An R&D challenge for the team
A look into one of the methods we use to push our creativity.
Jordan
Creative Director
Feb 13th 2026
© 2025 MightyGiant
© 2025 MightyGiant
© 2025 MightyGiant
Blog
Blog
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With it being in the depth of winter, and taking inspiration from the world around me, an idea for a short story was forming. With Christmas around the corner, snow season on its way, talk of the winter olympics coming. The idea, set from a group of children's overly imaginative creative minds where everything is bigger, faster, more vibrant and over exaggerated, they race down a mogul filled track, sliding around large banked turns, flying over small jumps, jostling for first place in a race against their sibling.
With it being in the depth of winter, and taking inspiration from the world around me, an idea for a short story was forming. With Christmas around the corner, snow season on its way, talk of the winter olympics coming. The idea, set from a group of children's overly imaginative creative minds where everything is bigger, faster, more vibrant and over exaggerated, they race down a mogul filled track, sliding around large banked turns, flying over small jumps, jostling for first place in a race against their sibling.
R&D
With a rough idea in place curiosity took over and it felt like a perfect opportunity to set the team an R&D challenge before taking on the full narrative. As the idea was grounded in childhood nostalgia, playfulness and sibling rivalry, it seemed a perfect pairing to look into creating a hand crafted, stop motion art style via a proof of concept. This an art style the team hadn’t done before and one I knew we could have a lot of fun with.
The inspiration for the art style was childhood shows from the late 80’s early 90’s like Fireman Sam. With their hand crafted models and the stop motion animation, we wanted to create a contemporary looking 3D animation that gave the tactile hand crafted feel similar to what was achieved back in the original Fireman Sam and Postman Pat days. Looking to add in those imperfections to the models, avoid movements being too smooth, to give a sense that it could have really been created via stop motion.
With a rough idea in place curiosity took over and it felt like a perfect opportunity to set the team an R&D challenge before taking on the full narrative. As the idea was grounded in childhood nostalgia, playfulness and sibling rivalry, it seemed a perfect pairing to look into creating a hand crafted, stop motion art style via a proof of concept. This an art style the team hadn’t done before and one I knew we could have a lot of fun with.
The inspiration for the art style was childhood shows from the late 80’s early 90’s like Fireman Sam. With their hand crafted models and the stop motion animation, we wanted to create a contemporary looking 3D animation that gave the tactile hand crafted feel similar to what was achieved back in the original Fireman Sam and Postman Pat days. Looking to add in those imperfections to the models, avoid movements being too smooth, to give a sense that it could have really been created via stop motion.
With a rough idea in place curiosity took over and it felt like a perfect opportunity to set the team an R&D challenge before taking on the full narrative. As the idea was grounded in childhood nostalgia, playfulness and sibling rivalry, it seemed a perfect pairing to look into creating a hand crafted, stop motion art style via a proof of concept. This an art style the team hadn’t done before and one I knew we could have a lot of fun with.
The inspiration for the art style was childhood shows from the late 80’s early 90’s like Fireman Sam. With their hand crafted models and the stop motion animation, we wanted to create a contemporary looking 3D animation that gave the tactile hand crafted feel similar to what was achieved back in the original Fireman Sam and Postman Pat days. Looking to add in those imperfections to the models, avoid movements being too smooth, to give a sense that it could have really been created via stop motion.
Look & Feel
The goal for this proof of concept was to develop a look and feel for the animation that got the essence of the story across visually, plus some time to figure out some of the technical challenges while the story was being developed.
Even if we decide not to take the story to its full outcome, the learning from this proof of concept we thought would be beneficial for the team on multiple levels, be it team building, artistically, skill development and more.
The character Poc was born and the team jumped straight into the challenge.
The goal for this proof of concept was to develop a look and feel for the animation that got the essence of the story across visually, plus some time to figure out some of the technical challenges while the story was being developed.
Even if we decide not to take the story to its full outcome, the learning from this proof of concept we thought would be beneficial for the team on multiple levels, be it team building, artistically, skill development and more.
The character Poc was born and the team jumped straight into the challenge.
Character Development
The characters in shows such as Postman Pat, Bertha and Fireman Sam featured clay heads, with vinyl stickers for the facial features.
This completely removes the need for a face rig, allowing us to animate the face in 2D, and slap it on the head as a texture.
As well as the simplified head, in order to get the feel of a stop motion puppet, we had to approach the rigging process in a different way. We wanted less mobility than you get in normal 3D animated characters. For instance, we’re used to going round the rig, bone-by-bone and really dialling in the weights that control how much the different parts of the character are affected by each bone. For this look, we didn’t want the boots to bend at all, which resulted in one of the easiest weight painting jobs anyone ever had. The boot is completely controlled by the lower leg.
The characters in shows such as Postman Pat, Bertha and Fireman Sam featured clay heads, with vinyl stickers for the facial features.
This completely removes the need for a face rig, allowing us to animate the face in 2D, and slap it on the head as a texture.
As well as the simplified head, in order to get the feel of a stop motion puppet, we had to approach the rigging process in a different way. We wanted less mobility than you get in normal 3D animated characters. For instance, we’re used to going round the rig, bone-by-bone and really dialling in the weights that control how much the different parts of the character are affected by each bone. For this look, we didn’t want the boots to bend at all, which resulted in one of the easiest weight painting jobs anyone ever had. The boot is completely controlled by the lower leg.
The animation had to have the slightly choppy feel of a stop-motion animation, without making the animation bad.
We animated the shots as we normally would, rendering every other frame. This gives us the 12fps look that most stop-motion is shot in. Once we were happy with the general flow, we went in and did another pass on the animation adding in some slight imperfections to the movement between poses. There’s quite a delicate balance between charmingly playful and absolutely god-awful. As in most things, less is more - but these tweaks, although subtle, really do change the “feel” of the character, and help sell the illusion that it’s a real little figure.
The animation had to have the slightly choppy feel of a stop-motion animation, without making the animation bad.
We animated the shots as we normally would, rendering every other frame. This gives us the 12fps look that most stop-motion is shot in. Once we were happy with the general flow, we went in and did another pass on the animation adding in some slight imperfections to the movement between poses. There’s quite a delicate balance between charmingly playful and absolutely god-awful. As in most things, less is more - but these tweaks, although subtle, really do change the “feel” of the character, and help sell the illusion that it’s a real little figure.
