The art of Democracy

Six years into their companywide Shorts programme, tom Box explains how the process helps Blue Zoo to Become a world-renowned Studio

“When doing things like this we think, ‘What would make people enjoy working here more?’ The shorts very much set the direction of our future work, because a lot of the TV work we get comes from people seeing those shorts around the world. It really aligns with our ethos as a company. We think that if everyone is enjoying working in our studio, then they’ll be happier and make better work, which means we get more projects in – so it’s kind of a selffulfilling cycle.

“It’s been a game-changing way of getting our studio on the map because we’re known for making kids TV series animations and as we make a few series a year, you can be seen as a bit of a factory – just churning out endless bits of animation. This is a dangerous perception to have because it’s perceived as not being very creative, when in fact the artistry and direction in storytelling that goes into those series is incredibly creative. It definitely gives a bit of a disservice to everyone working on it. So the shorts help to rebalance that perception by doing stuff that’s very experimental like Lynx

& Birds, where it’s just lots of fun but it’s really pushing the limits in terms of what, quality-wise, we’ve done before. It helps everyone to feel like they have ownership of where our company’s going, which is very important to us.”