7th Oct. 2012 GiG Italia Entertainment and tv channel Rai Yo Yo have recently presented the new tv series 'Ronaldinho Gaucho's Team', aired from '8th June at 7.00 AM, and based on the characters of Brazilian cartoonist Mauricio de Sousa, considered the Brazilian Walt Disney, already winner for his career at Cartoons on the Bay 2011.
Around one hundred people are working on all episodes in this first season which has football as common plot, the love for the sport preferred by all kids and sees the protagonist small Ronaldinho, who entertains us with his adventures, games, and gags together with inseparable Diego, Assis, Deisy and Miguelina. Ronaldinho has fun and cheers all of his friends and fans as a real superhero, a super champion on earth and in space.
The main idea of such stories involves the proposition of sports-football as a life style, a “gym for life” with values and positive principles: ideals which are really necessary today.
Actually nowadays football is seen by kids only as a rich business and only for money.
Ronaldinho and friends communicate sports as an activity through which one can learn and develop true values like friendship, team work, loyalty and fair play.
The main targets are kids 5 - 14 years old and the cartoon is sided by the homonymous comic stripe and a long list of merchandising objects, including garments, fashion accessories, games, plushes, action figures, web and mobile contents almost ready for launch. All rights in Italy are held by PLaneta Junior Italia.
This is the first co-production between an Italian startup company and a Brazilian most famous cartoonist of Latin America, Maurizio DeSosa. And this is also the only author and designer of comics and cartoons to evoke sports champions.
The story moves from a first meeting in 2006 of GIG Italia and Mr DeSosa who had already published his comics in around 170 countries. In 2009 a business plan was presented and also the idea to startup with creating other stories with sports characters.
Today the production process is divided into 3 main stages: the development of 52 single stories based on the comic stripe for 11 minutes each. From the basic format the final cartoon is definitely richer and this is made by the Italian team of around 30 professionals divided between two regions Lazio and Tuscany, dealing with all pre production. All new drawings are approved by the Brazilian desk, through web server ftp sharing with continuos passage from storyboard and videoports designed in Italy and immediately approved in Brazil. From here the production gets to an animatic.
“Our labour intensive section is operative from India by a branch of ours” says Giovanni Giuliano President of GIG Italia Entertainment, the producer company, “where the final process allows us to be very competitive with the broadcasters which recently lowered their purchasing budgets a lot.”
Then the production process sees the application of colors and again through shared servers Brazil approves immediately, since this is a true international co-production from the start.
After coloring phase, the final project is finalized and audio dubbed in Italy from renowned Italian dubbing companies, mostly in Rome. Editing, mastering and delivering is effected from Italy.
“This web oriented workflow” says Giuliani, “allows us to share files and everything in almost real time and we obtain a fusion of two working cultures which reflects the success of this production, sold to Italian RAI but also to Latin America, Far an Middle East, and we are dealing with other European countries like Germany, France and Spain.”
