Spain based Ink Apache, a studio dealing in 2D, 3D, Motion Graphics, Character Development and Design is working on Las Cuevas, a 52 X 13´, 2D Animated buddy dark thriller comedy targeting boys and girls aged between 9 -12 yr, and is all set to pitch this series at MIPCOM JUNIOR in a few days from now. Directed by Antonio Morales, Las Cuevas is a buddy comedy about two young friends, Danny and Balti and amateur detectives living in the oddest and mysterious town of the world.
Composed with suspicious characters and tones of frightened laughs, Las Cuevas is a creepy series bringing in paranomal phenomena with it.
Danny is a new kid in the town of Las Cuevas and has a fresh eye of a newcomer,wanting to know more about this town whereas Balti, who is born and raised in Las Cuevas is packed with full of local knowledge and the entire series is based on Danny and Balti encountering and solving mysteries.
Speaking to Animationxpress.com about the making of Las Cuevas, Antonio Morales, says, “Developing a animation project takes long time! The idea was flying over my mind ages ago and at some point I decided to go for it. I meet Javier, head of development at Ink Apache and Sico, a scriptwriter friend and together we brainstormed to polish the idea.We really had a lot of fun & very quickly appear the firsts characters draws. From there, we developed a first bible which we used to show to friends and some colleagues in tv´s to get their feedback. The project was well received and so we decided to bet on it and go for a killer presentation, which included a 1 minute trailer. Then we presented Las Cuevas for the first time in Cartoon Forum October 2011. The project was really welcome and stir up the interest of the main broadcasters and production companies. Since then, we´ve been talking and exploring different production ways in Europe, Canada & Korea in order to find the right partners to co-produce the series.
The series is written headed by talented & experienced Canadian scriptwriter Dale Schott.
Las Cuevas will release in English as a prime language, but Ink Apache plans to deliver the series in French and Spanish Version too.
At present, Ink Apache is in talks with co-producing the series with Canadian, European and Koren Animation companies.
To extend the experiences of Las Cuevas beyond television, the studio also has in mind to develop an investigation internet webgame folowing the animated series, which would be running in parallely to the aired episodes. Other credits of Las Cuevas goes to Javier Almazán as the head of development at Ink Apache, Sico as a creative consultant, Rogelio Folgueras as the animation director & Gerardo Alvarez as the Production Manager
Highlighting on the inspiration behind Las Cuevas,Antonio, shares, “I´ve always loved Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn´s adventures and stories that flew between the novel of manners, the thriller & suspense. I liked the friendship between the protagonist. A strong and intense relationship,which face the abyss of their social classes and keep them close in a team. On the other side, I was inspired by the dark & mysterious world that surrounded the kids and placed them in the center of dangerous adventures.Our project is inspired by this universe, but goes a step further by placing our protagonists Danny & Balti, in an alternate reality, in a blurred space on the map, in an epicenter of energy,where the most amazing paranormal phenomena occurs.Las Cuevas is a journey of these two buddies investigating imaginary cases that finally cross with the strangers, perfidious & unusual events.
The team of Las Cuevas feels that, 2D Traditional Animation brings in freedom to design any kind of scene, situation, background, animation and hence Las Cuevas will be pampered with a completely 2D look .Exaggerated wide angle optics, sometimes fisheye are used by the team to emphaize the sense of reality into the episodes. Also exaggerated colors through a rich and fauve pallete are being used to justify the look and feel of Las Cuevas and the team is in plans for bringing into action Toon Boom software for executing the entire series.
Antonio expressed, “Although the mystery & suspense live in the shadows, we want a bright & brilliant look for the series. The characters. which are integrated into a large and diverse community, have a high level of design. They are extremely original & highly expressive and they integrate very well with the backgrounds that share a common style creating a compact and powerful image. The animation is a high quality standard, which mixes tradigital and cut-out techniques. Beside that we bet on a high quality movie style score that would accompany the audience throughout the episode by lighting the moments of tension, suspense & humor.”
Antonio feels that the USP of Las Cuevas, would be its idea of portraying Paranomal investigation Comedy and also highlights that Horror genre is a good trend to be followed for a kiddie aimed series. In this series, one can experience a LAUGH OUT LOUD COMEDY meeting SPINE-TINGLING CREEPINESS, leading to MYSTERIES piled on MORE MYSTERIES.With Las Cuevas, the main focus of Ink Apache, is to make the audience emotionally identify with the protagonists, Danny and Balti, who are situated in darked locations, sinister places and tricky situations. The team aims to explore a dark and mysterious comedy genre and develop a black humor for kids, which is intelligent, morbid,a fearful experience with shocks and nervous laughters.
