Brilliant Idea group, founded in 2005, is the brain child of brothers Joon Lee and Sang Lee. Till date, B .I. Group have produced TV animations titled “MUFFY AND JEMJEM” and “BUBBLE BUBBLE COOK”. With the mission of delivering fresh content, the brothers are now all charged with their latest animated series titled ‘Gorollas’, which has been showcased at Mip Junior, Mipcom recently.
Gorollas is a 3D CGI series with a 2D feel. The entire series revolves around three Gorollas playing the protagonist. These Gorollas are a brave emergency service trio, who breakthrough problems without wasting a second and they go all out to help anybody, faces any kind of difficulty and are equipped with special tools with having their own vehicles. The home of Gorollas is titled as ‘Del Mango’, which is a planet.
The protagonists Gorollas are named as Dony, Pablo and Franco. Dony has a heart of lion and spirit of adventure with Pablo, who is always optimistic and is excited to do anything and Franco, who is the strongest and biggest Gorolla of all with being the most sensitive.
With a mission of upgrading the world whether by helping someone or fixing a problem, Gorollas take profoundly different approach of solving problems with some of the problem solving areas including, unblocking clogged pipes, saving penguins from melting North Pole, or trying to find out how mystery crop circles are formed, their actions are not driven from a particularly strong sense of justice, nor from some kind of responsibility for being heroes, but rather, they are motivated to do so as they find it as “what they want to do the most” on each day.
The entire series written, directed and produced by Joon and Sang Lee is aimed at kids aged between 4-7 years
Expressing about the idea behind Gorollas, Joon and Sang Lee, share, “As a show for children, there are many cute slapstick comic elements throughout the show. For the characters, we were looking for a new type of heroes that haven’t been dealt with in other classical hero shows. And, we came across Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. We were impressed by his frontier spirit. We focused on his initiative and drive that realized the wild idea of space travel. It was the kind of caliber we wanted for Gorollas and tried to make heroes that are not simply righteous or have super physical ability. We wanted heroes with challenging spirit and driving force.”
Joon and Sang wanted to give a rich yet minimal atmosphere for Gorolla’s environments and for bringing out this into action, they watched a couple of skateboarding videos, which showed lot of possibilities of engaging one’s ride into its environment, and most importantly get you into the mood of taking a ride with them.
Joon added, “We wanted to avoid gloomy future, which we see enough in Hollywood movies, and opt for a happy, bright and amusement park like a planet.”
Gorollas have three super cars named, Donybach, Pabloster, and Fummuh, which are designed as special cars that audience can enjoy seeing.
The goal of Joon and Sang with Gorollas is to present a futuristic yet warm and safe feel. The overall treatment of the series is made up of bright and primary colors for characters with overall pastel colors given to the background.
“We wanted the characters to feel soft and tender, move rhythmically as well as energetically. Says, Joon”
Soft Image and Autodesk Maya are used to execute the entire series with the production budget of the series being 5.5M USD. The creators are in plans to launch Gorollas by in 2013 on major television channels and also as a gaming app and merchandise
Expressing more on Gorollas, Joon, highlights, “Unlike story telling decisions, where it feels like you can only chose one for your age group you picked, good designs and visual overall can be enjoyed by broader age group apart from its story. With cool driving scenes right music, actions scenes and car turning scenes, we wanted to the show elements that can please one’s eyes regardless the age of audience, and yet still stand strongly as “pre-school show”.