is a magical tale of friendship and loneliness, which tells the story of a little boy who one day finds a penguin on his doorstep.

Although at first he is unsure what to do, the boy becomes determined to help the penguin find his way back home, a task that proves less easy than anticipated as the boy decides to take the penguin home himself, by rowing all the way to the South Pole.

And it was this story element that set in motion one of the hardest challenges of Studio aka, and Robert’s career to date.

It was a painstaking task that involved him working 14 hours a day, seven days a week during the last month of the production.

The result is simply breathtaking.

And when he watches the first screening on Channel 4 tomorrow with his mum, June Morris, in her Sidney Street home in Barrow, it will have all been worth it.

“When you see your work you get really proud,” said Robert, 37.

“A lot of times I get butterflies. All I ever see is things that are wrong with it. I see errors and mistakes that I didn’t have time to put right.

“I get nervous about what other people will think but nobody sees the mistakes.”

For the scenes in the script the sea would have to be presented in a number of ways, from a calm sunny day through to a storm of ferocious proportions.

The attention to detail would be very unforgiving and the little boy and penguin would have to be at the centre of it all.

As usual it started with a lot of research.

Not only did Robert have to animate the sea using a studio computer set-up, he also had to work out the tiny details like splashes and wakes of the boat and oars.

He looked at many different approaches and techniques and started experimenting with pre-existing work done by Hollywood specialists.

“Surf’s Up the movie really guided me,” he explained.

“There’s this big conference for all computer graphics professionals. Often there are reports released on ‘how we did this’.

“The guys from Sony released one for Surf’s Up. That was like my bible. Once I had done the research and spent months at a time involved in it I knew exactly how to do it.”

At the start of the project Studio aka’s software with regards to water animation, was limited and too basic considering the complexity required.

So one of the first hurdles was getting the best software that had been written for a different platform to work on Studio aka’s set-up, and also making sure that technical factors such as the ability to adjust wave size and wind speed – which would all affect the choppiness of the waves and the final look – could be controlled and adjusted.

“It took about three months to get the look of the water right,” explained Robert, who was working to a tight, 11-month shooting schedule.

“The children’s book is very stylised and I wanted to do a very realistic thing.

“I had to get the water moving right and looking right.

“The sea is such a complicated thing to do, especially the storm, getting it to render.

“That’s basically you telling the computer what to do and the computer goes ‘right sir’ and tries to work it out.

“But computers are pretty stupid. It will have to go through something a million times to get it right.

“Towards the end we were working 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

“That was for the last month or so and that was everybody.

“At the start there were only two or three people on the job because everybody was doing commercials. In the end I had six to seven people doing my job.”

It’s doubtful, according to the film’s director and producer, that the film could have been finished on time if Robert had not been working day and night to ensure everything would work.

Robert managed to get the mechanics in motion in August of the same year – just four months before delivery.

Then the ocean surface was ready for the animators to apply the characters and boat into it before the effects such as splash, wake and drip effects were added.

Producer Sue Goffe says: “Rob’s role finally slips into the background when watching the film, as his work is designed to enhance the story being told and be convincing rather than noticed, but it’s apparent when watching the film that the sea becomes something of a charter in itself along the way – and that alone is reason enough to applaud his efforts.”

The Premiere to Lost and Found was held in The Renoir theatre in Bloomsbury’s Brunswick centre.

So with narration by Jim Broadbent did he brush shoulders with celebrities at the premiere?

“Everybody up north thinks it’s a red carpet event but it’s not,” he laughs.

“There are no celebrities, no freebies. You get a bit of wine.

“But everybody who’s seen it said it’s fantastic. It’s good for everybody because everyone’s worked really hard on it.”

Studio aka has produced the film with a core of about 20 people.

“Often with big companies you’re a very small cog and I don’t really enjoy that,” he said.

“With this I did pretty much the whole ocean. It’s normally teams of hundreds.”

The director Philip Hunt added: “In an age where computer animation is seen as easy as throwing a clever 100 technicians at a problem, it’s heartening to know that a single technical artist can still toil away against the odds to achieve something that quiet literally takes the breath away.”

• Lost and Found is on Channel 4 tomorrow (xmas eve) at 2.30pm and again on Boxing Day at 12.30pm.

www.studioaka.co.uk/go/lostandfound

First published at 11:49, Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk