2022 - Year in Review

BBC Teach - Primary School Songs

2022 has been a very productive year for Kino Bino studio. We have expanded the team, employing two animation graduates Mhari Sibeth & Kathryn Flynn. These superstars have been integral to all our productions this year bringing the enthusiasm of youth and fresh new design styles to the studio.

CHILD-FOCUSED

At the start of 2022 we completed a new project for BBC Teach. This time around we created five fun animated songs for reception-age children all about school. We had a great time designing this group of diverse characters and animating the cool dance moves.

We helped the National Trust with an exciting new audio tour at The Children’s Country House at Sudbury. Commissioning the fab Gary Chudleigh to write the scripts and casting local voice actors to bring an exciting new audio experience for children visitors.

HEALTHCARE

Sunny Period - Applicator Coming in Spring

Amaze.org commissioned us to create two new sex education explainers about Menopause & Endometriosis. We were excited to work with American scriptwriter Sam Bissonnette to bring our Kino Bino character Sam back, this time with her cool Auntie Jo & her non-binary bestie Ash. Look out for these on the Amaze.org site in the New Year.

We enjoy supporting great causes and charities that big up Women's Health & people that menstruate, so we were more than happy to help period poverty charity Bloody Good Period with some GIFs for their #noshamehere campaign. This followed with another project we were really passionate about for Sunny Period, which creates products for eco-conscious people. Sunny needed an animated instruction video for their innovative new product ‘The Sunny Cup & Applicator’. We can’t wait to see our video alongside the product launch in 2023.

Bloody Good Period #noshamehere campaign - design by Kathryn Flynn

The Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust ask us to produce a suite of 14 animated explainer videos for their Healthy Together campaign. Including videos on important subjects like Body Image, Exam Stress, and Transitioning to Primary & Secondary School for National websites: Health for Under 5s, Health for Kids & Health for Teens. Although all delivered now - these will continue to roll out over the following year and we look forward to sharing them.

BUSY BEANS

It was a very busy year for our Creative Director Steff Lee, not only did she have the beautiful bouncy baby, Nina but on returning from maternity leave she took over the PANimation Instagram for a week and was invited to join Creative UK’s Female Founders. Steff is already putting into practice The Female Founders invaluable advice and will be continued to be mentored over the following year with ways to build on the success of Kino Bino.

Our Producer Bella was lucky enough to win a ticket to the Children’s Media Conference through Animated Women UK sponsored by Wildchild Animation. She spent a few days catching up with old friends in the industry, making lots of new contacts and being inspired by all the amazing talks - she can’t wait to start to develop new original children’s series ideas with the team in 2023.

Alongside all the client work we also started production on our very own short film ‘Of All the Things’ being supported by the BFI Hub Midlands and funded by the National Lottery. An amazing crew of women (& our brilliant Technical Director, Jack) are bringing Director Steff’s long planned idea into fruition and we can’t wait to share the finished film in 2023.

LOCAL PROJECTS

We delivered a lovely project for local company Platform Thirty1, a women led organisation working across the arts, culture, community and education sectors in the East Midlands. We produced four animations for their ‘Greater Creative’ initiative - based on some oral histories from the amazing mining community in Blackwell Parish, Derbyshire. The local community have loved seeing their stories come alive!

We were also involved in a couple of local Leicester events. Steff & Jack got the spray cans out and joined in with Bring the Paint. We were also selected to exhibit our work in the annual LCB exhibition Graphics Season.

Leicester City Council commissioned us to help with their Live Well Little Ones campaign. We initially started with a logo design and illustrations and will be bringing these to life next year with a full animated video.

WHAT’S NEXT?

With commissions already in from BBC Bitesize and further NHS & charity projects, 2023 is set to be another productive year for the studio. If you want to book your animation project for 2023 contact us soon!