+3K Animation is delighted to have produced all character design and animation on SKY KIDS original series, My Friend Misty, which first aired in May 2023 – executive produced by Fearne Cotton and CTVC.
The show follows a group of friends and their magical buddy, Misty – who supports them with their emotional wellbeing. Misty’s calm, warm and sweet personality was such an important focus of the character as she helps the youngsters to understand their emotions and deal with those big feelings.
Creating Misty
At +3K we worked with a range of 2D animation techniques to bring all of the magic to life throughout the live action setting. We used CelAction2D to build Misty’s character rig with a 16 pose turnaround (for all of those magical spins and flips!) and made sure she had a solid range of facial expressions for our incredible team of animators to push her performance to be as believable and genuine as possible. And with the beautiful voiceover by Daisy Haggard – Misty was ready for the world to see!
Misty Character Turnaround
(With different coloured limbs!)
Misty Eye + Mouth Shapes
(There were many more!)
Making Misty Magic!
In each episode, Misty creates magical visuals to engage and delight the children with all kinds of lovely scenarios and characters.
The writers developed wonderful ideas of how to utilise calming techniques and methods, and turn them into visuals that children can really understand and learn from. With this in mind (and Misty’s fabulous paintbrush tail that can create anything out of thin air), we used hand drawn animation to create these beautiful creative moments, with a painterly feel – from fire breathing dragons to floating aquariums, and even roller skating dinosaurs!
VFX + the Magic Misty sparkle!
The all important compositing and VFX work brought it all together. Blending all of these techniques with an added sparkle and polish. Every rainbow explosion, bubble and worry cloud added to the finished effect, is what makes the show so special – whilst always taking the utmost care to make sure that Misty would interact with the kids seamlessly.
It was a real joy to bring the series to life with so many talented artists – all with the goal of delivering a charming character for young audiences that is engaging, fun and truly magical to watch.
Watch a highlight reel of some Misty magic below, and be sure to catch the show now on SkyKids. Plus, you can now watch the full episode of The Dentist on YouTube.
More My Friend Misty magic!
Check out season 2 of SkyKids Original series, My Friend Misty!