APC Kids, the children’s entertainment arm of London-based boutique financier and distributor About Premium Content, has appointed Hong Kong-based Toy Plus as master toy partner for its animated series Kid-E-Cats.
The deal will see Toy Plus develop a range of toys including plush, collectibles, figurines and playsets for preschoolers. Initial products are set to debut at Hong Kong Toys & Games fair in January, followed by a global retail launch scheduled for October 2019.
Focusing on three kittens who are always jumping into action to solve problems in funny ways, the animated series is based on a Russian series produced by CTC Media and Studio Metrafilm. The third season is currently in production.
Toy Plus’s appointment comes as APC Kids continues to grow the series across the globe. Earlier this year, the company inked a raft of new broadcast sales with Turner’s Cartoonito in Italy, HBO Spain, MTG Latvia and Lithuania, and C4U (Kids1TV) in South Korea. The series debuted in 143 countries on Nick Jr. in 2017, including the UK, Benelux, Germany and Switzerland, with additional broadcast partners in Europe and Canada, including YLE (Finland), TG4 (Ireland), TV Puls (Poland), Knowledge Network (Canada).
Producer Evgeniy Golovin and author Maria Parfenova tell about the scenario, about creating the scenario for animated film «Koschei. The true story».
Several years ago we decided to unleash the «Fantasy Patrol» universe’s story. We wanted to make it deeper and broaden. We want to tell how the magic came to our world and where Helena, Mary, Snowy and Valery came from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NnLFpnGV0Y
Koschei, Baba Yaga and Vodyanoy are well-known heroes of Russian folklore. Everyone knows their stories and who they are, but no one understands why they did what they did. In our animated film we want to show these heroes from the opposite side. We show how these creatures become themselves. Magic world is not so simple as we think it is.
Our Koschei is not an geedy old man, he is warrior who bravely fight against the fate’s trials.
Music for an animated film should be unique and original. With our compositors Sergey Bogolyobskij and Daria Stavrovich we work alot on references. Although Sergey and Daria work on the «Fantasy Patrol» music.
We are trying to create our own style in music and graphics. We are trying to find the ‘face’ of our Animation Studio in making animated films
Evgeniy Golovin, producer at Parovoz Animation Studio
The main point is to make character original and interesting for the audience. The character need to hook the viewer
Maria Parfenova, author at Parovoz Animation Studio
A new mobile app based on the universe of the animated series Leo and Tig has been released. The adventures begin in fantastic taiga!
Download for iOS / for Android
Interactive Moolt publishing house released the new mobile app Leo and Tig: Forest Adventures. The first part of the game has already echoed in the hearts of children and their parents, and, in May 2018, it won three prizes at once on DevGamm Awards 2018 such as Best Game, Best Visual Design, Best Mobile Game.
The app Leo and Tig: Forest Adventures will lead a child through an exciting journey together with favourite charming characters. They will meet many unexpected obstacles on their way that could be overcome only in team.
The game story is devoted to adventures of brave friends. The spirit of taiga has led them to the heart of the forest — the Big Tree. This is the place where little animals can make the home they have dreamed for so long. They will have to complete many fascinating quests, make a number of extraordinary discoveries, and solve all the riddles from real spirits of taiga to make their new home as comfortable as possible.
A young gamer will have to choose one of the characters for a journey through the fairy tale forest.
Intuitive interface and gripping gameplay allow to enjoy playing for favourite heroes and the opportunity to guide them through fabulous adventures.
Interactive Moolt is the largest Russian publisher of educative mobile apps for children that enters the TOP-5 of publishers in this segment. The total number of downloads of educative games and apps of the publishing house has exceeded 30 million.
This is a rhymed musical series about friendship, honesty and taking responsibility for your actions. The main character is a Good Boy who often gets carried away with his games and accidentally breaks or spoils something. The plot is built in an unusual genre for animation series — musical. It successfully combines video dynamics and the narration of the story. In each episode there is a new story about responsibility, friendship and emotional world of the child.
Present days. Saint Petersburg. Four friends — Art, Kira, Phil and Vic are the coolest gamers in school. Eventually they find a suspicious laptop with «Heroes of Envell» game installed on it. Turns out that this very laptop is a portal to another dimension, a game realm which is full of adventures and real-life danger.
Animation series tells us about adventures of four aliens — cubies: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. After arriving on Earth, they disguised themselves as different species of flora and fauna but in the cubic form: Yellow became a cubic chicken, Red transformed into a red rabbit, Blue turned into aquarium and Green became a bush of green grass.
They will learn about various natural phenomena of our planet Earth. They also made new friends here who help them in their exploration: a smart and slightly unlucky boy named Stasik and Lera, who is cheerful, resourceful girl.
For many years two clans ruled by super villains—Hegemon the Rhino and Darwin the Atomic Monkey—have been at each other’s throats. Blinded by their desire to rule the world, they’ve turned it into a combat field and would’ve probably already destroyed it… If it weren’t for the Fearless Animals Special Team!
An imaginative series based on the world’s classic tales as told by the main characters through a projection of spectacular designs. Smarty-pants Kate teaches her baby brother Mike about the wonders of life through folk tales and beautiful images. Mike is a merry and mischievous young boy, a big dreamer and fan of computer games, who thinks reading is boring. In Magic Lantern, the siblings experience stories of classic literature — from the Musketeers, Gulliver to Oscar Wilde — as seen by captivating illustrations on a film-strip, created by 80 different acclaimed artists, discovering age-old life values for Mike and his sister.
Animated series «Paper tales» tells the kids about the fun adventures of paper animals, i.e. a moose named Aristotle and a woodpecker named Knock-knock, in a paper country where everything is made of paper only.
Funny adventures are combined with interesting do-it-yourself lessons, at which viewers will learn how to make all the cartoon characters from paper, cardboard, scissors and glue.
Anton Smetankin, CEO of Parovoz studio, spoke on specifics of Russian animation market, criteria for preparing of children’s content, and state support for studios in Russia on Culture Radio.
The audience under 3 years old is as undemanding to the quality of content as possible, of course, we mean children. Parents are the main censors on a child’s way to the cartoons. Parovoz studio always searched for something catchy for a child in a cartoon, the reason he would want to see the cartoon again and again. We believe a gentle voiceover, almost mother’s intonations, likeable characters, bright picture and stories without violence and quick action are the key criteria.
As for 10 to 14 years old viewers, we have to talk about love and sometimes show some violence. I guess, we are not yet ready for it and still learning to tell stories to this audience. However, these viewers watch our Heroes of Envell and Fantasy Patrol animated series.
Unfortunately, there is still lack of content on Russian animation market today. Existing major players such as Soyuzmultfilm, Animaccord, Aeroplane, Melnitsa, Petersburg, and certainly our studio can’t provide enough content, because they have to compete not even with each other but with foreign content which comes to Russia with sponsor support and large budgets for broadcasting. Moreover, work experience is not transferred from studio to studio: the key players develop their own expertise without sharing it. That’s why each studio in a way has to reinvent the wheel.
The lack of content is acutely felt on industry events: the same cartoons are nominated for competitions from year to year. As for us, we strive to go beyond Russian festivals and nominate our works for international competitions. For instance, our animated series Fantasy Patrol and Paper Tales have become participants of Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France in 2016-2017.
There are a lot of professionals in the market, however each studio prefers preparing its own specialists «customising» them to its own needs. At they same time, animation and game industries fight for technicians who are few in number in the market. Our studio is only 4 years old but we have gathered more than 300 professionals by the moment. We also try to provide freedom for our creators to enable them to make author animation which is quite interesting for audience.
Today, animated shows of the studio are watched on all continents where broadcast exists. In the past year, children from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, Papua New Guinea, Estonia, China, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Sweden had the opportunity to see the animated series of our studio.
Our cartoons are very popular in China because their own market doesn’t produce such content: they are still learning and don’t know yet which plots to choose and how to tell an interesting story to audience.
Dubbing and revoicing are provided not by the studio but by the right holder or directly by the buyer. This is how it works: colleagues give us the sound (english dubbing) and we adjust the picture to the sound.
The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation certainly tries to support animation through its grants as well as Cinema Foundation does, but the bigger issue here is that their patronage doesn’t extend to animated series. Yet there is some good news — the law which implies reducing of tax rates for animation studios is about to come.
We are eager to grow into creativity, we want to work with foreign companies and channels. It’s pleasant and interesting to make children’s content, yet we strive to learn how to tell amazing stories for teenagers as well.
Since its foundation, Parovoz studio was engaged with production of animation content for children’s channels of VGTRK holding such as Carousel, Moolt, Tlum HD, Ani, Moolt&Music. Today, animated series of Parovoz studio are presented on all continents where broadcasting exists. Let’s look in retrospect how animated shows of Parovoz studio have entered the world market over past year.
In 2017, channels of the largest media company on the territory of the former Yugoslavia – United Media – have shown Paper Tales and Magic Lantern animated series. It’s important to note that the total audience of company’s channels is 20 million people from European countries.
About this time, our animated shows Be-Be-Bears, Paper Tales, and Magic Lantern have become available for viewers of EMTV network — the leading media holding in Papua New Guinea. This resource has been «window to the world» for the country’s people over two centuries, and about 7 millions of TV viewers trust the information broadcast by the channel today.
In the same year, little viewers in Estonia could see four animated series: Be-Be-Bears, Rolando Locomotov, Paper Tales, and Magic Lantern.
The animated shows were purchased by national broadcasting company Eesti Rahvusringhääling (EER Estonia) and shown on channels ETV2 that broadcasts programs in Russian and children’s shows and ETV+ devoted to news, analytics, discussion, socio-political, cultural and entertainment programs, TV series, and modern independent films.
In early 2018, MBC Group, the leading company in the field of satellite broadcasting on the territory of Middle East and North Africa, acquired Russian animated series Magic Lantern and Rolando Locomotov produced by Parovoz studio.
The animated shows have become available on the first VOD platform in the region. The agreement on broadcast rights to the cartoons was concluded between MBC Group and Signal Media company.
In March 2018, subscribers of the largest online cinemas in China ( Tencent Video, iQIYI, and Mango TV) with total monthly audience exceeding 1 billion of viewers saw episodes of Be-Be-Bears, Paper Tales, Leo and Tig, Fantasy Patrol, F.A.S.T., Magic Lantern, Rolando Locomotov, Woodventures, Cutie Cubies, and Heroes of Envell. The sale of media rights for the large pool of animated series with the volume more than 550 series has become the greatest one in history of Russia and China.
«Expansion» of our animated shows continued in May 2018, when little viewers of the biggest in China online cinema YOUKU (monthly audience over than 500 million people) could watch episodes of beloved series.
Young audience loves Leo and Tig animated series not only in China but in the Netherlands as well. Nederlandse Publieke Omroep or NPO, state broadcaster and the largest media corporation in the Netherlands, has recently acquired rights for broadcasting of Leo and Tig. NPO manages three generalist channels and six thematic projects. The animated series Leo and Tig will complement the content profile of children’s channel NPO Zapp Xtra.
Already in 2017, the largest national media holding of Hungary MTVA has purchased 250 episodes of cartoons made by Parovoz studio among which were such popular projects as Be-Be-Bears, Paper Tales, and Magic Lantern. And in 2018, media holding has acquired media rights to animated series Leo and Tig. The episodes were intended for Hungarian public TV channel M2 broadcasting for kids and family.
The animated series Fantasy Patrol was premiered on one of the most popular kid’s channels in Sweden — SVT Barnkanalen in June this year. Little viewers were much delighted from the first episode: the cartoon gathered 49,6% of all channel’s audience. Thus, almost nine from ten young viewers opted for the Russian series.
We fell in love with Fantasy Patrol and adventures of the brave girls, friends helping each other in everything
– Helena Nylander, programme director at SVT Barnkanalen, tells.
Fantasy Patrol has become the most popular show on Swedish kids & family channels such as Disney, Cartoon Network Nordic, Nickelodeon, Disney XD, Nick Jr, NickToons, Cartoon Network Sweden.
Animated series Be-Be-Bears and Leo and Tig are now available on Netflix. The company mainly supplies TV series broadcasted through multimedia platform with paid membership. According to the data of January 2018, the number of subscribers has reached 130 million, half of them live in the USA. It means that little viewers from 190 countries covered by Netflix can watch our animated shows. Children’s content is quite universal, there is often no need to adapt it in a special way except translating. The success of our animated series abroad proves it.
This is a remarkable event for the studio confirming the relevance of our concepts in all markets — in Europe, Asia, and in North America now. We will announce about new experiments encouraged by this success in the fall. And thanks to Signal Media for committed work
– Anton Smetankin, CEO of Parovoz studio, says.
Netflix global coverage on the map
All agreements on broadcasting rights to animated series of Parovoz studio were arranged by Signal Media company.
Thanks to our colleagues we made a breakthrough: the attention of experts purchasing cartoons for their countries was drawn to Russian animated show Heroes of Envell.
The animated show was screened on an exhibition of audiovisual content for children and youth MIP Junior within New Creative Territories section.
Viewers could watch the first episode of Be-be-bears on the Russian cinema screens within Moolt in Cinema project on 21 March 2015. By now, more than 150 episodes have been released for the last three years! It is already three years that Bucky and Bjorn began sharing their funny adventures in an entertaining way on Moolt and Tloom HD channels that are parts of Digital Television group (VGTRK and Rostelecom).
The cartoon tells young audience about true friendship, kindness, and love for nature. Brown bear Bucky and polar bear Bjorn, Chiky, Littlefox and other faithful friends learn to get along and to experience together all adventures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=5Y8EXMKcg7g
The series have won the viewers hearts not only in Russia, but all around the world as well during this period.
Global conquest of international market began in October 2016 with the ambitious launch on the top world markets MIPJunior and MIPCOM (Cannes, France).
Russian animated series Be-be-bears got into the top-15 of the most demanded TV projects for children in the world, according to results of MIPJunior’s screening.
Media rights for animated series were acquired by TV channels and cinemas across the world in less than a year.
Be-be-bears are translated into 10 the most popular languages including English, Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi. Little viewers from the USA, North Africa, Middle East met the characters of animated series and became so fond of them. Be-be-bears launched in China with a great success. More than 6 billions viewers watched the cartoons on the web sight of the biggest Chinese video streaming operator LeEco in the first three days.
Be-be-bears attract big family audience to TV screens, occupy leading positions in ratings, moreover, professionals of the industry appreciated the quality of animation. In 2016, Be-be-bears was honored with Grand Prix of 23rd Open Russian Animation Film Festival in Suzdal. Series also won in viewers voting in the category Morning Series with a Cup of Cacao and a Bun within 10th Big Cartoon Festival.
Nowadays, Be-be-bears series are more than just cartoons. The cartoon has its own licensed products, 7 games for smartphone and tablets.
Bucky and Bjorn participated across the whole Russia in the annual major children’s festivals in the country «Multimir» and «Multimir. Bright Summer» which had more than 170 000 visitors in 2017! The bears took part in theatrical scenes, photographed with all who wished, and helped children to take a closer look at a fantasy world. Earlier, in 2016, Be-be-bears held their own winter Olympic Games – The Bears Competition with much success. In the end of 2017, the Moolt Store opened at the Riviera shopping mall in Moscow. There are more than 350 top selling licensed products based on Be-be-bears animated series.
In april 2018, all the young fans will meet new dancing competition from the main characters Bucky and Bjorn.
The Digital Television children’s channels will arrange a marathon of stories about Be-be-bears for the birthday of favorite characters. Tloom HD channel starts celebrating on Saturday 17 March, from 06:00 till 18:30, and will continue up to 21 March inclusively.
Moolt channel scheduled Be-be-bears Day for 24 March from 06:00 till 19:00, and for 25 March from 10:00 till 14:00. During the week from 26 March to 1 April, young audience will watch favorite animated series in Be-be-bears blocks.
On Mooltimusic channel Be-be-bears Day will be on 21 March. Viewers will enjoy songs and dances in the company of favorite characters for the whole day!
Young viewers in Latin America will have the opportunity to watch the favorite Russian animated series on Moolt channel from 19 to 23 March at 08:00, 16:00, 20:00 and on 25 March from 10:00 till 18:00.
High-quality dolls of main characters from Fantasy Patrol animated series hit the market on 15th of October. Helena, Snowy, Mary and Valery are presented in two collections — in casual with the everyday look and in magic — in their fairy appearance with magical clothes and accessories.
One can buy Fantasy Patrol dolls through the producer — Gulliver Company. Also the toys are already available at Detskiy Mir, national network of children stores.
Gulliver Company reaffirms its leading player status at kids fashion industry market year after year. The company gained not only the partners and consumers confidence but the well-earned respect of fashion industry professionals, having won some independent awards in the course of its activity. The retail chain has more than 175 brand stores in more than 100 cities of Russia, CIS and Europe.