An international production that brings together Australia and Los Angeles, Animalia is the most ambitious children's television series ever produced down under. All images © Animalia MMVII.

Talking animals have been a mainstay of animation since its early days. From the leader of the club (Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse) to a wascally wabbit (Warner Bros.' Bugs Bunny) to the current crop of CG animated creatures -- including a gourmand rat (Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille) and many, many penguins (Dreamworks' Madagascar, Warner Bros.' Happy Feet and Sony's Surf's Up) -- animated animals seem to have a lot to say.

While a wisecracking Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks) is kicking butt at the box office, another group of CG talking animals has been entertaining and educating children around the world about the power of words -- in the TV series Animalia.

"Most kids love animals -- even if they don't have any pets. So when animals on a large or small screen are talking and telling jokes, it's what kids expect animals to do," says Bruce Johnson, president and CEO, PorchLight Ent., and an executive producer of Animalia.

Animalia is an international production, headquartered in Australia and produced by Animalia Prods. -- a joint venture of executive producers Ewan Burnett, Graeme Base and Murray Pope -- in association with L.A.-based PorchLight. In addition to PorchLight's Johnson, story editor and lead writer Tom Ruegger also shares exec producer credit.

The HD animated show, based on Graeme Base's best-selling alphabet book with fanciful illustrations of animals, made its debut in four major English-speaking territories in fall 2007/spring 2008. Animalia premiered on Network TEN in Australia, on BBC-1 in the U.K., CBC in Canada, and PBS KIDS GO! in the U.S.

Ewan Burnett, president of Burberry Productions in Australia, commented that Animalia is the most ambitious children's television series ever produced in that country.

"Animalia is 40 half-hours of 3D animation at a level of quality not seen in Australia, and possibly the world, before," Burnett says. "As such, it was a hugely ambitious project to produce -- especially in Australia, where 3D television series pipelines did not exist to handle this quantity and quality of work. We had to implement a process of substantial infrastructure development and crew training and, with our principal animation partner Photon VFX, and our second animation house Iloura Digital Pictures, we imported talent from Canada, New Zealand, Europe, Argentina and elsewhere. As a result, the production has left a considerably enhanced capacity in Australia to undertake productions of this nature in the future."

Bruce Johnson.

"Graeme Base's Animalia is an iconic book property with a completely unique, whimsical art style," notes PorchLight's Johnson. "I've been a fan of the book for years, and I always felt these characters should be brought to life in animation. But because of the style, it absolutely had to be done in spectacular CG animation. Fortunately, Graeme, Ewan Burnett and Murray Pope felt the same way and were able to put together an amazing team of artists and animators in Australia. And our anchor network, CBBC, was supportive of doing a series in this style from the beginning."

Zebras in Zeppelins
The series features two contemporary kids, Alex and Zoe, who are mysteriously transported to a new land -- a sophisticated, magical world called Animalia. This land is populated with talking animals drawn from Base's book, including zebras in zeppelins, hogs on bikes, media mice delivering news bulletins on blue butterflies' wings, dragons, unicorns and even elephants with their own eatery.

Leading characters include the self-deprecating Livingstone T. Lion; teenage rock-and-roll loving G'bubu Gorilla; Allegra, a prima donna alligator; and the small but heroic iguana Iggy. There are troublemakers too, such as the scheming tiger Tyrannicus.

Because it airs on educational channels like PBS, Animalia carries positive social messages and promotes character traits like cooperation, persistence and creativity, as well as literacy. Each episode depicts one or more key communication skills such as language use, writing, speaking, listening, critical thinking and online searching and research.