A SET of cute characters created by a Brighton company could help a pioneering charity sign up young men and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds to help save lives.

The team at Buff Motion, an animation studio in Brighton, has created the third in a series of animations for Anthony Nolan, the pioneering national charity that runs a register matching people who donate their bone marrow or blood stem cells to people who need lifesaving transplants.

Set to music, the animation uses a series of characters going through each step of the donation process, which is explained in a voiceover.

“Each character represents a person, such as a doctor and a nurse, to take people through the process in a fun and playful way,” said Chloe Flexman, Buff Motion’s studio director.

“It can seem to be quite a scary process, more complicated than a simple blood test, and Anthony Nolan wants people to see that it’s not as scary as people think. Our brief was to make the animation to appeal to the kind of audience Anthony Nolan is trying to reach.”

Named after three-year-old Anthony Nolan, whose mother Shirley set up the world’s first register in 1974 because her son was in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant, the charity particularly needs more young men to sign up.

“They produce more stem cells than women and are six times more likely to donate, but make up just 15 per cent of our register,” the charity said. “We also need more donors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds as we often struggle to find matches for people in these groups.”

Anya Muir-Wood, from the charity, said: “Buff Motion did more than animate our complex messaging, they brought it to life.

“They really got what we were trying to communicate, and their extra touches exceeded our expectations to make a fantastic video that we’re proud to share, and that will ensure we recruit not just more stem cell donors, but informed ones who are ready to save people’s lives.”

To view all three of the animations, visit anthonynolan.org