Kuro Dragon Produce Title Sequence For New ITV Kids TV
Kuro Dragon animation studio has completed the title sequence for a recently launched 12-part series for CITV.
The project was Tyneside based Kuro Dragon’s first TV title sequence. It was commissioned by ITV’s Sign Post, the UK’s largest provider of on-screen British Sign Language.
Malcolm Wright, ITV’s executive producer has said that he “enjoyed” working with Kuro Dragon because it was “creative, proactive and fast.”
The series, which aired at the end of February is the first time in CITV that a children’s show will be presented in sign language by a deaf person, Joe Sheridan. The title sequence is an action packed rocket crash where the two characters are introduced to viewers.
Managing Director of Kuro Dragon, Stuart Howard said that the brief Kuro Dragon were given was “pretty open.” They were commissioned to create “an action packed title sequence which would appeal to a variety of youngsters from toddlers to children around the age of seven,” with particular emphasis on deaf children.
Stuart described the process Kuro Dragon used to create the sequence: “We used a custom style toon shader to allow us to translate Signed Stories’ pre-designed 2D illustrations into this 3D animation.” The whole piece only took four weeks to produce.
The show features a range of celebrity narrators reading stories from Sign Post’s online library – Signed Stories – that presents a wide variety of tales in both sign language and subtitles for deaf children. Narrators include Dawn French, Richard E. Grant and the former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen.