As sole broadcaster for London 2012, the BBC wanted marketing, titles and programming that showed that they were making the 2012 Olympic games accessible to everyone and everywhere. Literally giving people a seat at The Games.

To dramatise this, we created an animated world in which the British Isles was one huge venue that was big enough for everyone to be invited....‘Stadium UK’.

Within these epic surroundings, we see a whole host of Olympians (including sprinters on London streets, cyclists in quarries, weightlifters in dockyards and swimmers in Scottish lochs) preparing, then performing throughout the land.

All set to a rousing soundtrack by Elbow.

To meet the challenges presented the creative brief and the realistic style of the animation, Passion used XSI and the new XSI renderer V-Ray, plus new software Naiad for the fluids and Marvellous Designer for the cloth simulation. After testing MD2 for a week it was clear how quickly the results we wanted could be achieved in a relatively short amount of time and export them back into Softimage via point cache. After seeing the results on a few of the shots from the boxing sequence, Passion Pictures had enough confidence to switch the cloth pipeline to MD2 for the whole production.

• 60% of the nation felt the BBC was the home of the Olympic Torch Relay.

• 59% BBC coverage of the Olympic Torch Relay made viewers feel excited about the Games.

• 61% said the BBC helped them feel part of the local celebrations of the Olympic Torch Relay in their area.