One festive bird in the hand: Robin Robin (Aardman) takes flight for Christmas)

(image via Twitter (c) Aardman/Netflix)

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The story–which the directors wrote with Sam Morrison–follows a robin who is raised by a loving family of mice after her egg rolls into a dump. As she grows up, her differences become more apparent and Robin sets off on a heist to prove to her family that she can be a really good mouse, but ends up discovering who she really is. (synopsis (c) The Hollywood Reporter)

Who doesn’t love a heartwarming, funny, little-bit-silly holiday special featuring mice and an adopted robin?

Okay, some people may not but for the rest of us, there is Robin Robin, just debuted at the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, as a Work In Progress.

It is the first collaboration between Aardman Animations and Netflix which is departure from anything that the claymation stop-motion animation powerhouse has done before, as Aardman co-founder and creative director Peter Lord explains:

“… Robin Robin has a style that’s ‘different from anything we’ve done at Aardman before.’ Immediately evident is a departure from the clay puppets for which Aardman is widely known. Instead, Robin Robin‘s puppets are made of felt, which directors Dan Ojari and Mikey Please noted gave the characters a rich, colorful look and a textured, seasonal feel.” (The Hollywood Reporter)

There’s a delightful “Ugly Duckling” feel to the storytelling which is something director Dan Ojari (Slow Derek) remarked on during the session.

“I think the situation stayed the same, and the resolve, which is a robin who is adopted into a family of mice and how might she feel different, and it’s a story of her figuring out her difference — that element stayed the same. But there were huge areas that we didn’t have in at all, even just the idea [of] ‘the sneak’ which is [the mice] sneak into a house, when we started that wasn’t there. Initially it was just, how do we make a robin feel like she’s a bit different to a mouse? Maybe she just knocks stuff over and they’re really sneaky and quiet. Through the development we figured out that there needed to be a real practical kind of lifestyle thing that the mice do that Robin can’t do.” (Animation Magazine)

Excited yet? It looks like we all should be and with the speed at which this year is going, Robin Robin will be ours to glory in soon enough when it debuts on Netflix on 27 November this year.

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