Pilot Episode

The pilot episode of 'Bob the Builder is a lost 1 minute and 20 second animated clip which was made to pitch the concept of the series to HiT Entertainment.

Plot

"The 90 second pilot starts with Bob early one morning exercising in the builders' yard with one of his vehicle friends called Dig (who later became Scoop). They notice the gutter is blocked, so Bob climbs up the ladder to fix it - and slips. Luckily for him, Dig manages to catch him- perish the thought if he hadn't."

Behind The Scenes

Development

Bob the Builder was created by artist Keith Chapman in the late 1980s. He got the idea to create Scoop by looking at a JCB digger on a construction site. Soon afterwards all the other machines were created. Then the vehicles needed an owner and Bob was created. Eventually, Keith Chapman brought the project to HiT Entertainment, who developed the plans into a classic series. HiT formed HOT Animation and used stop motion animation for the show. The pilot episode was filmed in 1997 and development was acquired from the BBC. The pilot episode had one set and two characters.

Scoop's name was Originally "Dig" in the pilot episode, but was later changed when the show launched. Originally, He had a searchlight on his cab and his eyes were on his windshield.This could be a little similar to JCB's (Scoop's basis) long-running promotional children's toyline, My 1st JCB.

When the show launched, (which was on 28 November 1998), the machine designs had changed, how having headlight eyes and grille/bumper mouths.

Production

This pilot was most likely produced in May 15, 1997. It was pitched to HiT Entertainment in possibly either late 1997 or early 1998. A single screenshot of the episode shows Bob and Scoop (then known as Dig) in their original designs. This pilot was never released on DVD, nor on the internet. According to the website, the pilot was about 90 seconds (1:20) long. "HIT International required Ealing Animations to produce a 90 second pilot for Bob the Builder to pitch the idea to MIP C.O.M. We had a tight schedule of three months. I could see the idea had a lot of potential but the script was too long. The Script was re-written and production started. The designs for Bob the Builder took some time to crack, but once they too were finalised, the puppet was made in Bristol by a company called The Puppet Factory. The one vehicle featured was produced and engineered by John Wright, also based in Bristol. He was highly recommended and had done lots of work on the Wallace and Gromit films. The sets, props and animation was done in-house. We delivered the goods and HiT presented their proposal, which was swept up very quickly."

Trivia

For some reason, an unrelated picture depicting possible original models for Bob, Scoop (in his original JCB Design for some reason), And Pilchard facing the camera (except for Scoop). This rare picture was discovered by Show Blasters2 On YouTube.

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