How long did it take?

The spot went on the air on December the 6th, but we worked on it for the two months before that. Not all the voice talent was available at the same time, so we couldn't record them all at once, we had to get them individually. The producers went off and got them as they could. Some of them are actually soundbites from programmes as well, rather than being recorded specially for this piece. For instance, for Del boy, they couldn't get David Jason because he didn't have the time. We got stuff dripfed to us as the project went on. We got one of the last voices about three days before we finished, which is always nice.

Are the models of the people quite simple?

Yeah, they are almost cardboard cut-outs but they do have soft edges. They have a degree of depth to their faces - they have slightly embossed features and their noses and eyebrows have depth to them for instance. We still have to be able to bend them around because their arms and stuff move in three dimensions.

Jonathan Ross' hair seems to be a 3D model in its' own right. Is that right?

Nope, it's just a texture, just a heavily hand-painted texture. It does have a 3D feel though.

Did you design the characters?

It was something of a joint effort. I designed the first character, that was used to win the pitch - Patsy [from Absolutely Fabulous] who wasn't in it by the end because she got pulled. She was slightly more simple than the ones that ended up in there, then when we won the job, we wanted the characters to really be recognisable and although I can draw a little bit, caricatures are something of a difficult art and something I wasn't happy to attempt. So we employed a freelance caricature artist called Ric Machin who does a lot of work for the Times newspaper and others and he did traditional caricatures for me, front-on and side views. I then took those pictures into Photoshop and skewed them about a bit...

Because the end results are somewhat Picasso-esque...

Exactly. That was the whole idea, to get them to work - to have them in that kind of side-on, profile, both-eyes-on-the-front kind of Picasso thing. So I used the caricatures and kind of rehashed them, so it was a joint creative effort on the design side of things.

It must have taken longer to build the set than the characters. What was the most difficult bit?

The most difficult bit was not one thing in particular but have to create so many objects so that the sets felt full and rich. We created from scratch: peas; potatoes; turkeys; carrots; Brussels sprouts; crackers; streamers; cranberry sauce pots; glasses; bottles of drink; plates of half-eaten food; cutlery; place mats; gravy boats; mince pies and Christmas puddings. That was just for the table and the rest of the set was just as full so you can imagine the shear amount of things we had to create.

Are the people in the photos in the background people in particular?

They are actually black and white photos of people in the team.

What are you working on now?

We're now working on a Toilet Duck commercial - back to normal work.

On a completely different topic now, what's the robot at the urinal segment of your showreel about?

That's part of a short film called Thespian X that the company produced for a young director called Gerald McMorrow. It was set in the future at a job centre. A human goes into a job centre and has to go use this scummy urinal. There's another Scottish robot in the showreel that we did just the head for. It was a real actor for the rest of the robot's body.

Thanks for your time Nathan, have a good Christmas and a great new year. You can see more of the Hive's work at their website.