It's Timmy Time!

Today whilst looking for something acceptable to watch on TV (tryin my hardest to avoid GMTV) I stumbled across Timmy Time on CBBC (BBC2). I was about to flick staright for something even more senseless on perhaps a channel 4 variable when the animation caught my attention. The show is a spin off of Wallace and Gromit’s Shaun the Sheep. The animation style of Nick Park is continued in this children’s version, though a more colourful, and obviously more childlike style has been adapted for Timmy. This style of annimation is fun and accessible to every one, as the massive success of Wallace and Gromit shows. It is possible to adapt the style of clay modelling into many genres for advertising, design and animation, I would love to give this sort of thing a try and possibly incorporate it into future projects. It can also be a way to put across more serious messages in a different way, which perhaps would be more well recived.

What I also found really interesting about the animation is that none of the characters speak, well that is to say none of them actually say words. Instead they simply make the noises of the animals that they are. ( For example to owl simply says: “ Hoot Hoot HOOOOT Hoot!!”). This is perhaps for the benefit of the under 5 target audience which the show aims for. But I also find it raises an interesting question about language in design, as though no words are spoken the plot is easy to follow, and fairly witty when you put your own words to the sounds of the characters. This raises the question of how important language is in design, and with companies such as Innocent adopting a chatty tone of voice, how long before we give up on proper English altogether?