Styles / 2D
Beakus' portfolio is a blend of 2D and 3D work. Our director's have been designing and animating 2D for years, which includes everything from hand-drawn to cut-out, sand and paint-on-glass, digital 2D, Flash and Painter, rotoscoped and even hand-inked on cel (a laboursome technique not advisable these days…). It's the backbone to our Beakus skeleton. Collected below is a selection of work created by our directors.
We do of occasion also work with other feelance illustrators and designers, and hope to exhibit their work here soon, so you can really get a taste of all that we can do…
Leo Bridle put together a typographic musing on the practicalities of being a Nudist, following the excellent advice on wikHow.com. Just remember – close all curtains!
Director: Leo Bridle
Text from WikiHow.com
All 5 episodes of Steve Smith's irreverent comedy 'Stuffed' are online at the BBC Comedy portal! To make your browsing easier we've collected them here – but be warned, they are downright rude and quite vulgar..!
Featuring the voice behind Aleksander the Meerkat, 'Stuffed' is an animated series following chipper young deviant Brat and his victim [...]
Drops morph into various aquatic lifeforms on their way through the watercycle in this elegaic hand-drawn animation by Matthias Hoegg. The film was awarded 1st Place for Screen-based Design at the Norwegian Association for Visual Communication, 'Grafill', in 2006.
These British Animation Award, and Annecy Crystal winning spots for Russian kids channel Bibigon, were directed by Steve Smith. Crafted by an eighteen-strong team of gifted 2D animators, with two weeks per clip, the process was fun and furious. Each clip illustrates a bizarre fact, making science and education fun for children. Commissioned by Red [...]
Leigh Hodgkinson's zany, energetic, and foul rendering of Kayvan Novak's 'Fonejacker' sketch 'Talented Mouse' is hilarious. Created using a myriad of photographs and some clever compositing it was the standout skit from Series 1, gaining Leigh an Annecy Crystal (and Kayvan a BAFTA!)
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Maria Manton for Slinky
Commission: Channel 4, Hat Trick
Catnip
Pest Control
Cheese
Oasis
'Brat & Bear' is a 3-part mini-series created by Steve Smith for Channel 4. It stars a vindictive, experimental spike-headed kid and his set-upon yet optimistic toy bear. The action takes place each night in the shed at the bottom of the garden, where Bear lives. Inanimate yet cursed with strong cognitive emotions, Bear is [...]
Joe and Mary live in a fish & chip shop on the south coast. When Mary falls unexpectedly pregnant on a stormy night, Joe thinks their may be something fishy going on with Him upstairs… This is Steve Smith's funny and intelligent 3-minute hand-drawn film commissioned for Channel 4 through it's AIR scheme. It was [...]
The title sequence for 'Bringing Up Baby', a documentary showing how rearing a child has changed over the decades.
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Maria Manton for Slinky
Commission: Talkback Thames, Channel 4
Beakus director Steve Smith took on the challenge to create the visuals for Issue 7 of 'specialten' magazine, including all the menus, the cover, and this introductory animation. Taking a graphic approach, each menu boiled with flickering light and scattered imagery from the collection of films on offer. Highly regarded by Marcus and Fabio at [...]
Title sequence to 'Twiggy's Frock Exchange', a series in which wardrobe makeovers take centre stage, fronted by the fashionista model. The cut and paste attitude of the show was complemented by the punch-out kit graphics.
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Maria Manton for Slinky
Commission: Silver River
An unusual project flew over from Melbourne – animate an interactive web-book illustrating the story of Save The Children. Beakus director Steve Smith and Trunk worked together to quickly animate the scenes, transitions and interactive elements needed, which were pre-designed in Australia. Take a look at the interactive movie HERE>.
Director: Steve Smith, Trunk
Producer: Richard Barnett [...]
A spot for MTV and Condomi, to promote the "Staying Alive" AIDS awareness charity. With illustration by Jasper Goodall and co-direction from Trunk the silhouettes are actually rotoscoped dancers, composited with graphic motifs and gradients.
Director: Steve Smith, Trunk
Producer: Steve Smith for Trunk
Commission: Point Blank Creative
Leigh Hodgkinson's humorous short for the Channel 4 AIR scheme features a little girl and her pet cow who, desperate to get her attention, jumps over the moon… well… almost. Harangued by an incensed bee (voiced by Little Britain's Matt Lucas) who has been taken for the ride, the cow starts eating all the stars [...]
This Depict! prize-winning film by Leigh Hodgkinson takes a look at butterfly speed dating… With only a short time to live, they'd better find a date – pronto!
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Leigh Hodgkinson for Skillset
Commission: Skillset, UWN
"Firefly" is a beautiful faery tale based on Rapunzel. Created digitally but with a graphic cut-out puppet technique, a story of winsome romance and determination unfolds, taking us from the city to the countryside and back again. Beakus director Steve Smith worked alongside Trunk to craft, animate and composite this highly acclaimed video.
Director: Steve Smith, [...]
Fantastic director Richard Fenwick's film 'Albert's Speech' needed bespoke sequences of animation to sit in with the live-action narrative about a guy unable to deliver a bestman's speech.. Beakus director Steve Smith provided the titles sequence and subsequent rabbit carnage, all taking place in Albert's summery escapist imagination.
Director: Steve Smith
Producer: Richard Barnett for Trunk
Commission: onedotzero [...]
Title sequence to introduce an evening of eclectic new animated films on BBC3.
Director: Leigh Hodgkinson
Producer: Maria Manton for Slinky
Commission: BBC3
Vessels are, or where, an Americana band featuring love-lorn lyrics and an earthy pop feel. This, their first video, was created by Beakus director Steve Smith and the team at Trunk. A combination of scribbles, diaries, sketches, graphics, photos, and even a spot of super 8 footage, the result is an affable always-changing visual smorgasbord [...]
Leigh Hodgkinson's tale about an attention-seeking peacock, Larry, to be published by Orchard later this year.
Limelight Larry is delighted when he finds an empty book – he can be the star of the story! Then a whole host of storybook characters arrive and Larry – much to his outrage – is pushed out of the [...]
This short clip features Sunny McCloud and her family who feature in Leigh Hodgkinson's picture book 'Smile!'.
What would you do if your smile completely disappeared? Look behind the sofa? Under your bed? It could be anywhere!
When Sunny McCloud loses her nice big made-to-measure smile, she spends ages looking for it. Will her smile ever turn [...]
Matthias Hoegg's graduation film from Kingston University is an elegant and atmospheric nocturnal encounter between garden wildlife and a biology book. It was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award and plugged in Aardman's Talent Showcase 2006.
Asked to help out a youth-orientated media event, Leo Bridle had to act fast to create this ident. Vibrant colours and scenes linked by roving lines found their way to screen in just 2 weeks.
Director: Leo Bridle
Commission: Youth Media
CBBC Newsround commissioned a small number of animation directors to create bespoke 3-minute sequences to illustrate the stories of several children living below the poverty line in the UK. Beakus directors Leigh Hodgkinson (through Slinky) and Steve Smith (through Trunk) both created work for the programme, which went on to win a BAFTA! Below is [...]
