Blacklab Entertainment and Cutting Edge create 52 part kids’ series for WAC airing on ABC3
Blacklab Entertainment and Cutting Edge have teamed up to create WAC: World Animal Championships, a 52 part series that puts the animal kingdom through its paces and has a heap of fun along the way.
Presented by two prankster hosts and a crusty commentator, WAC tries to figure out which animal is the scariest, grossest, fastest, strongest and many other wacky categories.
An original new format created by Brisbane based Blacklab Entertainment, WAC is a visual and audible feast combining live studio links, stock footage and multiple animation and graphics segments per episode. Creatively, the graphics artistic style developed by Cutting Edge for WAC is characterised by clever animation that mimics the child-like nature of scrapbooking and invokes the aesthetics of a collage. This was combined with footage of animals in natural habitats in order to fully complete the story.
Broadcast domestically on ABC3 and sold internationally by The Australian Children’s Television Foundation, the production of WAC was a true creative and logistical achievement, with the ABC3 commissioning a large number of episodes. Clocking in at 52 episodes at 24 minutes each, and all created within a timeframe of just 12 months, the project posed many challenges, all of which were overcome through careful planning and close communication amongst the various teams.
Tim McGahan, Blacklab Entertainment executive producer said the results speak for themselves.
Says McGahan: “The high quality animation and design output that Cutting Edge delivered for the budget was astonishing. The production pipeline created for the project was equally well thought through and designed, and meant there were virtually no process slips ups.”
From the outset, each decision from script to creative execution required careful planning and thought. Cutting Edge’s creative director, Zenon Kohler, said that a particular challenge of such a long running series was that the initial look that sold the pilot had to not only be replicated within budget, but had to be as aesthetically engaging in episode 52 as episode 1.
Says Kohler: “You have to establish rules that maintain a consistency that then allows you to do something surprising and different when you break those rules.”
Jasper St Aubyn West, lead animator, focused the team on ensuring they were able to deliver on Zenon’s creative direction. With their advanced design and after effects skills, they were able to maintain an incredible rate of production that was well above the industry norm.
WAC: The World Animal Championships is produced and financed with the assistance of Screen Queensland and is currently screening in Australia on ABC 3.