Hanging out UWE Graduates Hagbox3

Three of our UWE Graduates from 2019, Hector K-B, Cillian Dubock, and Ben Spybey have formed a studio in Bristol, named Hagbox3. In this short space of time, they have been very successful and have had their work included on the Aardboiled Youtube Channel, a channel created by Aardman to showcase new and upcoming talent. 

They were very happy to answer some questions for UWE about themselves, how they got into animation, Hagbox3 and what’s next for them.

I guess the best question to ask you first is: Tell us a bit about yourselves separately, and how did you discover animation?

Hector: My name is Hector K-B (the big, hairy one) and I discovered animation during my fine art A-level at college, at about 16. Up until that point I had always loved playing with clay and plasticine so naturally I worked in the form of very clunky claymation. I found it soon engulfed the rest of my studies and by the end of my two years I had created two 6min, stop-motion films. Yet I received an E in my fine art A-level, as I had failed to write barely anything to accompany the films.

Cillian: I’m Cilian DuBock (the handsome one) and my interest in animation first began at around 10 when I would make rudimentary stop motion shorts with my toys and a webcam. Fast forward a few years and I’d discovered Adobe Flash (CS6 I believe) – but I had not yet discovered a graphics tablet. I spent a shamefully long amount of time drawing all of my frames with a mouse. Great practise for patience as it turns out!

Ben: I’m Ben Spybey (the muscle) and I have always been drawing, since before I couldn’t be trusted not to yak all over my dungarees, So my love for animation kind of just flowed out of that. As for actual formative memories, I do remember watching a grainy VHS of Who Framed Roger Rabbit when I was about 7 or so, and that probably cemented my obsession with bringing characters to life through animation. After I was a bit older, about 11 ,and a few more neurons had formed in my head, I had figured out it didn’t work exactly so magically as it did in that film, and started doing little flip animations in the corner of my exercise books. Been flippin’ ever since. Yurp.

What led you to study animation – and what made you choose UWE?

H : It wasn’t till very late on in my university applications that I decided to study animation; as acting, music and creative writing were and still are keen interests of mine. I think that’s why I chose animation in the end, as I believe it’s a marriage of all those elements.

As for choosing UWE, I think being reared in Devon had something to do with that. Being two hours down the road, I had visited Bristol a few times before it came to applying and loved the city. Also being a stop-motion lover, the thought of being closer to Wallace and Gromit’s house was enticing.

C: I think I decided on animation at around the time I began sixth form, and spent the whole of that making rude little shorts about drunk babies/dinosaur chavs and pretty much trying to push the adult comedy side of it as much as I could possibly get away with. When I was looking around univerties I fell in love with Bristol as a city, and I also loved the location of the Bower Ashton Campus. I remember looking out at the deer park from the windows of the animation block and feeling pretty sure I was in the right place which was further affirmed when I realised how close the campus was to Aardman!

B: I think I always knew I wanted to animate for a living, which is why I was never too concerned that I was spending most of my classes doodling. So it was where I was angling towards as soon as I could pick and narrow down which classes to take. I partly chose Physics to up my bouncing ball game, because I was a very cool child, clearly. I picked UWE because it seemed like it was in a great city with a thriving and diverse animation culture within it, and I was right!

What led you to form Hagbox3?

HagBox3 actually began as just Ben and Hector as a collective name for their quirky and off-beat collaborative pilots. Cilian just seemed to hang around awkwardly until one day Ben and Hector saw that Cilian was repeatedly smashing out home runs with his solo work (and also had a peek at his glistening animator muscles through his tight t-shirts) and thought they needed to snap him up quick before Adult Swim did. Plus they all lived in the same house and Cilian’s constant begging to be involved became so pathetic and awkward that Ben and Hector just had to let him join. And thus HagBox3 was born.

Your final year project was The Ugly Boy. How did that come about and how did you work together to create it?

Between the three of us, we actually developed four series’, two of which had finished pilots. There’s Scary Stories with Ben and Hector (Directed by Ben and Hector funnily enough), Cuckinton Village (directed by Cilian), Hey Pappy (Also directed by Cilian and also due to feature on the Aardboiled channel in the coming months) and lastly Snake Oil (another spearheaded by Hector and Ben).

There’s certainly been some exchange of ideas in the brainstorming stages which we use each other for as we all have a similar but distinctly different style of humour. We feel we really complement each other like a fine rouge and packet of Oaties (Aldi brand Hobnobs – if you don’t know them, then get to know them!)

After this stage we are fairly segregated in our workflow, Ben and Hector have created a marriage of their two visual styles whilst Cilian’s art and writing style is his own. We love to help to critique and build on each other’s work, and have found this to be the most integral part of HagBox3 so far. 

How did you find out about Aardboiled? What did you have to do to get them to see your work?

We first discovered the existence of Aardboiled whilst at Encounters Festival in our first year. We specifically remember it because they brought sweets with ‘Aardboiled’ written on them (hats off to the Aardman marketing team) and we started watching pretty much everything they uploaded from there.

John Parry our tutor organised for us to pitch our series to Robin and Liora of Aardboiled and they loved both ‘Scary Stories with Ben and Hector’ and ‘Hey Pappy’! We then pitched them again to Peter Lord (who also loved them) and then even ended up doing a really big pitch at the 2019 Cartoon Springboard in Valencia of Hey Pappy again to hundreds of animators, producers, and directors just last summer.

What’s next for Hagbox3?

Before the Coronavirus outbreak, we were building up our studio space in the lovely Jam Jar down in Old Market. Our next step there, once this is all over, is to set up a shooting space for some stop motion projects. But besides that, we’re working on finishing the two Aardboiled series (‘Scary Stories with Ben and Hector’ and ‘Hey Pappy’) as well as our own freelance work. Starting out as a freelancer isn’t plain sailing for all the undergrads that are looking for hope, we all work day jobs and don’t sleep much (other than Ben who sleeps all the time). But we can say that in our first year after graduation that we have made some good first steps. We are also thinking of developing an Augmented Reality app where we can all sit in the bath with the user at the same time, called SudzBudz3.

If you enjoyed this interview, you can find more of Hagbox3’s work online as per the links below:

The first episode of Scary Stories with Ben and Hector is out on the Aardboiled YouTube channel. Hey Pappy will be on there too as soon as it’s good and ready!

Instagram: @hagbox3
Facebook: HagBox3
Website: hagbox.weebly.com

They also have our own Instagrams:
Cilian : @foxy_duboxy
Ben: @benspybey
Hector: @h.l.s.k.b