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Teddy on the Edge - Teaser Trailer
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Also viewable on Vimeo

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A sensitive young goat who feels things in a deeper way than others. He tries to stand out from the

crowd, but struggles with a

sense of belonging.

Animated with a purpose: In an age of uncertainty and confusion, mental health and well-being, among the young in particular, is of paramount importance.
Our film is directed at a youthful audience in the hope that the unique message will stay with them into adolescence and beyond. It delivers a feeling of optimism and gratitude, aspiring to be an inoculation against despair in the form of an

earnest story based around a set of child-friendly characters…

A down-on-his-luck, slightly tubby teddy bear. Following a recent relationship breakdown and estranged from his own family, he feels he has no one

left to turn to.

A wise old sage of a bunny rabbit. He’s known his ups and downs in life and has a wonderful tale to tell.

Oracle’s trusty canine sidekick. Energetic and fiercely loyal.

A bunny’s best friend.

A teddy bear, alone on the edge of a cliff contemplating ending it all, is interrupted by a wise old bunny rabbit with a life-affirming message to pass on.

A Story to Share

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Our Headspace

Based in London UK, Train of Thought Studios has created this film with the intent of partnering with local mental heath and suicide prevention charities as well as getting the film seen far and wide in as many animation festivals as possible.

Charities we plan to link up with following the project's festival run include: Papyrus, Childline, and CALM.

Our Global Team

We brought together a small, but brilliant group of people from across the globe to work remotely on Teddy on the Edge.

Our lead animator, Anne, drove the performances working remotely from Scotland (a great accomplishment, as she also gave birth to her daughter in the middle of production!) Supporting animators, Fergus in South Korea and Adam in south-east England, both studying at Animation Mentor concurrently to working on the film, giving them great first hand production knowledge.

For character rigging we had Lens,

a highly knowledgeable technical director setting these up out of Germany / Namibia.

We employed 2D animator, Hero, to bring life to the characters of the otherworldly 'ancestors' sequences of the piece. 

Fortune was on our side in lining up professional British character actor Paul Ready to record our voices and narration, all thanks to our Executive Producer, Julie Baines, a veteran of the film and TV industry.

Our talented composer Dimitri, working from South Korea, created an original score which forms the backbone of our lyrical film and award-winning sound designer

Kevin Langhamer completed the emotionally resonant soundtrack in the final mix.

Teddy on the Edge is the debut short film from writer / director P.L. Kerr

an experienced CG artist and animator based in London, UK, who put it all together.

Part of the process was his focus on

real-time tools and their implication for classic linear storytelling...

The Technology

Given the limited resources of what is essentially a passion project / charity piece, we needed to find cutting-edge

ways to streamline our CG animation pipeline.

An important way we did this was using Unreal Engine to generate the environments for the film - building the world our characters would exist in inside the leading game engine is a massive advantage when considering production and render time-frames.

Our world was built using the powerful landscape system in the engine and leverages a modified version of Joe Garth's Brushify materials and assets. We wanted a lush and natural environment that would feel alive, but also stark at times - just like the coast of south-east England, where our story is set.

Environmental objects and props (even the grass!) use Nanite for maximum geometric detail. The lighting is globally illuminated with the high-end implementation of Lumen which is raytraced. The clouds in the sky are a combination of volumetric clouds and the new VDB feature for importing high-detail volumetrics. Trees were created then imported from SpeedTree and blow dynamically in the wind in engine. The ocean simulation employed Imaginary Blend's Fluid Flux plugin, which was customised by its creator to facilitate storm ocean waves.

Due to the extremely computationally expensive fur on the characters, they are rendered in a traditional non-realtime method in Chaos Vray, but using lighting data exported out of Unreal. Advancements in Vray's RTX pathtracer meant that the entirety of the 6 minutes of character animation was rendered on only two nVidia Ampere GPUs with most shots completing overnight.

All this was rendered out in 4K HDR then composited into the environments exported out of Unreal's movie render queue for a super high-quality film-like presentation. 

Teddy on the Edge - Character & Concept Art
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Behind the Scenes

Budget Breakdown

A little peak at some of the work that has gone into the project,

starting with early concept art, character design and more:

More coming soon...

Art and Design:

(done by the director)

Concept Art and Character Design: £0

Storyboards: £0

Animation Production:

(allocated and paid for)
Animators: £12,000

Software Licenses: £2,000
Unreal Engine: Free


Voice Acting:

(actor / studio gave us time for free)
Voice Actors: £0
Recording Studio Rental: £0


Music Composition and Soundtrack:
Composer Fees: £500

Sound Design and Effects:
Sound Designer Fees: £500
Foley and Sound Effects: £200
Audio Editing and Mixing: £500


Post-Production:
Editing and Compositing: £0

(director doing this)
Rendering and Output: £0

(rendered locally)

Contingency and Miscellaneous:
Contingency Fund: £300
Marketing Expenses: £2000

(marketing materials, festival submissions, etc.)

Total Budget: £18,000

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We received a lot of help in getting Teddy's story told and much of our team worked for a generous rate or for just for the fun of being involved. This is the only reason we were able to achieve the finished film on a relatively tiny, self-funded budget:

Film Credits

Written & Directed by

P.L. Kerr

Lead Animator
Anne Moth

3D Animators
Fergus Holmes
Adam Johnson
Paul Kerr

2D Animation
Hero Wilkinson-Rodrigues

Technical Direction & Rigging
Wynand Lens

Score composed by
Dimitri Roussopoulos

Violin performed by
Nadine Roussopoulos

Executive Producer
Julie Baines

Narration
Paul Ready

Voice Recording
Michal Kaluzynski

Sound Design & Final Mix
Kevin Langhamer

Special Thanks
Adeline Aletti
The Kerrs

Production Babies
Fiona
Hugo

Story inspired by the song
'On the Edge of a Cliff' by The Streets

Thank You for your Interest!

All Character Design, Modelling, Shading,
Lighting, Rendering & Compositing

P.L.Kerr for Train of Thought Studios

 

No A.I. image generation
was used in the making
of this film.

© 2025 by Train of Thought Studios

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