Creative brief

The Tube: Keep London Moving is a six-part Channel 5 series that dives into the logistics, people and engineering behind one of the world’s busiest public transport systems. Produced by ITN Productions, the series blends interviews and archive footage with motion graphics to unpack the inner workings of London’s vast Underground network.

Little Shadow was tasked with creating a collection of animated 3D maps that would help visualise this complexity—bringing scale, clarity and movement to the system’s hidden patterns. From peak-hour crowd flows to cross-line connectivity, the maps needed to be visually compelling while supporting factual storytelling.

Our approach

Our team designed a bespoke motion graphics toolkit tailored to the production’s evolving editorial needs. Using Cinema 4D for 3D visualisation and After Effects for compositing, we built a dynamic set of map sequences capable of showing the Underground’s 11 lines and their spatial relationships across the city.

Clarity was the driving force. Each map needed to communicate movement—of trains, people, or data—without overwhelming viewers. We developed a modular animation style with stylised textures, bold line distinctions, and flexible camera movement to direct viewer attention.

We visualised data like commuter volumes, interchange pressure points, and real-world line distances, ensuring geographical fidelity while adapting for readability in a fast-paced factual edit. Because these sequences were used repeatedly across the series, we engineered assets to be easily repurposed—allowing the production team to recontextualise sequences as needed without loss of consistency.

The results

Little Shadow delivered over 30 animated sequences used throughout the series, supporting key narrative beats and helping audiences understand the system’s complexity.
The maps became a visual signature of the show, praised for clarity and editorial utility across six episodes.