How the new Zog series took to the skies!
Magic Light Pictures have proven themselves to be the perfect team to adapt the work of beloved author and illustration team Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, making Christmases marvellous by lifting their beloved characters such as The Grufallo, Stick Man and Tiddler from the page to the screen.
One of the most popular characters in the Donaldson/Sheffler lineup is Zog, who has the rare accolade of having not one, but two specials, putting the delightful dragon, Princess Pearl and Sir Gaddabout next to only The Gruffallo in terms of exposure. Having learnt to fly (though not quite how to land) in Zog, and adventuring as an airborne ambulance with his pals in Zog and the Flying Doctors, it’s his continued adventures helping the health of the inhabitants of the magical realm that form the focus of the brand new series on CBeebies.
The new series was initially produced for Magic Light by Wild Child animation which sadly fell into administration during production, only to be reborn as Stirling Animation under the direct management of Magic Light, giving the company it’s own animation studio for the first time in it’s 20+ year history.
Whilst a 20 minute festive special gives the team a chance to let the material breath and add an air of feature quality to proceedings, producing a series boosts the screentime of Zog from the 50 minutes the specials make up by a whopping 572 minutes. What’s incredible to see with this new series is that in spite of the turbulence the series faced everyone involved has still managing to retain what was special about the specials in every eleven minute morsel remaining true to the characters and to the books.
Skwigly managed to catch up with Zog series producer Vici King to discover how the new Zog series took to the skies.
Zog stands alongside the Gruffalo as one of the few Donaldson/Scheffler characters that has warranted a book sequel as well as a TV special sequel, but it’s now the only character (besides the made for TV duo of Pip and Posy) to have a own series. In your own experience, what is the appeal that drives audiences back to the Zog universe?
Zog, Pearl and Gadabout are such fantastic characters that after they fly off into the sunset you want to know where they are going and who are they going to help next?
We love that at the centre of the Zog world is our unlikely trio who don’t follow the paths they have been assigned but here they are, united in wanting to care for others. They are fully rounded characters who feel very real emotions, who aren’t always perfect and I think this is also what resonates with audiences. They might initially be drawn in by the appeal of an orange dragon who flies and breathes fire but they stay because they care about him and the things that he goes through.
Magic Light pictures have built decades of good will with author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler, who are rightly protective about the work being true to the original source material. What prompted this series and how do you expand their universe and maintain their approval?
We have been fortunate to spend many years working with the incredibly talented Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler across many projects building their trust. The series is very much inspired by them rather than created by them, so with their blessing we have expanded the world and characters.
The new series will be telling tales in half the time of the specials, how does that change the pace? What can we expect from these mini adventures?
The specials were our inspiration for the series and we wanted to bring that depth of storytelling and filmic craft to the series. But it is a different audience and platform so we also needed to ensure that we would be satisfying the needs of our viewers here too. It was important to us that the series embodied the values of everything we do here at Magic light, which is creating something at the highest quality for our audience at whatever price point that may be. Spending time at script and animatic to really hone and shape the stories, character journeys and balance of comedy and adventure set the blueprint for the rest of the crew to bring them to life.
You can expect a variety of stories across the series. Stories that lean more into comedy, others into adventure and some that are quieter with bigger emotion. Always at the centre is a character finding something out about themselves.
It must be a a challenge making a series and producing close to 10 hours of brand new Zog material, how do you balance ambition against budgets when audiences expect the series to be the same as the specials?
It’s hard! We have been very fortunate to have a lot of reference material from our specials, either using some of the models directly, or taking inspiration from the animation and design style.
We don’t have the capacity to finesse in the way we would on a film, so it was important to have strong creative leadership across the different production departments and a shared creative vision, to hit the mark in fewer iterations.
The set up of each department is crucial in that way as once you establish the rules, the look, the style the tone, you can then keep that moving. Series production is a fast moving train! We also feel that what is most important to audiences is that connection to the characters which comes back to great stories and great performances from our cast, then building from there.
During production of this series Wild Child unfortunately closed its doors, only to reemerge as Stirling Animation with the help of Magic Light Pictures. Nationally, it’s a tough climate for animation, how can we sustain studio productions such as Zog in the UK?
While it’s been complicated setting up Stirling Animation Studios, we’re delighted to be working with such a tremendous crew. There’s a global production squeeze (after the boom years) so it’s a particularly tough climate at the moment.
Government needs to encourage high quality children’s animation production in the UK by raising the tax credit so that it at least matches the one for indie films. Long term we believe there’s always an audience need for high quality well told stories and that will remain our focus.
Does this series open the door for further adventures from there Donaldson/Scheffler universe? A Stick Man series, a Highway Rat run, The Superworm saga?
Zog comes from a wonderful place – a film ending where the trio flew off into the sunset to be doctors together, and Julia’s long term interest in caring (her husband was an eminent paediatrician). We want to explore these wonderful characters and this amazing world for many years to come. Never say never, but for now we’re delighted to be focussing on the wonderful stories of Zog, Pearl and Gadabout caring for all the weird and wonderful creatures in their world.
Zog is now screening on CBeebies and is available to watch on iPlayer