There’s lots to like about Yum Yum. They produce 3D visuals and animations which are full of texture, humour, colour, interesting miscellenea and super fun characters! We spoke to directors / designers Beth Algieri and Jonny Plummer about their beginnings, their design process and inspiration.

How are Yum Yum today?

Just fine thanks, It’s lovely and sunny today. How are you?

For those unfamiliar with your work, could you tell us about yourself in 3 easy-to-follow steps?

We are a design studio founded by two directors who love character design, animation and storytelling. What ever we do, we make it really good. And we make stuff for people to enjoy.

How did Yum Yum come about?

We started working together after realising that we had a similar outlook and a passion for creating characters and fun stories.

In 2007 Jonny took a drawing Beth had done and made it wobble about a bit, we discovered that we had this ability to realize all the crazy stories and wonderful characters that were in our heads and bring them to life. This seemed to be a really fun thing to do as a job, and we are still doing that now. We have had the amazing opportunity to hang out and work with really talented directors, agency creatives and designers along the way.

Talk us through a typical day in the life of Yum Yum!

Drawing, scanning, modelling, rendering, a cup of tea, sketching, emailing, brainstorming, texturing, biscuit, inspiration, drawing, sleep. Lots of coffee. Working hard while being relaxed and loving it at the same time.

What projects are you currently working on at the moment?

We are super excited about the project we are currently worrying on. It’s a series of short animations. After lots of commercial work for clients we decided that we should take some time to create things purely for fun and to make people laugh. Each animation will be short and sweet.

How do you manage your workflow on a typical piece? Who does what and what’s the process?

Talk about the brief with the client. We will come up with various ideas, pulling inspiration from anything and everything. One idea usually stands out. Beth will start designing the characters. Once we are happy with the designs Jonny will start creating 3D versions from the designs. We update the client frequently throughout so that the process is a collaborative one. Once the 3D is lit, colored and composed we hit render. When the project is delivered we high five and begin the next one.

What has been your favourite work piece of work that you have completed so far?

Probably our vinyl toy series. Our brief to ourselves was to create something completely random. We imagined what kind of vinyl toy we would like on our shelves and this is what we came up with.

When you’re pitching, how do you make yourself stand out and be different? What do you think are the unique elements that you bring to a project.

When we get a brief for a pitch we look at how we could make it as fun and yumyum as possible, something that we would be proud of having in our portfolio, so if we love what we have created then the client would hopefully like it too.

Our fundamental rule is to make things for other people to enjoy. We are not too caught up in advertising and design circles. We aim to make people laugh. Hopefully you could show it to your nan and she will get it too.

What’s are your favourite animated videos / films?

We love all types of films. Beth likes directors such as Hayao Miyazaki and Michael Arias’s Tekkonkinkreet for their weird stories and cute characters. We also get a lot of our inspiration from live action films and often design our characters based on some over the top action heros.

Which other artists should we be looking out for at the moment?

Well, there are these amazing designers called Yum Yum who seem to be the future. Really though, Man vs Machine are super cool, the talented illustrators at I Love Dust are killing it and our friends at We Are Seventeen are doing some really awesome stuff too.

What else are you loving at the moment?

Ham bones, cats, giant crabs, donuts, Mr Kipling Cherry Bakewells, Baby versions of animals, Stereoscopic 3D, Karl Pilkington, sunny weather, Jonah Hill, Family Guy, jelly fish, ice cream.

What direction do you think you’ll be taking your work in 2011?

Keep an eye on our blog so you dont miss any of our new series of short animations. This is something we love doing and will try to do more long form stories over the year.

Finally, what’s the one thing everybody should do today?

‘Like’ the Yum Yum Facebook page so you dont miss out on all the wonderful new work coming out :-)

You can follow YumYum on Twitter (@YumYumLondon) or follow their awesome work on the Yum Yum website.