Richard Hogg and Mummu: Hello FutureLearners!

Charmingly sharp character animation in this spot for FutureLearn.com. I got a chuckle out of everyone featured, but really, Lynn steals the show.

More about the making-of from the site’s blog:

All of our conversations were recorded over the phone, so we don’t know what Anzela, Guljan, Tony and Lynn look like (and who knows, maybe they really do have blue and purple hair). But we worked closely with the audio material to build visual characters, using Aardman’s Creature Comforts work from 1990 as inspiration.

Richard Hogg (who designed the PlayStation game, Hohokum and lots of other great things) designed the characters and the rest of the film. Mummu were our animation partners.

Even though at times it’s hard to make out what each character is saying (I suggest turning on closed captioning), I love that Hogg and Mummu risked incorporating the audio’s imperfections. The glitches not only make the spot more authentic, they add a strange stylistic quirk that keeps me tuned in.