MSHED

The brief

In July 2021, we were commissioned by Gail Boyle, Senior Curator (Archaeology and World Cultures) at Bristol Culture & Creative Industries from MShed, to produce a series of interactive character animations to be projected onto the windows of a 1950s Lodekka bus which is on display in the Museum.

The turnaround on the project was pretty tight, from the briefing to delivery of the final animation we had around 12 weeks.

There were ten animated characters needed in total, three of them in the bottom windows of the bus’s left side could be waved at by visitors and would respond to this action by telling a story about an object in the museum collection.   

The three passengers in the top windows of the bus also responded to the waving by interacting with the museum visitors by smiling and looking down at them.

The bus was also to have an animated driver at the wheel and a Conductor character was to be screened on a TV next to the bus to signpost people to the interactive display and encourage them to wave at the passengers on board.

The process

Working closely with Gail and Simon Fenn (Design Consultant for museums, heritage centres and art galleries) we came up with a diverse range of characters, broadly representative of the Bristol community.

The animation was to be projected onto contravision screens situated within each of the bus’s windows, which allowed Museum visitors to see the characters in -situ in their seats and through into the interior of the bus.

Each of the interactive windows has an animated ‘waving hand’ icon that fills up based on how close it is to being activated by the visitors’ waving.

We devised a range of animations per character to accompany their specific piece of dialogue and also to act as ‘idle’ actions to run when the main animation wasn’t triggered.

Scripted dialogue was recorded for each of the main characters, including a chatty Bristol accented Bus driver, a teenager chatting to his mate on his phone en-route to MShed and a little boy stomping his dinosaur toy along the bus window edge!

We sent over the first animations to technical advisor- Jack Evans, to be tested using the newly installed Touchdesigner interactive system. There was a little bit of to and fro with the timings of the animations to get everything to work and to loop seamlessly, but with relatively few changes at our end and thanks to the hugely cooperative team over at MShed, the animations were successfully launched in October 2021.

Here's a link to the animation in action:

The team

Claire Grey acted as Producer, Director and Lead animator.

Design and animation were by Devon Short

Additional animation was by Jamie Walsh

Client relations

We were in constant contact with the team at MShed, who were hugely helpful.

From the initial receipt of the characterful scripts to the delivery of the final files, it was just a great job to work on with excellent communication and speedy client feedback throughout the schedule.

The end result.

‘Our Bristol Lodekka bus is a magnet for families at M Shed but the limited interaction allowed with it as a result of Covid restrictions proved disappointing for visitors. Animating the bus allowed us to provide a safe but playful intergenerational engagement opportunity, which is so important to the family audience, and to rebuild a level of interpretation appropriate for younger ages. The imaginary animated passengers react to visitor movement and provide snippets of conversation scripted to encourage visitors to locate objects and stories within the gallery. Projections of passengers on the upper floor windows also move and react to each other in a natural or humorous way. The animations are both fun, colourful and diverse and literally bring a huge inanimate object to life. In a nutshell they help us to illuminate more of Bristol’s many stories than those carried by the bus itself, and although Covid restrictions have now been relaxed they are an integral ingredient within the gallery that enable us to stimulate memories and discussions so as to create positive and memorable visits for all ages.’

Gail Boyle - Senior Curator (Archaeology and World Cultures) at Bristol Culture & Creative Industries