Animated sketch-based children’s TV series from One Animation launches U.K. toy line with global rollout to follow.
LONDON – One Animation has announced a global spinoff of an Oddbods’ toy line. It will initially launch in the UK followed by an international rollout. Oddbods, the animated children’s TV series created by Richard Thomas, is a sketch-based series aimed at 4-9 year olds, which follows the adventures of seven characters living in Oddsville who each have a distinct personality - from sleepy Zee to short tempered Fuse. The series has received over 170 million views on YouTube.
Oddbods is set to rival kids’ TV classics such as Thunderbirds, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and SpongeBob SquarePants, with a range of toys and licensed merchandise which hit the UK shops this month (July) before anywhere else in the world.
Since its TV debut last year, Oddbods has been picked up by channels around the world, including Boomerang across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and Disney Channel in Asia, plus Cartoon Network and Disney XD. In the UK it debuted on ITV’s dedicated kids’ channel CITV late last autumn, and is already one of its top five shows of 2016, racking up six million views to date.
“Every so often animated characters come along whom everyone just seems to fall in love with - in the past this has been iconic characters such as Tom and Jerry, or in more recent times the highly successful Minions. And now we have Oddbods. Characters and shows like these have a universal appeal because of their conceptual simplicity combined with good old-fashioned fun,” commented Trudi Hayward, SVP, head of global merchandising, ITV Studios Global Entertainment. “Oddbods, which celebrates all the ‘oddness’ in everyday life, is one of these types of show not least because of the fantastic quality of storytelling and cinema-quality production. But also because the slapstick, dialogue free concept works so brilliantly for the multi-screen generation.”
“As a kid growing up in Northern England I loved Cosgrove Hall productions such as Danger Mouse, Count Duckula and Jamie and the Magic Torch, plus a tiny stop-motion animated series from the 80s called The Trap Door, narrated by Willie Rushton, which was inspired,” added Thomas. “The fact it was clearly hand crafted totally hooked me in, because like every kid I loved Plasticine, and from then on I was totally hooked. I admit to sometimes being miserable and grumpy, but behind the facade lies a plethora of rather cute and endearing ideas - one of which happened to be Oddbods, which was particularly inspired by two cartoons I grew up 
with: Tom and Jerry and Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“The non-dialogue approach for Oddbods was very deliberate - It was important thatthe animation conveyed the emotion - and the best way to enforce this was to place restrictions on the animators. Once you take the 'spoken word' out of the picture so to speak - it forces the animator to make very deliberate decisions with their acting choices. Every nuance counts, the eye-dart, the raised eyebrow, the posture...it's the subtleties that really bring the characters to life,” concluded Thomas. “Comedy is universal and silent comedy even more so, as there is no language barrier to dilute the gag. It doesn't matter if you're five or 55, there's normally something in the fabric of our writing that you can relate to either as a child or a grown up,”
The Oddbods toy range, distributed by Golden Bear, launches this month in the UK with roll out in other regions to follow. It is available from a range of stores including Argos, Amazon, The Entertainer, Tesco, Toys ’R’ Us, and Smyths.
Source: One Animation
