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Tales from a Very Cute Friendship Showrunner Jeroen Jaspaert tells us everything we need to know about Magic Light Pictures/ Blue Zoo’s new show Pip and Posy. Jeroen Jaspaert
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he charming friendship between a mouse and a rabbit is at the heart of the upcoming preschool series Pip and Posy. Based on the hugely popular books by Axel Scheffler, this 52 x 7-minute CG-animated show is produced by U.K.’s Magic Light Pictures and Blue Zoo animation studio. We had a chance to chat with the show’s Emmy- and Annecy prize-winning showrunner Jeroen Jaspaert (Stick Man, The Highway Rat) to find out more about this lovely new offering: Animag: Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved with this new show? Jeroen Jaspaert: Having worked with Axel Scheffler for many years on our half-hour specials, we’d been aware of Pip and Posy since the first picture book release. We liked the characters a lot. They typified the appeal of Scheffler’s illustrations; these charming little animal characters, visually enticing stories
and a lot of comedy sneaking onto the pages. It was the perfect inspiration for Magic Light’s very first TV series production. The company started to develop the project in 2017 initially working with long-time associates writer/director Max Lang (The Gruffalo, Zog, The Snail and the Whale) and writer/producer Suzanne Lang. Later in the year they were joined by Magic Light’s development producer, Vici King. When did you actually start working on it and how many people work on the production? I had been at Magic Light to direct Stick Man and The Highway Rat. It was a great experience working with them, so in 2018 I joined their animation development team. Initially I looked at various prospective projects, but as I had previous experience in preschool television, Pip and Posy instinctively felt like a natural match. Together with a few final scripts, this set out our vision for the series which
met with a great response from the market. We were fortunate to get commissioned for 52 episodes by Milkshake, Sky Kids and ZDF. We are still writing the final scripts but have delivered the first batch of finished episodes for broadcast already. At the moment, we are at max capacity — we nearly have 100 people involved in this production. Where is the animation produced? Which animation tools are used to produce it? We did the original teaser with Blue Zoo animation studios. This was a great experience, as it quickly became clear to us they are a group of talented artists, who pride themselves in going beyond the expectations of preschool TV. They were the natural choice to produce the animation. We are working with Matt Tea as the series director, who has a great rapport with the whole team. The team at Blue Zoo is around 60 to 70 people strong. They use
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may 21
