Bio and Bones

The bare bones of how human bodies work introduced by a blobby one-celled character called Bio.

A fun 1980s animated educational film on human biology and evolution is introduced by a blobby one-celled character called Bio, who orchestrates the building of a human skeleton. This was a pilot episode for a speculative series on how bodies work by South Shields animator Sheila Graber, aimed at television, but it was judged ‘too educational to sell’ at the time.

Sheila Graber's animations were broadcast on the 1970s national children's television programme, Clapperboard, and the award-winning 12 Days of Christmas was shown on BBC Look North in 1975. She gained an international reputation for the 1981 animations of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories for Nicole Jouve of Interama, the agent for The Magic Roundabout, who began to distribute her animations worldwide in 1977. Once a gifted amateur with improvised rostrum equipment, Sheila Graber went on to win several major awards from the Royal Television Society, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.