Born Naughty
Graphics for Channel 4's Born Naughty, blending hand drawn character animation seamlessly into real filmed sets, matched carpets, real crumbs, and drawings brought to life to help explain each child's story.
The Brief
Born Naughty is a Channel 4 series that sees Embarrassing Bodies' Dr Dawn Harper team up with paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram, offering families much needed help when they believe their child's behaviour has a clinical cause, be it ADHD, autism, or something more common. The graphics needed to sit inside the children's own world convincingly, not float over it as an obvious overlay.
What CUMI Created
CUMI's approach was to keep the graphics grounded in the physical world the children occupied, blending them seamlessly into the show rather than treating them as a separate animated layer. Scenes were recreated to sandwich the graphics between real elements, matching items in the background, even buying large pieces of carpet and sprinkling them with just the right amount of crumbs so a drawn sequence could sit convincingly inside a real room.
Process & Approach
In other sequences, the team took a drawing one of the doctors was using to talk to a child and animated it so it came to life on screen, turning a static explanatory tool into a small piece of storytelling in its own right.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
The lead film in this project, explaining an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (34 sec).
Autism GFX
A second autism-focused graphics sequence (43 sec).
Honey Tick Boxes
A sequence built around a hand-drawn honey/tick-box diagram (33 sec).
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome
A sequence explaining a delayed sleep phase syndrome diagnosis, drawn directly into a bedroom scene (28 sec).
Autism Spectrum
A shorter autism spectrum graphics sequence (20 sec).
ADHD GFX
A graphics sequence explaining an ADHD diagnosis (53 sec).
Gallery
Credits
- Character Design & Animation
- CUMI
- Client
- Channel 4