Bringing Christmas Adventures To Life

A heartwarming animated adventure will be broadcast to the nation on Christmas Day thanks to the animation of Bryan Panks, course leader in Animation and Interactive Media at the University of Gloucestershire and the writing of his wife Helena.

Mr Panks and his wife Helena, who live in Rodborough, Stroud, have created Max Bear and the Lucky Charm, starring two pals who just happen to be bears, featuring the voice of Tom Baker as Max.
Max Bear and Tubby Bottles are the best of friends, but both want different things at Christmas. To Max, Christmas is all about the festive food and the once-a-year treats he allows himself to indulge in.
For Tubby, the main focus is Father Christmas. As a bear of 30 plus years, he believes that a “face to face” with his all time hero is long overdue. But as usual, Christmas Eve begins early for Tubby with the same old routine; the alarm clock rings loudly and awakens him from the most perfect dream, the one where he is flying through the starry skies, in the sleigh with Father Christmas, but this year, unusually, there is a sinister twist at the end of the dream and one that scares Tubby.
From then on, the day is never quite what the two friends expect it to be, and the impulse-buy of a magic, glass bauble seems to take them on a wild and wintry journey to a place where the heart of Christmas exists. Max is in his element and Tubby’s desperate longing to see Father Christmas reaches an all time high as they decide to help some very special people and ultimately change their lives forever.
Max Bear and the Lucky Charm is an original Christmas story sparked from a chance meeting with two avid glass bauble collectors. The lives of a few hard-working glass blowers in the eastern German mountains was such a captivating and heart-warming concept that the writer and producer of Max Bear (previously a series on Channel 4) saw a chance of developing the idea and making a delightfully different animation for Christmas.
As Tubby makes his final deliveries before the “Big Day” he calls on Max Bear, voiced by Tom Baker, who is busily dragging a Christmas tree across the garden. Having decided to meet up later at the local market, the two friends embark on a journey which takes them from magical and frightening visions to wild woods and scary faces and from gypsy fortune tellers to snow capped gingerbread houses.
The creators: Bryan and Helena Panks
Bryan Panks – Animation and producer
Helena Panks – Story/script and director
Matthew Potter – Music score
Bryan and Helena met at art school on a fine art degree course, on successfully completing their degrees they married had four wonderful children and now live in Rodborough.
Through various artistic career swerves they fell into animation by chance when Channel 4 commissioned the first Max Bear special in 1998, a series followed and was broadcast from 2000 to 2005. When Tom Baker was first approached to play the role of Max Bear he immediately responded by letter stating: “I was “born to play Max...and if I don’t do it I shall change my name to Max Baker as a cry of disappointment”
When she is not writing and directing the Max Bear stories, Helena makes cheese for a local artisan dairy and Bryan is currently course leader for Animation and Interactive Media.