My Spy Family

 

Kindle Entertainment asked Bottletop to pitch against three other companies to win the commission to design and produce the titles for My Spy Family, a new children’s series for Boomerang, transmitted on Cartoon Network. Bottletop was delighted to be successful against some fairly stiff competition.

The programme revolves around the adventures of the Bannon family who may seem, at first glance, to be a normal family but are, in fact, deeply involved in various forms of espionage. The Bannon parents are both ex-spies – one Russian, one British.

The brief called for the spying heritage of the family to be explained in a fun and exciting way and to include a logo suitable for use across all media, merchandising and the web. Bottletop’s answer to the brief was to feature each cast member in a continuous ‘story’ which illustrated their character and their individual relationships to each other in a very short period of time. The overall design was deliberately retro and light-hearted with a strong, punchy logo reminiscent of James Bond.

Using a combination of hand drawn backgrounds and a live action green screen shoot at ITV’s Leeds Studios Bottletop composited the sequence in After Effects.

End credits for the series were created in the same style for each episode and delivered digitally via ftp to the series editor in Leeds. My Spy Family has since completed a second series for Boomerang with graphics provided by Bottletop.