Behind the Scenes of Twirlywoos
We went behind the scenes at TwirlywoosHQ to give you a sneaky peek into stop-motion animation.
1. How complex‽
Some scenes involve very complex animation; the longest scene in this series took one of our animators almost four weeks to shoot!
2. Patience is a virtue.
Each animator aims to shoot approximately 10 seconds of footage per day, so it takes six days to shoot one minute’s worth of footage.
3. Do you have enough time for this?
When the Twirlywoos wave at the start of every episode, the puppets have to be repositioned more than 27 times. On screen, the movement only lasts two seconds.
4. Peekaboo! We see you!
Can you tell who it is?
5. There's snow business like show business.
The Twirlywoos covered in fake snow. What? You thought it was real?
6. Here's one we made earlier.
A finished model next to its unfinished counterpart.
7. If it's worth doing once...
Multiple animations are shot at the same time and each segment is then later digitally put together.
8. Take a seat.
After a whole day's work, this animator probably deserves the bench more!
9. Size matters!
How big is The Big Red Boat at the beginning of Twirlywoos? It’s MASSIVE!
10. I'm going for a quick woo...
Even the loos are woo-nderfully named!
11. The perils of chroma key...
You’ll notice that there are very few green props in Twirlywoos. This is because Twirlywoos is often shot against a green screen. When the green is removed in post production, the green props would disappear too!
If a green prop is necessary, a blue screen is used. But if Big Hoo is in the shot, his blue body would disappear!
12. How colourful!
Each Twirlywoo has its own colour swatch — every container is painstakingly marked to keep their colouring consistent throughout the series!
13. Keep an eye out for this!
Each animator has a box of spare eye and mouth shapes. These are replaced on the faces of each puppet whenever the animator wants to change the expression. Hundreds were used throughout the course of the series.
14. Don't lose your head!
We hope these Twirlywoos facts and figures blew your mind!
