Brighton Zoo... 2023 Wrapped!
2023 - what a year! This year we produced our biggest TV series ever, one of our largest games and so many other brilliant projects from e-books, shorts to apps. With the year coming to a close, we thought we’d put together our very own Brighton Zoo wrapped, summing up our highlights from the studio.
Project highlights
This year we’ve been busy producing a variety of longform, shortform, interactive and live content for a range of fantastic clients. While a number of projects are still in top secret production stages, here are our highlights from the ones we’ve wrapped this year:
Children’s Media Conference
This year we produced 2 live sessions for Children’s Media Conference; Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, a dragons den style pitching session to find the next big children’s TV idea, and Stream if you want to go FASTer, a valuable discussion on how to maximise revenues on new AVOD and FAST platforms. We also produced a video for CMC’s YouTube channel sharing different industry perspectives on animation development. We had a brilliant time at the conference in Sheffield and it was great to meet so many new faces and catch up with old friends across the industry.
Earth Squad Go! Update
BBC Bitesize commissioned us to produce an update for Earth Squad Go, a game we made back in 2019 for KS2 students studying science. Our new update offered a complete restructure where players now work up the ranks from Rookie to Pro scientists studying four different earth habitats. We implemented a new shop feature where players can customise their squad character, purchasing special outfits and accessories using the stars they collect throughout the game. All together we implemented a whooping 71 bespoke clothing assets including a teddy bear suit and a pair of funky duck shoes!
Sky Kids Quiz
We were commissioned by Sky Kids to give our trivia quizzes a makeover, implementing updated graphics to incorporate the channel’s new branding, repurpose existing quizzes, and deliver a new question format which would be operational via remote control for the SkyQ box.
Supertato
It was a huge year for our long-form animation project, Supertato, and we wrapped up production of series 1 for CBeebies back in April. We couldn’t be more pleased with the response from both parents and kids alike and we are so proud of our talented team for making the show the hilariously action-packed, vibrant and FUN experience that it is. Since the series launched, we've been busy creating various additional interactive and short form content for the brand. In March, we put together an interactive Supertato story for the CBeebies Storytime app and used our in-house live animation pipeline Animoco to create a number of videos for YouTube including Banana’s Supermarket News and Sprouty Claus’ festive song A Merry Veggie Christmas, voiced by Greg James. The song has been a real hit, receiving promotion across the BBC on Radio 1, Live Lounge and Breakfast News.
Social highlights
This year we have seen a wonderful growing community emerge both within and outside of the studio thanks to the range of exciting social activities. From craft club, beach socials to Dungeons and Dragons, there is always something to look forward to each month. Here have been our social highlights:
Seasonal Social Events
We’ve put on a bunch of seasonal social events including our summer beach picnic event, a volleyball match at Yellowave and a rounders match at Preston Park. We also hosted a Halloween games night at the studio and ended the year with our Christmas party at Komedia, watching stand up comedy and tucking into a 3 course festive dinner. Big thank you to our Studio Manager Sally for organising these brilliant events.
D&D
The crew have also begun an exciting Dungeons and Dragons game after work; characters include a 1ft tall bird person, a buff barbarian elf and a fancy ball noble who had to pause his adventuring to to a fashion show in fantasy Milan. Our Generalist Mia has done a fantastic job of organising this and being the perfect D&D host.
Studio events
Soup and Sandwich Thursday’s have still been going strong and we’ve also incorporated monthly pub trips and themed lunchtime craft sessions.
New additions!
And lastly, we have to mention our two new furry additions to the studio - super cute pups Ruby and Dusty have lit up the office and also become joined at the hip!
Here's to an even better 2024! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the whole Brighton Zoo Team x
