2008 = New Sparkle Friends!!!

So after last years 10 episodes almost killed us, we thought we'd never be doing any more ever again, but after some careful thought and contract negotiation we decided we couldn't let the kids down came up with 10 new storylines!!
We still only get about a week on animation per each episode but we really tried to step it up this year and reckon these are, hopefully you'll agree, our best episodes to date. This first one was a bit tricky to begin with as we had to try and come up with an origin for the newest Sparkle Friend. At the end of last year 2 of the presenters, Richie and Tamati, left the show What Now, and thus we were down 2 Sparkle Friends. They then introduced a new presenter, Tumehe, and we had the task of fitting him into the Sparkle Friends "universe", which, thankfully, has been far easier than we thought as he's a really funny dude that really gets what we're trying to do.

Here's some of the design process...

And here's some process work from the episode...

Another cool thing about this years episodes is the show's new title sequence. It was a lot of fun to make and really makes it feel like a proper cartoon! We even managed to call in a favour from NZ Hip Hop superstar P-Money, to create a Sparkle Friends theme remix.

So here's the finished episode...