Kavaleer & Copernicus Highlight New Co-Pro

DUBLIN: The new 52×11-minute animated children’s series Garth & Bev is being presented by Kavaleer Productions and animation house Copernicus Studios for the international market.

Garth & Bev is an international co-production being distributed by BBC Worldwide, which is handling sales for all territories excluding Ireland and Canada, with Toronto-based Picture Box as the sales representative for Canada. Production for the series is well under way, with Kavaleer supervising and delivering all the preproduction artwork. Copernicus is delivering half of the storyboards, and all the 2-D animation and final composite work for the series. Paul Rigg, the president of Copernicus, is executive producer, alongside Gary Timpson, a partner and business development director of Kavaleer. Broadcast partners currently signed on for the series are CBeebies, launching the show in March 2010, and RTE, Ireland, which is set to air it in September.

"Kavaleer and Copernicus certainly are keen to capitalize on the lessons garnered from our recent success in obtaining distribution for Garth & Bev, which is an official Irish-Canadian co-production," said Timpson. "This knowledge will be extremely valuable to both companies as we look forward to collaborating on a number of other exciting projects in the near future."

“Garth & Bev is aimed at the 4-to-7 age group and the associated message of respecting the creative inspiration of nature is perfect for kids today,” added Rigg. “The show encourages kids to look to nature for solutions in much the same way the great thinkers and inventors of history have done over the centuries. In a world where kids are largely surrounded by gadgets and gizmos, it reaffirms that nature provides us with all we need and encourages us to look again at the natural world as the great influence behind many of these great ideas.

“We continue our tradition of using lots of hand drawn elements in all aspects of the production process by our talented team of artists,” Rigg continued. “Our team combines the craft of traditional animation with cutting edge HD digital tools to create a visually unique look. This gives the animation, and thus the story, a warm, hand made feel.”