Hi, it’s Lucy here, one of the Executive Producers of Iconicles, a brand new series for CBeebies. I can tell you that the champagne is on ice ready for 3.45 on 8th August when the Iconicles production team will sit down to watch its very first transmission on Cbeebies . Well, at that time of the day it’s more likely to be tea and cake but nevertheless a celebration is definitely in order as the quirky, colourful Iconicle characters literally burst out of the screen for the first time.
As we put the finishing touches to the last episodes of the series it’s hard to believe that the Iconicle characters which I first saw as a collection of wonderful designs from the talented designer Lois Lee 6 years ago have turned into the 26 x half hour series that starts next week. As soon as we saw Lois’ designs we just knew that children would love her animal characters, but we needed to answer a lot of questions before we could bring them to life as a series. It was in one of our first development brainstorms that someone mentioned that as a child themselves they always wished that their favourite characters could jump out of the television and into their living room and that was the spark that we needed. What if the Iconicles really could jump through the screen and become ‘real’?
That first question quickly became many more as we asked ourselves “Where do they live?”, “Do they all live together?”, “Who finds them?”, “How do they get into the real world?” and before we knew it we ended up with the character of Nat, a young explorer-inventor, who has invented an amazing interactive touch-screen on which he can watch the adventures of our Iconicle characters. Of course, with Nat being an explorer, he wants to visit the world of the Iconicles if only he could invent a way to do that. When one of Nat’s inventions backfires, instead of him going to the world of the Iconicles the screen becomes a portal that allows the Iconicle animals to jump through into Nat’s world.
Luckily for us the BBC were as excited about this idea as we were, and once Cbeebies said yes in 2007 the hard work of raising the money and finding production partners began. In 2009 work finally started on what must be one of Cbeebies most complex and ambitious shows ever. Iconicles is a mixture of Live Action, 2-D animation and CGI animation and during the course of the production over 100 people have been involved in the various stages from the amazing Writers and Directors, all those lovely animators at Dinamo Productions in Wales and of course our wonderful cast who breathed life into the Iconicle animals.
One of my personal highlights in this long production came when we cast the character of Nat. As soon as we saw the gorgeous and talented Gavin Stenhouse we all knew what a hit he’d be with the audience (not to mention their Mummies!). But this was an unusual role. As well as acting, Nat has to interact with the audience and with the Iconicle characters which of course were animated after the live-action was shot. Gavin became very adept at singing, dancing and chatting perfectly to thin air. Now, when you see him chatting to Rumple the Rhino or juggling with Skitter the Squirrel in the finished show it’s hard to believe that the Iconicles haven’t really jumped through the Iconi-screen to join Nat in his studio.
We hope that watching Nat and the Iconicles will spur your children on to explorations and inventions of their own . I for one am hoping that one of them will be inspired to invent a screen through which our favourite characters really can jump out into the real world. When it happens – I’m first in line.
|15:06 UK time, Friday, 26 August 2011
