Badly Drawn Series

The Sunday Business Post reports that Dublin company Jam Media will produce a new €5 million BBC animation series.

The BBC will provide over the half the funding, with additional money coming from Irish sources.

John Rice, managing director of Jam Media, said that the series should air on RTÉ in 2010. He added:

"The big advantage with producing the series in Ireland is that you can go to the BBC, for example, and tell them that you could get between 30 and 50 per cent of the necessary funding in Ireland yourself with initiatives like Section 481, the BCI and Irish Film Board."

Principal photography work for Badly Drawn Roy began last week. The series will debut on the BBC next March.

"This is our most ambitious project so far," said Rice.

"We'll be producing the series in Ireland and contracting in 90 writers, crew, actors and animators to work on the project in addition to our own staff. We're looking at a 12week live action shoot and 30 weeks in animation production."

The BBC picked up the series following Jam's short film release of the same name in 2006.

Produced under the Frameworks Scheme with funding from RTE, the Arts Council and Irish Film Board, the original film was presented as a mock documentary about an animated character called Roy and his life as part of an ordinary live action' family in a Dublin suburb.

Rice said the format for the new BBC series had been re-jigged to appeal to a pre-teen audience.

"It was commissioned by BBC drama, which is really unusual for a kid's TV series," he said. "The idea is that it might appeal to children on the verge of puberty who often feel kind of different - Roy is a cartoon boy living in the real world.

The original short film upon which the series is based was co-written by Alan and Frank Shannon, and directed by Alan Shannon.