Now that the dust has settled on Rescue Bots Academy, I wanted to do a thread on some of the roles and brilliant people I got to work with on the show. A little peek behind the curtain!

It all starts in the writer's room. Twice a year, the writing team got together for 2 days to start the roadmap for the series. It was a hugely entertaining process & amazing to watch the writers start with a couple of words that would eventually become an episode!

An episode would start as a premise. A couple of words that would briefly describe the episode. That was expanded to a 2-page outline. Then we'd go through 2 or three drafts until the episode was finally locked down into a 14-16 page script full of action and comedy!

Once we had a script, pre-prod would break into a couple of different branches. I'd do my board notes & sketches for the storyboard artists. We had some incredibly talented board artists, so my notes would be weirdly specific shots I'd work into episodes for my own gratification!

One of my favourite parts of the entire process was working in edit. We'd take the 1st draft storyboard & cut it down to time, rearrange shots & tighten things up. You started to see the episode take shape. Here, Fiona Hamilton patiently waits on some decision I have yet to make

When we have an animatic pass, the design teams would start working on concept art, character designs, prop designs and background design. Here you can see some of our brilliant team leads looking at a rough board prepping for the episode.

I'd then do my notes for the board artists so they could refine the board. This pass would get us pretty close to a locked board. You can see me working on one of @Oriol__Vidal 's boards here. We were blessed with amazing artists, including @petrapopescu_de and @LourencoEstrela

Things would go through a couple of stages of refinement. A second pass on edit, where the editors would add scratch music and sound effects, helping to tie the animatic together. We'd also go through the concept designs so we'd establish the look of the episode.

With the animatic and designs nailed down, we'd do a workbook meeting that included animation leads, BG leads, FX leads, compositing leads. We'd watch the locked animatic and I'd give notes and address any concerns. Then the teams would go off and CREATE!!!!

Here, the animation leads take the animation team through the animatic as they prep to animate the hell out of it in a very short space of time. The team did an incredible job given the complexities of the character designs and the time they had to do it.

At this point, the episode is being put together by the production teams. I'm pretty much out of the process unless there are tweaks to story or staging to make things work. But the team are so good, they don't need me most of the time! I move onto... POST PRODUCTION!

When all the animation and backgrounds are done, it's back to the editing suite for the audiolock. This was a very tricky and time-consuming process where you have to get the episode down to an exact time. This would mean cutting and adding individual frames to scenes...

... It was like working out a very tricky puzzle. But it was incredibly rewarding and very collaborative. We had a great editing team who pretty much learned how to anticipate what I'd call. Like I said before, editing was one of my favourite part of creating the show.

Retakes time. The most despised part of a production! My incredibly irritating and anal notes go back to the production teams and they work tirelessly to cater to my every whim! They were very patient and I was lucky to have em!

At this point, the episode goes off to the composers and the audio wizards at Windmill Lane. We'd send notes and the composers and sound designers would send back a pass. We'd send back notes and the episode would gradually come together.

And so, the final part of the process. The final mix. These were always great days. We headed to @windmilllane. They pamper us as we work on tweaks & edits to the audio mix & lock the episode down. Here's proper sound lad (pun intended) @stevemaheraudio. A pleasure to work with

All that's left at this point is to send the episode off to Hasbro, ready for broadcast. It's a hugely gratifying process seeing a couple of words like "what if a balloon got stuck up a tree" grow to a fully-animated episode of a TV show.

I'm not in any way doing justice to the huge amount of work put in by the creative teams on the show. They sweat bullets to get a fully animated show put together. And I get to lord over them like some mad king. Working on the show was one of the best experiences of my life.

And one of the most special moments on the show was the time we got to see an episode on the big-screen. We were joined by @PierceCravens, our lead voice actor and it was a brilliant way to have him finish working on Rescue Bots Academy.

Two departments I neglected to mention. Rigging and 3D. The rigging department are on-the-fly problem solvers. They're unsung heroes on the show. And our 3D artists were so good, there were times even I couldn't tell where 2D ended and 3D began. Much love to them both!