Lon­don 2012 Olympic mas­cots Wen­lock and Man­dev­ille were recently launched with a short CG ani­ma­tion, OUT OF A RAINBOW, writ­ten by Michael Mor­purgo, pro­duced by Barn­aby Spurrier and directed by Mario Cav­alli.

The mas­cots were devel­oped and designed by Iris Lon­don over an 18 month period, while the pro­duc­tion of the 3 min 45 sec ani­mated film was com­pleted at break­neck pace, from design and sto­ry­board to com­ple­tion and launch in just 10 weeks.

All pre and post pro­duc­tion was done in Lon­don, with Cav­alli design­ing the non-mascot char­ac­ters, work­ing with Teddy Hall on maque­ttes and Pete West­ern on sto­ry­board. Pro­duc­tion design and back­grounds were by Neil Camp­bell Ross, edit­ing by Richard Gra­ham, with final grad­ing and out­put at UNIT.

The ani­ma­tion was done by Crys­tal CG, the com­pany respon­si­ble for the Bei­jing 2008 Olympics ani­ma­tions and graph­ics, through their offices in Lon­don and Beijing.

Orig­i­nal score and orches­tra­tion by Tommy Hewitt Jones. Voice over was read by Simon Rus­sell Beale.

Within 48 hours of launch, the movie on the offi­cial LOCOG mas­cots’ site had already clocked up 750,000 unique hits, while the same video was the ‘most watched’ on YouTube world­wide in the same period.