Luckily I’ve never felt the need for an excuse to watch cartoons, but since Eve has started to pay a little more attention to the flickering screen in the corner I’ve been trying to introduce her to some of my favourites. There are some excellent ones to choose from and my hope is that if I can indoctrinate her with the quality shows then perhaps she’ll never ask me to sit through Barney or BooBah.
One of the best is Pocoyo. It’s a Spanish-made series about the adventures of a little boy and his friends: an elephant, a duck a sleepy bird and a puppy. The animation is 3d and it has a wonderful lighting and texturing technique that makes it look like soft plasticine. The design is slightly skewed, the animation is snappy and there’s a lot of funky dancing but no dialogue, instead it’s narrated by Stephen Fry. I haven’t quite persuaded Eve, but I watch it whether she’s around or not so I was really excited (yes I’m a nerd) to discover that one of the creators, David Cantolla, has a blog.
In it he talks about how hecame up with the idea of doing a show when he saw his daughter Vega watching the Tellytubbies:
I had not really paid much attention to them before that and I have to say that at the time I didn´t understand why they were so successful. However, Vega was transfixed. I felt a huge sense of envy… “those guys are so lucky, they are forming part of my daughter´s memories!!!†… and suddenly I saw it really clearly – I wanted it to be US who were building her memories, her´s and my nieces’ and nephews’ , José MarÃa´s kids and business partners´, friends´ and their friends´. To Make Memories!!! And for them to be different, to give something that had ever been given before, a different view point for the pre-school world, we wanted to see children laughing, and applauding and to see the adults understanding what their children were watching, so that they could enjoy it with them … this was the challenge, and this is where it all began….
He goes on to talk about how he and the other creators came up with the idea for Pocoyo eventhough none of them had any experience in making animation. The artistic influence that Calvin & Hobbes and Little Nemo had on the design and story. How they searched for funding and grew it from that seed of an idea to become a multi-award winning global hit. It’s a fascinating read and a blog I’ll be adding to my links.