UK animators eye monster success

Framestore CFC's success with the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs and the follow-up, Walking With Beasts, has led to work on the latest James Bond film, Die Another Day, and the Harry Potter movie The Chamber of Secrets. In Dinotopia, a three-part mini-series which gets its UK premiere on Sky One this weekend, teenage half-brothers David and Karl are washed ashore on an island after a plane crash and find themselves in a long-lost land where humans and dinosaurs have happily coexisted for thousands of years.

The show, poised to win a slot in Channel 4's New Year schedule, features comedian Lee Evans as the voice of Zippo, an animated dinosaur who makes the longest appearance on a television show by any computer-generated character.

Mr Webber insists that while science fiction fans have seen large-scale computer animation before in the cinema - notably in the last two Star Wars films - nothing this advanced has ever been attempted on the small screen.

"Although we are probably Europe's largest visual effects company, with 250 permanent staff, if you placed us in the Hollywood industry we would be tiny," he said.

"We manage to be more innovative than LA-based companies and we like to think of ourselves as a particularly creative company."

Success at the Emmys would confirm Framestore CFC's position among the world's most successful production companies.

Although the company was created after a merger between FrameStore and sister company CFC last December, FrameStore staff have celebrated victory at every ceremony since 1996, when they won their first gong for work on Gulliver's Travels.