"Lily's Driftwood Bay" - The Making Of SixteenSouth's Brand-New Preschool Series For Nick Jr. UK

To celebrate and promote Nickelodeon UK's preschool channel, Nick Jr. UK and Ireland, starting to premiere and show the brand-new mixed media animated preschool series "Lily's Driftwood Bay" from Monday 5th May 2014, the official website of the television industry magazine Broadcast has unveiled a special 'Behind the Scenes' guest article by Colin Williams, the founder of the Belfast-based independent children's television production company Sixteen South Television, who are producing "Driftwood Bay" from Nick Jr. UK, and Julie Gardner, the Head of Production at SixteenSouth, who talk in-depth about the making of Nick Jr. UK's brand-new preschool series, from pitch to production, which you can read below.

Catch Nick Jr. UK's brand-new show, "Lily's Driftwood Bay", premieres daily at 5:45pm, 5:50pm and 6:05pm from Monday 5th May 2014, only on Nick Jr. UK and Ireland (repeated at 6:45pm, 6:50pm and 7:05pm on Nick Jr.+1)!:

Lily's Driftwood Bay, Nickelodeon

There was no room for compromise on a series crafted from objects found on the beach, says Colin Williams

When I first pitched the show that became Lily's Driftwood Bay, broadcasters asked what its touchpoint was. I struggled to find comparisons. It's a mixed-media show in which everything you see on screen – sets, props, characters, you name it – has been crafted from things found washed up on the beach.

But underneath the unique design, it's a show about what it means to live in a community of inter-generational relationships. Ultimately, it's telling stories about life.

Lily is a five-year-old who lives a simple, organic existence with her dad in a beach hut on the shore. He's a woodcarver who sells his creations at the market every Saturday to buy food.

Being a dad to a young daughter, I wanted to celebrate this special relationship, which is rarely seen on screen.

Across the way is Driftwood Bay, an amazing island community of friends of all ages. Every day when a new treasure is washed up by the sea, Lily and her best friend Gull go on an imaginary adventure to the island with it.

Every producer knows that with tariffs being squeezed, compromise is often the only way to get a show made.

But I believed this show was special and committed at the outset to stand my ground on story, design and music.

When I shopped an early trailer for the show three years ago, we received many co-production offers. One of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make was to turn down a handsome commission. It would've closed our finance gap and kicked off production, but I knew that the real cost would have been shared creative control with a foreign broadcaster.

We eventually funded the show by pre-selling it as an acquisition to 20 territories and bringing in The Jim Henson Company to handle further distribution. Northern Ireland Screen, a long-time supporter, came in with production funding, and although it took longer than I had hoped, we got the greenlight with no compromises.

I wanted to avoid the familiar stories of caring and sharing and instead tell stories about the world and life around Lily – her community, her environment and her relationships.

She's not a prim princess who is never in the wrong. She often messes up and causes confusion and upset to others around her, just like the rest of us. It's real life, and I wanted us to tell stories of real life – like jealously, selfishness, love, birth and death.

Five-year journey

The journey started five years ago when artist Joanne Carmichael got in touch with me. She was selling simple pictures in her local art gallery on the Isle of Arran, which she had made from bits of pottery and seaglass found washed up on the local beach. I immediately fell in love with the idea and began to think about creating a complex world made from things washed up by the sea.

At the outset, I set some design rules. We could adjust the colour and size of the objects, but not digitally manipulate them by twisting, bending or warping. When you look closely at each object, you can see the individual items that make it up.

The sound was created at the very start, alongside the organic look. The show had to sound like it looks and look like it sounds. I took influence from modern acoustic folk artists like Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling.

Every note is played by session players on guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, accordion, Hammond, harmonium, xylophone, marimba, pots and pans and more. It is 100% real.

I wanted the setting to be a real community of different accents and drew up a wishlist of actors who played comedy characters I adored: Ardal O'Hanlon, Stephen Fry, Annette Crosbie, Peter Mullan, Jane Horrocks, Tameka Empson and Richard Dormer.

I never expected to get any of them – but they all fell in love with the show and said yes.

Creating Lily's Driftwood Bay has been the loveliest, most fulfilling, amazing – and exhausting – creative journey I have ever been on. It is a beautiful work of art and testament to a brilliant creative team of 100, every one of whom raised the bar to the highest level in story, character, casting, direction, design and score.

LILY'S DRIFTWOOD BAY: BREAKING NEW GROUND

Julie Gardner Head of production

We knew from the start we were breaking new ground. Colin wanted to create a show that looked like stop-motion using stones and ceramic fragments, which inherently would refuse to behave in a straightforward stop-motion way.

A pebble or a piece of driftwood might give the shape necessary for a character from one angle, but looked at from another, it might jar.

We couldn't achieve the look with stop-motion, so we had to photograph the beach finds from a range of angles, see what positions they would look right in, and work with those limitations.

How do you set up and manage a workflow that hasn't been done before? We looked to world-leading talents to advise us on animation techniques, software and production scheduling.

With that grounding, we were able to set up our in-house animation studio in Belfast and build a work able pipeline, which we shaped and refined as production progressed.

Last March, I battled through a blizzard to bring all 50,000 pieces of Joanne Carmichael's beach fragments from Scotland to Belfast in a transit van. In the studio workshop, all of the pieces were painstakingly sorted and individually photographed. Each one of these 50,000 pictures then had to be clipped in Photoshop, creating a huge library of digital materials.

The artwork was then digitally composited and rigged for our 12 animators to produce a style that is true to the handmade feel of cel animation.

Twelve months later, we've seen 26 episodes through to delivery and will deliver 26 more in July. We've deviated considerably from the original blueprint but have shaped a show, and a way of working, that is unique.

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