The main complicating factor of this series was that, due to its late commission, getting consistent filming time was very difficult and it had to be shot in a very fragmented fashion. Over the summer of 2006, episodes were made in groups of two or three, sometimes on weekdays but often on the weekend. I was there for the whole of the shoot to sit with the direction, Paul Jones, and make sure that Dinamo had everything it needed to reproduce the movement later and also to make sure that the actors had all the information they needed to visualise Danedd as a real character. In some ways, the time between shoots proved very helpful because we were able to receive the first edits pretty quickly and composite Danedd into the footage so that everyone could see what he looked like. The breakthrough came when I was able to attend the shoot for episode four armed with completed shots from episode one. Previously, the only reference we'd had for Danedd had been Paul and my direction and a small stuffed bear. Now, with the animation finished and Danedd visible in shot with the actors, everyone from cameramen to sound recordists could see our work filling the empty space in the frame. It was the same problem I'd dealt with on Something Real: even though I could visualise the virtual robot on one side of the frame, it was difficult to communicate that to the rest of the crew without drawings or standins. Once everyone saw the finished result, they were able to trust their reactions to otherwise empty space.

Morgans series 2 proved a very challenging post production and somewhat stupidly took on several roles, including managing the project, lighting all the CG, compositing every shot and rendering it all on the seven or eight machines in the studio that could handle the job. On Con Passionate I'd established the render farm and, without it, this project would never have been completed. Further complicating post production was the fact that the shoot was going on while we were working and so as soon as everyone saw the quality of the CG hamster (animated by Romano Marenghi), they wanted more and more so that by episode ten, there was no 2D animation at all and we had 30-odd shots of animation to complete. That said, every episode was different and the character settled in really well with the rest of the cast.

Danedd was animated in 3D Studio Max, textured and lit using Splutterfish Brazil (our first project with the renderer) and composited with After Effects. I took a great deal of trouble to use the global illumination features of Brazil to improve the quality of the lighting and make Danedd look like a realistic part of the set. This also extended to some props, such as a remote controlled car that Danedd eventually drove that was completely CG even when appearing in the back of a shot, and a hamster ball that had to match the real one handled on set. Camera matching and tracking was done using PFTrack and it was important that we maintained real world scale for all the props and characters. I rendered two passes, a beauty pass and a shadow pass so that I could adjust everything in After Effects afterwards. I also outputted z-depth and velocity passes so that I could add motion blur and focus effects.

The compositing was incredibly challenging and my own obsession with perfection lead me to do a lot of late hours and weekends to get all the work done. Since this was before our dedicated render farm, I was having to use the offices machines to render which often irritated my co-workers! Although much of the rendering was done overnight, deadlines meant that I had to get corrections done during the day. That said, I was glad that I could be involved with every shot and make sure that each one had a filmic look previously unseen on Welsh TV. I used it as an opportunity to experiment with more realistic lighting and motion blur so that Danedd really did look like he was on the set with the actors. All in all, I think we succeeded.

Once filming was done, I made a showreel that we're still using to show our character animation skills.

Since Morgans series two, I've been able to approach larger projects like Grandpa in my Pocket with greater confidence and change the workflow so that it worked in our favour. One of my primary frustrations with this series was the face that it was shot and edited on tape. A tape-based workflow means that it was edited with lower quality off-line footage in the Avid that we were unable to use for compositing. Therefore, we had to wait until the edit was finished before getting our shots. We then had a short space of time to get it all done (and transferred back onto tape) before the higher-quality online edit was scheduled. Such was the ambition of the show that we were always running against the clock to get everything done and fit into the already-established tape workflow. For Grandpa, I pushed for it to be made completely digitially, thus bypassing the glacial, linear tape-editing workflow and instead allow us to start working on the shots before the edit was complete.

When I look back on Morgans series 2 now, I can't believe we got it all done in such a short space of time. I also can't believe I survived it, as my contemporary blog entries attest.