2 minute read
Mixed-Media Mayhem
Ken Anderson talks about the fun and madness of bringing Liz Pichon’s Tom Gates books to animated life.
When British author and illustrator Liz Pichon’s frst Tom Gates book was published 10 years ago, young readers couldn’t get enough of its charming humor and its cheerful illustrations and games. This year, the multi-million-copy bestselling book series enters a new medium as a 20 x 11-minute mixed-media show titled The Brilliant World of Tom Gates hits the market. (It premiered on Sky’s on-demand service Sky Kids in the U.K. and Ireland in January).
Produced by TG Entertainment and Screen Scotland, with animation provided by Wild Child Animation, the instantly likable show centers on Tom’s crazy creative life at home and school as he runs rings around his parents and fnds new and inventive ways to annoy his sisters. The voice cast includes actress Catherine Tate as Tom’s long-suffering mom Rita, Mark Bonnar as his “beady-eyed” teacher and 10-year-old newcomer Logan Matthews in the title role. As exec producer Ken Anderson explains, “Liz’s books are written and illustrated in a very particular way, with all kinds of fun games, songs and activities mixed in with stories and random fun and funny characters. The prospect of trying to wrangle this type of storytelling and visuals into a conventional TV series didn’t seem to be the way to go. So, we needed to do something different.”
— Exec producer Ken Anderson
After bringing award-winning writer Ben Ward (Horrible Histories) on board, the producers opted for a modular, magazine program that could be shown separately or combined together to create essentially any length of programming. “The fnal element was to try to pull all these elements together into a coherent and watchable episode,” says Anderson, who is also the founder of Scotland’s Wild Child Animation studio. “An episode that had
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