It is mid-May and Leo Wright has invited me to Yamination Studios in Birmingham, the production site of his upcoming film. He is quite an animated character himself, greeting me with an excited smile, signature bow tie in place, and leading me through an obstacle course of boxes – a temporary chaos while the studio is moving location.
We come to the end of the room where a miniature street sits illuminated on a table. Complete with a bakery, hardware store, general store and suck shop (Black Country for sweet shop), the level of detail is spectacular, from the tactile brickwork right down to a tiny newspaper.
This is a set piece for Leo’s upcoming film The Dudley Bug. It will be a tour of the heritage and industrial history of the Black Country, hosted by this trilobite, whose fossil is uniquely found in the area. Mining, canals, Teddy Grays, and orange fish and chips will all feature.
There are also a couple of personal nods such as Leo’s grandparents’ names on shop fronts. The Red House Glass Cone in Stourbidge will feature too, which was built by Leo’s seven-times-great grandfather after he stole blueprints from Germany and fled a death sentence for his crime – quite an extraordinary piece of family history!
The bug is voiced by John Homer, a man who went viral a few years ago on the Black Country Living Museum TikTok page. Leo thought “his voice was so beautiful and so characterful”, and after having him narrate his previous film The Big Bad Wolf, he felt a need to use John’s voice for a character too. Leo chose the best five minutes of a two-hour interview for use in the film. The natural conversation style should make watching it feel “like a chat with your grandad” over a cup of tea, he says.
Leo reveals the Dudley Bug, a silicone puppet with a metal frame and wire inside. 3D printed mouth pieces, eyelids and pupils can be attached with magnets or vaseline. Silicone is “a lot more durable than plasticine so should make animation quicker, but believe me the puppet-making took a very long time”. The process took four months; about five or six times longer than it took to make the plasticine figures for Leo’s previous film.
The only plasticine on this puppet is the eyebrows, which is needed to preserve the Wallace and Gromit-style movement that Leo wants the character to express. There are approximately 12 eyelids, 50 pupils and 50 mouths. Leo tells me “I send a lot of photographs of my mouth” to 3D modellers in order to ensure the facial expressions he envisions are captured correctly. There are also a number of miniature bugs designed to match the scale of the set in the studio; the larger puppet is for other, oversize sets.
The Dudley Bug is a “hefty team effort”, with over 30 volunteers having contributed so far. Leo imparts how six people made and fastened over 300 tiles onto the house roof; how people have assisted with stripping down, improving and editing the set of The Big Bad Wolf to transform it into a new backdrop; how props have emerged from the archives at Yamination Studios and antique shops, or have been handmade by Leo himself (such as the fish and chips).
“Everything you see has been made by humans and […] to my drawings and vision”, he proudly states. Some things have changed in the process, but Leo says this was expected: “Film is like a fluid glass of water. It changes shape and evaporates a bit and gets dusty”.
Animation takes time, lots of time, but The Dudley Bug was never intended to be this big: “What was meant to be a couple of weeks in my loft and 20 seconds of animation has ended up becoming a year of my life and the most ambitious project I’ve made to date”. Leo says that the idea has “evolved just as […] trilobites did”; an initially unexpected but subsequently welcome development.
On the day I visit the studio, Leo is planning to start filming – nine months on from the start of the project. It might take ten weeks to shoot if he does so solidly from this point onwards, which is equivalent to achieving seven to ten seconds of footage per day. Editing, music, and a potential live-action introduction to the film will extend the schedule.
The final film will be approximately five minutes long and Leo hopes to have it released in August. September is the 70th anniversary of Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve – where the Dudley Bug fossil was first found – and Leo would like to have the film done so that the reserve can screen it in celebration.
During childhood, Leo loved Wallace and Gromit and became fascinated with animation. He recalls how accidentally stumbling across the bonus features of Toy Story opened his eyes to the amount of creativity that goes into producing an animated film. “I’ve never questioned it since”, he admits, “which is kind of cool, a blessing and a curse, like it means I’m just obsessed by it”.
Leo reflects on how careers advisors would encourage him to entertain alternatives: “They said, ‘oh, maybe you should become an architect’; I’m like, ‘no’”. He accentuates this as if offended that they could suggest such a thing. “Storytelling’s my bread and butter”, he asserts. He divulges some of his biggest inspirations: the animation of Disney, Pixar and Aardman; the storytelling of Roald Dahl; and the British humour and creativity of the Beano and the Dandy.
Leo studied animation at university and two of his student films received Royal Television awards (which you can watch on his YouTube channel). After graduation he began working on The Big Bad Wolf at Aardman. It has been screened at 40 film festivals, including BFI London Film Festival and Manchester Film Festival.
It has won five awards and been shortlisted for the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards. Thanks to the film’s success, Sony is sponsoring the creation of The Dudley Bug.
However, it is the experience of attending festivals and meeting other creatives that Leo feels is the “real treasure” associated with film awards. One highlight is the cinema release that The Big Bad Wolf enjoyed, being screened just before Wallace and Gromit. He tells me this was “a dream come true because that’s what made me want to animate, and hearing the Wallace and Gromit theme tune play just after my name had appeared on screen on the credits of my own film was… goosebumps”.
Having been lucky enough to get a peek of The Dudley Bug’s storyboard with audio, I have no doubt that this humorous and informative project will be equally adored.
When asked what comes after its release, Leo alleges he plans to take a break from large-scale projects in order to work on a few smaller ones. He also confesses “I’ve got another three [ideas] ticking along in my head right now. So probably enough ‘til I’m forty, at the rate I’m going now!”
Keep an eye on Leo Wright’s website and Instagram for the release of The Dudley Bug.
