Sunny - Sunny Gen Y

We were thrilled to work in collaboration with Apple TV and A24 on the 2024 mystery thriller series 'Sunny', based on Colin O’Sullivan’s novel 'The Dark Manual'. Our design team worked with Director Lucy Tcherniak and Writer Katie Robbins to create a number of unique robotic characters.
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The title character of the show, Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura), is a Japanese domestic robot designed to help people with basic everyday tasks. The design needed to be achievable as a practical puppeteered build, that was ultimately built by our manufacturing team. We explored many different directions and design languages before we landed on the final look, even creating a lineage of robots that lead to the current day Sunny model.
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Sotomura's voice performance fed through our puppet’s live facial capture to manipulate Sunny's face animations in real time on-set. Hence, the designs for the facial emotes and expressions were important to convey her cute and wholesome personality.
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Concept Artists: Christian Pearce, William Bennett
Art Directors: Ben Hawker, Christian Pearce
Production: Brooklyn Dineen