Mick the Tick: Bringing a Children's Story to Life

From children's book to internationally recognised animated film!

We are delighted to have been involved in the creation of Mick the Tick, an animated children's film based on the original story and characters created by author Kara Perrin.

Working closely with Kara, our role was to help bring her illustrated characters to life through animation. We created and rigged digital puppets of the story's principal characters, including Mick the Tick, Kara the Koala and Crow, transforming the original illustrations into expressive animated performers.

Using our specialist Digital Puppets technology, we were able to give the characters personality, movement and expression while remaining faithful to the charm and appearance of the original artwork.

The project combined character animation, storytelling and the original illustrations to help transform the children's book into an entertaining animated experience.

International Film Festival Recognition

We're especially pleased that Mick the Tick has gone on to receive recognition at international children's film festivals in 2026, including:

- San Diego International Kids' Film Festival – Official Selection - Children's International Film Festival of Wales – Official Selection - Awareness Film Festival – Honourable Mention - California International Children's Film Festival – Honourable Mention

It's wonderful to see a project we've helped bring to life receiving recognition internationally, and we're delighted for Kara and everyone involved in the production.

Bringing Illustrated Characters to Life

Mick the Tick is a great example of how we combine traditional creative expertise with modern animation technology to bring illustrated characters and stories to life.

This was a hybrid production, combining our specialist Digital Puppets technology with AI assisted animation. By carefully blending these techniques, we were able to achieve the creative scope and visual ambition envisioned by the original creator, while keeping the production within the available budget.

Whether it's a children's book, an educational project, a television concept or a brand mascot, we specialise in helping creators take their characters beyond the printed page and bring them to life through animation.

Find out more about Mick the Tick on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt46060661/).

Here at LOOK Creative, we love working on our own in-house projects! Whether we're developing and pitching new children's TV shows, exploring the latest creative technologies or simply experimenting with exciting new ideas, there's always something happening behind the scenes.

This image offers a little sneak peek at a Christmas video we're currently working on, created purely for the fun of entertaining our friends and family!

It's a chance to let our imaginations run wild, try out new techniques and, most importantly, have some creative fun along the way!

Bringing children’s safety lessons to life with 3D animation

How can character animation help children understand and remember important safety messages? A new Reallusion feature explores the work of Lil’ Iguana’s Children’s Safety Foundation, including insights from LOOK Creative’s Ant Evans.

The video examines how Character Creator 5 and iClone 8 support the production of expressive 3D characters, clear lip sync and engaging animated performances. Ant shares his expertise in character design and the facial animation techniques that help stylised characters communicate effectively.

Combined with storytelling, music and repetition, these characters make safety lessons approachable and memorable for young audiences.

For LOOK Creative, this project highlights the value of combining creative thinking with technical animation skills to support meaningful educational content.

Watch the video to meet the wider production team and discover how they bring Lil’ Iguana’s safety lessons to life.

Bringing Dennis the Menace and Bananaman to life with digital puppetry

In 2024 and 2025, Digital Puppets, LOOK Creative’s specialist motion capture department, worked with Beano on two projects featuring some of British comics’ most recognisable characters: Dennis the Menace and Bananaman.

We turned these much loved characters into 2D digital puppets, creating fun animated content for the famous comic. For Scott, a lifelong Beano fan, working on the animations was both a personal highlight and a privilege.

Using Adobe Character Animator, Scott combined digital puppetry with his experience in cartoon design and animation to create expressive performances while retaining the characters’ familiar personalities and visual appeal.

This approach demonstrates how 2D motion capture animation can make character content more accessible. By using puppetry to drive performances, we can produce engaging cartoons efficiently and work within more modest production budgets.

For LOOK Creative, these projects brought together a lifelong love of comics with the creative and technical skills we use to help clients bring their characters to life.

The Time Diary: A British Scifi Comedy for Fans of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Dungeon Crawler Carl

A time travel adventure, 25 years in the making, from Torquay, Devon

What happens when a bunch of wonderfully terrible people get their hands on the power to change history, rewrite reality and potentially destroy the universe?

Welcome to The Time Diary: A Barstewards Tale, a British science fiction comedy novel by Scott Evans, author, animator and founder of LOOK Creative, based in Torquay, Devon.

Combining the imagination of Douglas Adams, the wonderfully flawed characters of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the chaotic humour of Red Dwarf and the outrageous, high stakes storytelling that has made Matt Dinniman's 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' such a phenomenon, The Time Diary is an unpredictable journey through time, morality, friendship and the occasional end of absolutely everything.

A Scifi Comedy with Big Ideas and Terrible Decisions

Set largely in the seaside town of Torquay, England, The Time Diary follows a group of ordinary, deeply flawed characters who find themselves meddling with time, history and the very fabric of reality.

What begins as an extraordinary discovery quickly spirals into a series of increasingly ridiculous disasters involving time travel, alternative histories, paradoxes and some rather uncomfortable questions about human nature.

Because when ordinary people are given extraordinary power, there's no guarantee they'll do anything remotely sensible with it.

With short chapters, unpredictable twists, plenty of cliffhangers and a distinctly British sense of humour, The Time Diary is designed to be an entertaining, fast moving read that also gives readers something to think about.

It's a story that asks some surprisingly big questions about morality, free will, cause and effect, and whether being a good person is simply a matter of never having had the opportunity to become a complete bar steward.

Love Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Bobiverse or Dungeon Crawler Carl?

If you enjoy science fiction and fantasy that combines ambitious ideas with comedy and memorable characters, The Time Diary might be your next read.

Scott grew up loving Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and Monty Python.

More recently, books such as Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse, Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force series (featuring the wonderfully entertaining Skippy) and Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl have demonstrated just how much readers enjoy imaginative adventures that aren't afraid to be funny.

The Time Diary follows that same broad tradition of taking the science fiction seriously, without necessarily taking the characters seriously.

It's not LitRPG, and it isn't trying to imitate any of those authors. Instead, it's a distinctly British time travel comedy with its own characters, mysteries, absurd situations and philosophical questions.

If you enjoy funny scifi books, humorous time travel novels, British comedy or character driven science fiction with unexpected twists, there's a good chance you'll feel at home here.

From a Babbacombe Pub to a Published Science Fiction Novel

The story behind The Time Diary is almost as unusual as the book itself.

Its origins go all the way back to 2001, when Scott was working at The Royal, his family's pub in Babbacombe, Torquay.

During the quieter winter months, he began scribbling stories and developing characters to entertain himself. Those early ideas gradually evolved through different creative projects, including concepts for animation and television.

Over the following two decades, Scott built a career in animation and creative production, working on projects associated with Disney, Cartoon Network and The Beano.

But the characters he created in that Torquay pub never entirely went away.

Eventually, around 25 years after their beginnings, they found their way into a full length novel.

Today, The Time Diary is a published British scifi comedy with its roots firmly planted in Torbay, Devon, even if its characters have a rather unfortunate habit of wandering through time and occasionally destroying reality.

A Book That Invites Readers to Think, Laugh and Discuss

Beyond the humour, The Time Diary explores questions about time travel, paradoxes, alternative realities, consciousness and human morality.

Could information exist without ever being created? What happens when somebody changes the past? And can people who make terrible decisions still be fundamentally good?

There are also plenty of mysteries, surprises and a few ideas that might leave readers questioning what they thought they understood.

Scott is particularly interested in hearing readers' interpretations of the story, its characters and the theories explored throughout the novel.

After all, when you're writing about time travel and the nature of reality, there's always room for a good argument about how any of it is supposed to work.

Where Can You Read The Time Diary?

The Time Diary: A Barstewards Tale is available internationally through Amazon, including as a Kindle ebook, paperback and hardcover.

It's also available to eligible subscribers through Kindle Unlimited.

For readers in South Devon, physical copies are available to borrow from Torquay Library and Paignton Library.

Discover The Time Diary on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F8VG16RP

Join the conversation with the author:

https://www.facebook.com/Barstewards

Whether you're a fan of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Red Dwarf, Bobiverse, Expeditionary Force or Dungeon Crawler Carl, Scott would love to introduce you to a new group of characters who really shouldn't be trusted with the fate of the universe.

And if you do read it, come and tell him what you think. He's got answers to your questions. Probably. Well, he's certainly got theories.

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The Time Diary is an independently published British science fiction comedy novel by Scott Evans, an author and animator based in Torquay, Devon, UK. The novel combines humorous time travel, alternative histories, philosophical science fiction and character-driven British comedy. LOOK Creative is Scott's creative studio, specialising in animation, advertising, visual storytelling and creative production.*