Happy Christmas!

Hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year -
Get our Christmas Broadcast here!

Share a Story Special

Take a look behind the scenes at our animation work in 'Share a Story Special' on children's channel CITV on 23rd December at 3.45pm, or on ITV1 on the 29th December at 7.25am (unlikely, let's face it) or CITV at 3.45 on 4th January 2012.

CITV - Share A Story

Bottletop was delighted to be asked by children's channel CITV to animate one of this year's Share A Story winning films. The eight winning storyboards were chosen to be animated by different companies across the UK with each child recording the voice over for their own story. See Alice Brumwell's story of Greta The Greedy Witch here animated by Bottletop. The animations are being shown on CITV over the next couple of weeks.

Science Museum films go live

Following our tender win to work with the Science Museum we were delighted to see some of the films go live on the new digital signage system last week. The system allows visitors to gain an overview of what there is to see within the museum including the films shown in the IMAX cinema and in the two 4D experience theatres. We have edited existing IMAX and HD footage, adding animation and graphics. We are also shooting new footage within the museum to give visitors a taster of the different galleries, the shop and the cafes. All of the films are being produced in landscape and portrait format. Work continues until the end of November. Bottletop also got a (small but perfectly formed) mention in Design Week.

Show Off!

Bottletop will be at Antenna's Show Off event on Monday 19th September. Come and say hello, find out what we do and have a go at winning our splendid competition........

It's all in the mix

Mark took a day off recently to 'help' our pal Ben make a cake. It was no ordinary cake either as you can see here. Luckily we all got to eat the end result which was surprisingly tasty if a little worse for wear. Now we know about the amazing, though not entirely sensible, culinary talent we have on board at Bottletop we are expecting further scrumptiousness..... fairy cakes anyone?

Science Museum

Bottletop is delighted to have won a tender to work with the Science Museum in London. The project will involve filming, animation and video production and will be completed by the end of November. More news later...

Unicef web video

Bottletop has been commissioned by children's charity UNICEF to create an animated web video to feature on the home page of a new website for its research centre based in Florence, Italy. The Innocenti Research Centre is the hub of Unicef's global research archive. The new website will enable academics, researchers and the media to access the latest reports and findings on children's issues from around the world. Unicef required an animation to explain to web users the different types of information available on the site and how to find it.

Shane Warne TV adverts

We have recently been working hard creating a series of TV adverts for transmission in the UK, Australia and New Zealand on behalf of Olive Media for the Advanced Hair Studio. World famous cricketer Shane Warne was shot on green screen by Olive Media who then commissioned Bottletop to create 3D backgrounds, graphics and final compositing for 15 and 30 second versions of the adverts against a tight transmission deadline.

Greta the Greedy Witch

Bottletop is delighted to have been asked by CITV to create another 'Share A Story' animation for broadcast in the autumn. The CITV competition invites children to write a short story with the winners then recording their own voice over as the guide track for the animation. This year we will be animating the exciting tale of Greta the greedy witch.....watch this space.

Bacardi Conference

Bottletop has been commissioned by Top Banana  to create the opening animation for a conference being produced in Barcelona for the HR department of Bacardi. Using video elements and cut outs Bottletop produced the quirky, motivational video against a tight delivery and turnaround time.

It's no yolk!

There were a magnificent 208 eggs in total in our fabulous Easter competition!
We had a whole heap of entries with wildly varying guesses.
The winning entry was from Daisy H with a guess of 205!
Well done Daisy. Your eggs are on their way.........

Enter Our Eggstravagant Easter Egg Comp!

Guess eggsactly how many choccy eggs there are in the jar and if you guess correctly you win the lot! What a cracking competition! You have free range to enter any time between now and close of play Monday 2nd May...... go for it!

Gardening Leave at The Royal Hospital, Chelsea

More Quik Quizzes for CITV

Following the success of the Quik Quiz idents we produced for CITV over Christmas and New Year we have just delivered a further set to the children's channel based in Manchester. The silly quiz questions are really popular with the audience of 7-10 year olds and will be on air shortly.

The Cool Stuff Collective

Bottletop has just delivered 6 more Hasbro sponsorship animations for 'The Cool Stuff Collective' on CITV. Hasbro were delighted with previous work which was commissioned by CITV Creative leading them to ask for these further idents which feature Nerf Blasters and Supersoakers including the magnificently named Deploy CS6, Longstrike and Thunderstorm.

Gardening Leave

We are delighted to have been asked by the charity Gardening Leave
to create a short film which will enable the public to have a better understanding of the unique work they do. The film will be shown at fundraising events and also on Gardening Leave's website. The aim is to attract donations and also to alert ex-servicemen and women of the existence of the charity from which they may benefit.

Gardening Leave provides a non-clinical approach to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the form of horticultural therapy. Walled gardens provide a secure haven for traumatised ex-service personnel whose symptoms of stress may not surface for many years after returning to civilian life. The charity has established gardens near Glasgow and has just been given a walled area of The Royal Hospital, Chelsea (home of the Chelsea pensioners). On our recce day the new area in Chelsea looked lovely in the sunshine but will be totally transformed by the time we film the official opening on April 14th.

Hasbro sponsorship

Commissioned by CITV, Bottletop has designed and animated the latest sponsorship animation for one of the world's leading toy manufacturers, Hasbro. The ident features one of Hasbro's leading products, a new Nerf blaster called Barricade RV-10 and appears before the titles and during the commercial breaks for the television programme "The Cool Stuff Collective" which airs in January 2011.

Be afraid.

Quik Quiz for CITV

As everyone else was lurching back from their office Christmas parties we were still toiling away at Bottletop HQ. Having pitched several ideas to children's channel CITV we were commissioned to produce fifteen break bumpers for the new year with a delivery date just before Christmas. Each ident consists of a ten second animation into, and out of, the commercial break. Bottletop developed a series of quirky quiz questions with suitably silly answers to amuse and engage the target audience of 7-10 year olds. The idents are now showing on CITV.

Planes, trains and automobiles.....

We were incredibly busy before Christmas and had no time to update the blog with what we'd been up to. We had lots of TV work, some print design and web - so a bit of everything. The biggest project of the lot was the production of a DVD for a major transport infrastructure company (we're not allowed to say who). We travelled to Glasgow, Manchester, York, Derby, London and Brighton to complete filming and then we edited and did lovely graphicy bits back at base in Nottingham. The client cried at the first viewing which we decided to take as a good sign......