HOT Animation

HOT Animation (also known as just simply, HOT) is the animation studio division of HiT Company.

They started with producing the later four episodes of Brambly Hedge, a series of 25-minute episodes based on the eight illustrated children's books by Jill Barklem.

Their worldwide success did not follow until the creation of Bob the Builder, a British animated television series which follows construction builder Bob and the Can-Do-Crew of building vehicles. The theme tune was released as a single, "Can We Fix It?" with an accompanying promo produced at HOT, which beat Kylie Minogue's "Please Stay", Eminem's "Stan", and Westlife's "What Makes a Man" to become the Christmas number-one single.

The company then made Rubbadubbers, a series about bath toys that come alive. Pingu, a Swiss-British animated series about a family of penguins, was recreated with great success from 2003 to 2006.

HOT ceased to produce the main series of Bob the Builder after 2008 when the studio announced that jobs would be cut, and opted to produce a direct-to-DVD series called Bob the Builder: On Site, using stop motion from Bob's world and live action from real world construction sites.

On 18 August 2012, the studio permanently closed, due to HiT's owner (LandonToei) at the time wanting to focus on more profitable animation studios in their porfolio. In 2021, HiT announced to be reviving the stop motion studio as HOT Motion and it's first project was a stop motion short based on Shantae.