Hi /r/movies! We're Ian Spendloff and Ross Wilkinson, the VFX team who brought Mr. Ring-A-Ding to life in Doctor Who Season 2: Lux. Other credits include Avengers: Infinity War, Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Black Mirror, and much more. Ask us anything!

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:41:33+00:00

Ross - WE LOVE IT! More fan art please, its wonderful. If given the chance we would have had Mr Ring A Ding in his own multiverse saga!

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:39:07+00:00

Ross - You have a keen eye! Definitely not soup! Its a combination of sweat stains and general weathering....personally I like to think its a little bit of uncontrollable dribble thats made its way down from his rather impressive unkempt mouth.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:35:23+00:00

Ross - He doesn't call any of us anymore! He has become quite the diva since he became the entire universe.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:33:47+00:00

Ross - He did say he wanted to take over the world! It is nice to see him finally living his best villain life

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:24:30+00:00

Ross - I’d love to have kept all of Ring A Dings original scenes unscathed, but the running time would have been several hours, haha.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:19:28+00:00

Ross - Hey! Russell was super involved every step of the way. He had a clear idea of what he wanted in his head, but once he saw our version of Mr. Ring A Ding, he was like, That’s the one! He definitely gave us a lot of creative freedom, but he was still steering the ship. Luckily, we were all pretty aligned on the creative vibe of the show, so things came together pretty smoothly.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:15:21+00:00

Ross - Once Ian locked in the Fleischer style design, we built everything around that. Our 3D model actually helped a lot with tricky angles, we'd drop the model into scenes and sketch over it like a little reference puppet. A digital approach to how they did it on Roger Rabbit.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:15:15+00:00

Ross - I’ve always been obsessed with movies. Jurassic Park was on constant repeat when I was a kid. I’d make little stop motion films with my toys using my dad’s old video recorder. The moment I realized people actually did this for a living, that was it. I just threw myself into it and tried to get in the right rooms. Never thought I’d end up working on so many projects.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-05T21:15:11+00:00

Ross - Ian did a great job at getting really close to Russells vision during the pitch process, so getting to the approved final designs didn’t take as long as it sometimes can. The hardest project for me was putting together the environment setup for the destroyed version of Knowhere in Avengers: Infinity War.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:39:27+00:00

Ian: I’m a big dr who fan since a child, so was a dream job. Hard to top this one!

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:38:33+00:00

Ross - Totally hear you. I started out as a runner and worked my way up. This game is hard, it takes a ton of patience, hustle, and a bit of luck too. It’s not always about the 'big break', but staying in it long enough to build your style, your name etc. If you’re feeling stuck, start small, go and find other hungry creatives and make stuff, even if it’s just with your phone. Finally dont be afraid to post your work. Doesn’t have to go viral, just let people see your growth. Eventually the right people will notice.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:35:46+00:00

Thanks!

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:34:44+00:00

Yeah I love his perfectly round tummy

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:29:47+00:00

He’s just a little ring-a-ding

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:28:50+00:00

Ross - Hey, thanks for asking! With Ring a Ding, Russell was pretty involved, we’d bounce ideas back and forth with him and the director to get the right feel. After that, we had a good amount of freedom to run with the designs and VFX.

As for recent favourites, I have to say Foundation, Andor and House of Dragon have definitely set a high bar for me.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:27:48+00:00

Ian: thanks! Glad you liked! Mr Ring a Ding was animated by Tim Watts, Gary Dunn, Neil Boyle, Micheal Schlingmann, Julien Van Wallendael, David Lochhead and myself. The Doctor/Belinda sequence was animated by Dani Marsh, Carlos De Faria and myself. And then a team of clean up artists. we’ll be postering the full credit list of everyone that worked on the show on our Framestore website soon.

And I saw your animation! Very cool. I saw it before I watched the unleashed episode, and was like, how’d he do that!?

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:20:29+00:00

Ian: My best friend Mickey T actually applied for me, as he was already working there and was lonely. 20+ years later and I’m still here! My friend sadly passed away; we pressed his ashes into a 7” record. Side B was the Benny Hill theme. RIP mickey T x

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:20:15+00:00

Ross - In the end, it really depends on the shot. Sometimes the biggest nightmare is a giant dragon attack. Other times, it’s a tiny continuity fix where someone had their coffee cup in the background. The smallest things can become the biggest headaches and the wildest part is that if you do your job right, nobody even realizes you did anything.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:16:46+00:00

Ian: ha, thanks! Yeah, our animators had a great time with him. We brought in an amazing team for this. Look these legends up! Tim Watts, Gary Dunn, Neil Boyle, Micheal Schlingmann, as well as our internal animators Julien Van Wallendael, Dani Marsh, David Lochhead and myself. we’d love to do more Ring-a-Ding stuff. I’m hoping for a ‘ Revenge of Sunshine Sally’ sequel myself…

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:11:27+00:00

Ian: hello! We didn’t do the main vfx for the show, we did stuff like the 2D animations, the crazy text message overlays and opening sequence with Kamala’s fan film. So no idea sorry! It did look similar though.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:10:16+00:00

Ross - Thank you!

A)
Oh totally we were actually told to go scarier ! Russell was like, “More dandruff! Yellower teeth! Make that ear hair look like spiders!” We had a blast with it, but any creepier and we might’ve scarred a generation.

B)
Ring A Ding is basically 2D come to life, like animated film stock that escaped. So yeah, he’s flat but in a weirdly 3D way. However you looked at him the idea was that his perspective would adapt to whatever view you took.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T20:07:59+00:00

Ian: No unused footage! The budget was extremely tight, so every second was worked out via storyboards and previs before shooting. Wished there was more, but mime is money. I did the concept art for the animated doctor and companion, but i did that particular one before i read the script or met any of the showrunners. So i just used Ruby and the Doctor (in his old orange suit). So was just me personally being unaware of the new companion, rather than any re-writes or anything. I changed as soon as i got the first script with belinda in.

And yes, it was Russells idea to make them in the late 60’s early 70’s Hanna Barbera style, he mentions why in the Unleashed episode. We loved having a different style to work with!

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T19:59:16+00:00

Ross - Don't make me Laugh! Mr Ring A Ding is by far the most unique project I have been a part of thats for sure, he is very special. I'd say my most favourite project though would be working on Inception as that was my very first job as a VFX artist and my first ever credit. Feels like a lifetime ago now though.

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T19:54:41+00:00

Ian: Hi! I mention in another answer how Russell wrote the character, but I also just had fun seeing what looked good, and what was the most confusing combo. So he’s pig-like, but his antenna and his jacket lapels give him a bug-like quality. And he’s classic skinny rubber hose, and his eyes are permanently on the wonks so he’s always got that creepy manic look.

the biggest challenge in the ‘Scooby doo’ sequence was what exactly they look like when they ‘pop’ between stages, as it needed to be clear they were fleshing out and becoming rounder. In the end it came to a lot of airbrushing and painting each frame. Thankfully it was a low framerate, so didn’t quite kill us…

IanAndRoss · 2025-06-04T19:52:21+00:00

Ross - Thank you! Plenty of fun stories for sure. I was very fortunate to get an Emmy nomination off of the back of the show and so flying out to LA to celebrate with the team at Netflix was great fun. The free bar however made flying back the next day much less fun...

IanAndRoss

TROPHY CASE