Scottish Screen has backed Britain’s remotest animation studio with a £9,000 package to bring Splat! the sporting hedgehog to life in a series of short animations aimed at the children’s television market.

According to Ted Harrison, founder of Unst Animation, the studio he set up on the northernmost of the Shetland Islands, Splat will build up quite a following for his screen antics.

Ski Jumper

" In the first of the series, the intrepid hedgehog takes up ski jumping. In each of the series he takes up a new dangerous sport, but despite courage and determination always ends up splat!

Scottish Screen’s new Chief Executive Steve McIntyre, then Head of Production at Scottish Screen, visited the studio last year.

Beachcombers & Jumbonauts

Other Unst Animation ideas that are on the desks of commissioning editors in London include The Bruck Family about a family of beachcombers who live on a Shetland beach in a house under an upturned boat, St Emena’s aimed at the adult market about a hospital of outrageous disasters which is every patient’s nightmare. Flumbles is about a jumbonaut, a space elephant, who travels though time and space exploring the galaxies.