‘Planets: The Greatest Show in the Universe’ – Blue Zoo Pitch At Cartoon Forum
If you’ve been following our coverage of this year’s Cartoon Forum, you will already be aware that Blue Zoo are pitching one of nine TV projects at this year’s event – Planets: The Greatest Show in the Universe – a 52 x 11 min highly paced comedy series for 6-8 years olds, blending a cross-media combination of 2D & 3D animation together.
Skwigly is pleased to share an exclusive first look at the show – with a new trailer and images, plus an interview with the creators Mishmash (who are Alec Smith, Dan Edgley & Phil Brooks).
About the show…
Scientists will tell you that in the beginning there was a big bang “BOOM” that created the Earth, the planets, many galaxies and the universe. What they forget to mention was that at exactly the same time there was a much sillier Bang “Parp” that created “Planets”. So let Planet siblings Pip and Pebble introduce you to Hot Dog planet, Nervous Bubble planet, Planet of the apes, Ghost Planet, the planet with the tiny face and many, many, more. Come and find out how they deal with the inevitable problems of being so completely and utterly ridiculous.
A few questions for the creators…
‘Planets: The Greatest Show in the Universe’ looks like a great idea for a show – where did the initial idea come from?
We started by listing all the things we liked which mainly consisted of blobs, faces, blobs with faces and round squishy things. From there we thought about what hadn’t been animated before, whether it be setting, characters or format. After mucking about with different ideas and a few hour long discussions later, we were left with the concept of planets.
The show is created/written/directed by Alec Smith, Dan Edgley & Phil Brooks (aka Mishmash) but how do you split your roles, and do your responsibilities cross over much?
After some time in development it became clear we couldn’t all work on and approve every step of the process. We made a pact to give each of us a particular part to take control over and they get the final say for that aspect of the pilot. We all had our opinions and wanted it in different ways and of course we’d try and make everyone happy but sometimes it’s better to just trust that person’s decision. Otherwise you get this mix of all these opinions and you end up with something that pleases no one..
We mainly all played to our strengths with Alec focusing on animation direction, expression sheets and scripts, Phil on colour, storyboarding and scripts with Dan focusing on design, compositing and editing. Though that never stopped everyone overlooking one another and sticking their oar in.
At what stage did Mishmash get in touch with Blue Zoo, and how did you end up working together?
We’ve been working together since university where we met and were all hired by Blue-Zoo shortly after graduating. Since then we’ve worked across various projects in the studio over the last four years, until we decided to see if we could make our own show. We spent a year in our bedrooms working on a pilot for Planets before we realised it would be really smart to show Blue-Zoo. From that point onward they showed interest in the idea and helped develop it this past year.
Could you tell us a little about the development process and creating the pilot – how long was the show in development and did you encounter any problems?
The idea for Planets has been around for roughly two years with the pilot episode taking only three months of that time to produce. A lot of time was spent on deciding how an episode would work, what are our character motives? What do planets actually do? Working out how the universe works and fitting a huge cast of characters into some kind of plot took a long time. As it turns out there’s a lot you can do in space and the Planets universe is a pretty busy place. For production we thought it’s simple design and animation would make for smooth sailing, but even the simplest stuff can be a huge technical challenge. The rigging team spent months developing and redeveloping the system used just to change the facial shapes, something we’ve not seen in any other show.
Despite the show’s 2D appearance, it is all animated in Maya, yet there is some really nice ‘squash and stretch’ animation there. What was the reason for opting for 3D software for such a 2D looking show?
We’ve used Maya for years and so have Blue-Zoo, so it made sense to stick with something we and the rest of the studio are comfortable using. The system is not very different from that used in 2D software, the principles are all the same and there was no real benefit to use something else . For instance, we had a big bank of mouths to use for each character, in 2D if you want a new mouth shape you could just draw it, so we implemented a similar system where the animator could just draw whatever you wanted and have it appear in Maya instantly. The characters pull some pretty weird poses and this wouldn’t be possible with your normal 3D rig.
We also plan to implement different media. Some planets will be photographs, stop motion or full CG and using Maya makes this easier.
What is the next stage for ‘Planets’, when the team arrive back from Cartoon Forum?
When we get get back from the forum, we begin the process of funding, that will start with follow up meetings at mip.
We aim to close funding within a year and have all the eps ready in 2017, we are also looking at producing a further short animation to help with marketing the show to international buyers.
