Helena Bonham Carter is to narrate a new animation based on Sir Quentin Blake’s children’s book Clown.
The Channel 4 Christmas special will be created with hand-drawn animation techniques to capture the style of the illustrator’s artwork.
Clown, which will be 30 minutes long, tells the story a toy clown who gets thrown away and sets off on a journey to find a new home.
Sir Quentin said: “Clown has always been one of my favourite characters, and it’s wonderful now to see him off the page and running about on his own.”
Production of the programme was funded with a grant from the BFI’s Young Audiences Content Fund, which supports the creation of high-quality content for children.
Executive producer Massimo Fenati said: “Quentin Blake’s Clown is a charming and heart-warming story, and bringing to life Sir Quentin’s exquisite, inimitable style for the screen is an inspiring creative task.
“An exciting jigsaw puzzle of incredibly gifted animators from all over Europe have embraced this creative challenge enthusiastically and everyone on the team feels privileged to be working from such wonderful source material.”
Sir Quentin and Bonham Carter will also star in a feature explaining how the programme was made.