HOT Animation was a British stop-motion animation studio owned by HiT Entertainment. It was founded as a purpose-made in-house studio to animate the Bob the Builder series until the switchover to computer animation, outsourcing the animation to the American animation studio SD Entertainment.
HOT also produced the fifth and sixth seasons of Pingu, the Rubbadubbers, and even a parody of the Camberwick Green in an episode of Life on Mars from the BBC. Additionally, the short film Gina and Stella as well as 2 pitch pilots of Bitziboos and a cancelled series called Dinosaur Roar was produced for HIT and animated at the studio.
The studio started to lay off employees (e.g. Curtis Jobling) sometime around 2007, and later went defunct around 2012, around the same year Mattel bought HiT. Afterwards, the studio's building was taken over by Chapman Entertainment, which was founded by Keith Chapman, the creator of Bob the Builder. Chapman Entertainment used the former HOT studios as their own in-house animation studio for their own animated series; however, it later went defunct in 2013 when DreamWorks Animation acquired the company's assets.
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