It's Graduation Year For Ocean Girl - From Live To Animated Work

The Age

Tuesday November 17, 1998

CAROLYN WEBB

After battling the forces of evil on Earth, Ocean Girl is morphing into an animated crusader to do battle with the dastardly Space Wizard on her home planet of Oceana - and she is set to cast her spell over children throughout the world.

The story of Ocean Girl, or Neri as she is also known, has been such a spectacular success as a children's drama series, in which the lead role was played by Marzena Godecki, that the character has been given a new lease of life in an animated series being created in Melbourne.

The drama series, which is shown in 115 countries, last month won a BAFTA award for excellence.

Carlton company Animation Works is creating the $8 million animated series. Channel 10 has already snapped up the 26-episode series, even though the first episode won't be finished until mid-December and will go to air in the middle of next year.

World distribution rights for the animated Ocean Girl series have been bought by Beyond International (for North America and Asia); Monaco-based Daro (for most of Europe); and French company Teleimage, (for France and French territories).

Next March, the animated Ocean Girl will be shown to the big overseas TV networks at the MIPTV festival in Cannes - the major TV marketplace.

Ocean Girl is set on Oceana, the home planet of Ocean Girl, or Neri. The ``Arthurian"-style stories focus on her battle with the evil Space Wizard, who creates fierce earthquakes, tidal waves and general mayhem. Neri ends up uniting the planet's clans to save the day - and finds time to fall for handsome Prince Jobah.

The making of each episode starts with a comic-strip storyboard, with drawings based on a script. Character voices are actually recorded before the artwork by actors who include Marg Downey (Something Stupid), who plays Shema, head of the Flyers, a gang of pterodactyl-like birds; Michael Carmen, who is the Space Wizard; and The Age television reviewer Dennis Pryor, who voices King Nemon. Ocean Girl is played by the live action series star Marzena Godecki.

Next, the dialogue is ``track-read", or broken down into individual components, which the animators use to match their images. Ocean Girl has ``three-dimensional" surrounds that enable the action to go into and around a scene. The characters are ``composited" or superimposed on to the scenes.

The action is then computer-edited, the composer adds music, dialogue is mixed in, and the finished product is copied to digital video. Up to 40,000 drawings are made for each 22-minute episode.

All Ocean Girl's animation will stay in Melbourne, rather than go overseas. And Animation Works can look to other projects. In future, its producers want to tackle teenage and sitcom animations - our own Simpsons.

Animation at work:

* The $8 million animation series, Ocean Girl, will be 26 episodes of 22 minutes each.

* Each episode includes 12,000 individual drawings.

* All have been sold to the Ten Network and three distributors for overseas markets.

* Episode one should be finished by mid-December.

© 1998 The Age

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