Annibendod: How We Brought Bochau to Life in Blender
Bochau is the name of the cheeky little animated hamster in Siwan Jobbins and Twt Productions’ live action Welsh series Annibendod. The series was produced in collaboration with Boom Cymru for S4C’s Cyw channel and is aimed towards two-to-five-year-old Welsh speakers and Key Stage 1 and 2 children who are learning the language. Bochau is the gregarious, fun loving pet of the mischievous main character Anni. The live action footage was shot across three locations in the Cardiff area. The Cloth Cat team were then assigned with the delightful task of bringing Bochau to life on-screen.
Each episode of Annibendod concludes with Bochau the hamster singing an enlivening Welsh song in his little hamster pad, which was created entirely in Blender. Written by composer Dyfan Jones, the songs introduce and reinforce new Welsh vocabulary, centered around the overarching themes of each episode. We had a lot of fun bringing Siwan’s ideas to life, making Bochau sing and dance with colourful props and costumes. If you’d like to see him sing and dance, be sure to head over to the Cyw YouTube Channel where a playlist has been compiled of all of the songs from Annibendod.
Siwan Jobbins, the creator of Annibendod explains more about how his original idea developed: “We set about creating an entertaining, slightly anarchic comedy series with a feisty young female lead. To allow us to push the visual comedy further, we dreamt up our playful, cheeky sidekick, Bochau. Having a CGI hamster allowed our stories to have a quirkier, more off-beat feel and as Bochau is also a highly talented musician, we were able to wrap up each show with a song, reflecting on an aspect of the story that would resonate with learners.
“We’ve worked with Cloth Cat on several productions and knew that they were the team to bring Bochau to life. They were instrumental in developing the hamster’s look and they were very supportive as we conceived comic hamster scenarios, always happy to push things as far as they could go visually. Cloth Cat has a lot of experience working on location and set-based mixed media shows such as Grandpa in my Pocket, as well as another Twt series, Llan-ar-goll-en, so we were confident in their ability to create an effective work pipeline and deliver their shots back to the edit seamlessly.
“Having a team member on set was also a tremendous help as it allowed us to tweak scenes on the hoof without compromising on what was possible animation-wise. It’s been a pleasure to work with Cloth Cat and hopefully, we’ll be back doing the same thing again with series 2!”
Designing Bochau
Tom Lucas is our Head of Animation Development and has been instrumental on a number of productions, fulfilling the role of Art Director on Luo Bao Bei and Director on Rainbow Stories, Helbling: Space, Helbling: Whatsit, and Dewin & Doti. Tom created the original design for Bochau the hamster, defining his cheeky personality and overall aesthetic by sketching him out in 2D.
Our Senior Artist Kim McCarthy was responsible for producing a 3D digital model of the hamster from Tom’s initial designs. She joined Cloth Cat to work on Shane the Chef and since then has worked with us on a wide variety of animation and games projects, including Helbling: Secret Spring, Byd Cyw and Planted. “As the 3D artist on Annibenodod I was responsible for the creation of all the 3D modelling and 3D visual effects seen in the show. From the character model of Bochau, to his basement pad, his instruments and the various props required for each episode, I mainly used Blender along with Zbrush and Substance Painter. There sure has been a lot of variety and fun along the way!
“Bochau the hamster was firstly designed in 2D with our resident 2D artist Tom. I then created a 3D sculpt in Zbrush to play with the look, focussing on the hamster’s proportions whilst also keeping in mind that the rig would need to deal with walking on two legs, four legs and the transition between both. I also had to bear in mind that the fur was going to be added later on and would take up some of the overall mass of the shape. The fur system used here and in the first series of episodes of Annibenodod is the particle system fur setup found in Blender.
“Over recent years, Blender’s geometry node system has come on leaps and bounds, introducing a fur and grooming system that overcame most of the hurdles encountered when using the previous particle system fur. Previous render times have been reduced by 80% and hair can now be manipulated in much more elaborate ways than ever before. It was definitely worth reviewing Bochau’s fur, just for the amount of time that could be saved when rendering.
“As we were reviewing the fur system, we thought it would be a good idea to review the 3D model to iron out any issues that users may have had when working with Bochau. We had found better ways to do things since creating the first version of Bochau; one of the main adjustments being the eye lid and how it sits around the eyeball. We made this shape more accurate and modelled it in a more neutral pose. Other improvements included the quality and texture of the fur, which really enhanced and refined his overall look.
“I also had the fun of creating the ‘basement’ of Bochau’s hamster cage. This is where we see Bochau perform his music and sing about the life lessons learnt in that episode. Where possible, we outsourced for instrument models and modified them to suit our character’s world, usually tweaking scale and re-texturing/shading. For the sake of efficiency, background instruments seen on the stage are low poly in comparison to the instruments you will see Bochau playing.” For more from Kim, be sure to check out My Journey of Character Creation as a CG Artist at Cloth Cat.
Rigging Bochau
Josh Doyle is the Lead Tech Artist at Cloth Cat. He worked as an animator on Olobob Top and as a CG rigger and layout artist on Shane the Chef. Josh has been expanding his knowledge of Blender whilst working on a vast array of TV pilots, games and other animated media here at Cloth Cat. He used Blender to create the rig for Bochau; the internal skeleton with joints and controls that allows the hamster to be posed and animated realistically. Josh continues, “I was responsible for rigging Bochau, adding the size guide during filming, layout and lip-sync animation.
“When rigging Bochau, I followed my standard character rigging process, which involved taking the character model from Kim, creating a skeleton in Blender, weight-painting the model to the skeleton, and then creating controls for animators to pose the character. Bochau had several new rigging developments from previous characters, such as deformable fur and enhanced deformation smoothing, allowing for better posing with his chunkier body type. I also created a pose library to speed up the animation process further down the pipeline.
“During filming, Jon and I were on-set to add a Bochau size guide for each shot in which he was present. This ensured that we had an accurate reference for the camera framing and distance. In layout, I would use this size guide footage to create the digital scenes in Blender, matching the camera framing and the basic positioning of Bochua in preparation for the animation process. When the main animation of the body was complete, I worked on the lip-sync animation, timing the mouth poses to the dialogue audio using the mouth poses that I had already made in the pose library.” For an in-depth look at Josh’s creative process, be sure to read his article, How We Use Blender’s Unique Rigging Features at Cloth Cat.
Animating Boachau
Sehyun is an animator who has worked with Cloth Cat on projects such as Luo Bao Bei, BBC Bitesize: Citizenship and Diversity Role Models. Whether Bochau was leaping into Anni’s hands or dancing the salsa in his pad, Seyhun was making the motion happen!
“One of the most exciting parts of my work was bringing CG characters to life so they could interact seamlessly with real actors. It was incredibly rewarding, almost like completing the performances of actors who had been acting against empty space. In a similar vein, the greatest challenge was animating the hamster in a way that felt natural within each scene. If its expressions or movements looked stiff or overly exaggerated, it could easily ruin the whole scene, so I had to pay close attention to every detail.
“Blender tools like the Animation Layer add-on and the Dynamic Parent add-on were a big help in working more quickly and efficiently. They’re the tools I use most often. Also, the tweening function with ‘shift + E’ is invaluable for making poses when you need breakdowns, overshoot or anticipation.”
Compositing Bochau
Our Managing Director Jon Rennie completed the final post-production step of compositing the separate characters, backgrounds, props and effects into the single, cohesive image that ends up on our screens. Jon finalised and rendered each shot, lighting and colour-grading all of the visual elements to ensure a perfectly unified and believable sequence.
“My background is in live action filmmaking and compositing, and my first jobs in the animation industry were on similar projects like Grandpa In My Pocket, so I felt right at home with Annibendod! Josh and I shared the on-set supervising duties and we made sure it was a simple process to record all the data needed to add Bochau in later. A simple cardboard size reference and the distance to the camera was all we needed – everything else would be judged by eye. When it came time to light each shot, we used the live action plate to tell us which direction the main light was coming from (if any on cloudy days!) and then After Effects was used to match the shading and colour.
“The music videos were a different challenge and were great fun from a filmmaking perspective. Siwan gave us the lyrics and some directions for each one, then it was up to us all to interpret those based on the fantastic music written by Dyfan. Each track was a different style so we found fun ways to dress up Bochau or create a mood. Sehyun and I blocked out the dance moves, doing as many repeat moves as we could get away with! We had limited time to get these done but we didn’t want to lose the charm and energy.
“Blender was used throughout the process to animate and render Bochau, and then After Effects was used to composite everything together. Even the music videos required some additional work here and there. Annibendod shows how well a tight team can work together: Siwan provided us with the key creative direction and gave us a relatively free reign to bring Bochau to life. The voice and the music really drove the performance, and animation gave the final spark that made him leap off the screen.”