She's a Little Princess!

As mentioned in a previous blog post, next to David McKee, Tony Ross is one of Britain's top children's authors and illustrators. Tony's art style is easily recognisable as he's most famous (in this generation at least) for illustrating Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry series, as Quentin Blake has been for Roald Dahl and Nick Sharatt for Jacqueline Wilson. In fact, Tony has illustrated literally thousands of children's stories - even the semi-forgotten Story Teller series back in the 80's.

As for his writing, his own stories are just as colourful and whimsical, full of witty characters and mad (but clever) storylines. The maddest and funniest of all has to be Towser, but that's another story...

Some of his books were adapted, along with a few of David McKee's, for the wonderfully underrated Anytime Tales - which saw the animated debut of one of his best-loved characters, the Little Princess.

As with a great number of children's characters, the Little Princess started out as a series of books, which saw the Royal Miss eager to explore everything...and often than not, having to learn things as well. It came as no surprise that the character was brought to animation again in 2006 as an animated series, courtesy of Illuminated Films (who also brought to life The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the brilliant Prince Cinders). And thanks to script editor Rachel Murrell, she more or less ensured that the animation style was as faithful to Tony Ross's illustrations as possible when pitching the character for television.

Featuring the voices of squeaky Jane Horricks and Julian Clary as the Narrator, the series has been a rousing success for both Channel 5 and Tony Ross - and with the birth of the Royal Baby, there'll be no fear of this Little Princess being forgotten yet!

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Visit the Little Princess's Kingdom Website!

View episodes of Little Princess on Demand 5!

Toonhound reviews Little Princess!

Buy Little Princess books from Anderson Press!

King Rollo (1980)

David McKee is, in my mind, one of Britain's top children's writers / illustrators with a great many books and characters under his belt - Elmer the Patchwork Elephant, Mr Benn and of course King Rollo. The latter, in fact, was the name that David used when he started up his own animation studio, King Rollo Films Ltd, which saw adaptations of his stories, and that of Tony Ross. The company continues to create new shows for today's young generation - Maisy, Humf and Poppy Cat - each a little gem in their own right using the latest technology but maintaining the classic, gentle look of shows gone by.

King Rollo was one of the first characters the studio created. From the original series of books, it tells of the young-at-heart king who is always in need of assistance from his friends - the Magician, the Cook, Queen Gwen and King Frank. The stories were very simple but wonderfully read by Ray Brooks and animated superbly by Leo Beltoft in their (then) trademark cut-out style. It's a nice little series which shows the skill David McKee's crew could produce at such a small number involved.

Arguably, whenever this series is brought up, fans would always remember Hamlet the Cat, and with good reason - there's no fear of viewers getting bored with Hamlet close by, trying to get involved in the story with his on-screen antics!

A few of David McKee's programmes have been put to DVD already - Anytime Tales and the complete Mr Benn - but just recently folks have reported that a few more shows will be following suit this coming September...including, I'm happy to report, King Rollo himself. So whether you remember the series from old or am keen on sharing some "old school" with your little ones, you can't go wrong here!

Pre-order the following DVDs to come from Amazon!

King Rollo

Towser

Victor and Maria

Toonhound's King Rollo page!

King Rollo Films Home Page!

Ric the Raven (1989)

Personally speaking, while I happily accept cartoons with clever word-play and mad personalties, I've mostly favoured visual humour on account of it's so much fun and easier to draw or write. And in terms of storytelling, they get through scenes and gags much quicker than having characters over-explain everything. To coin a phrase: "Actions speak louder than words."

Pantomime cartoons have always had a great appeal to the International Market, spanning back as far as the Black-and-White days of Charlie Chaplin - given that they barely contain any dialogue to translate, it makes them very easy to air across the world. The Pink Panther, Nudnik, Tom and Jerry, Chuck Jones' Road Runner and Coyote...these would all knock the likes of Spongebob for six should one find wall-to-wall dialogue extremely taxing. They have also inspired many modern-day "silent" works such as Oggy and the Cockroaches, Bernard and even Scrat of Ice Age fame.

They also inspired King Rollo Films to create their own "silent" cartoon back in the late 80's. Co-produced by German Studios Ravensburger Films / Videal GmbH Production, it follows the adventures of Ric, an optimistic blue raven who, as with many characters that weren't limited to singular settings or "guidelines", was placed anywhere in a variety of roles - as a Pilot, a Viking, a Thief, a Knight and many others - where he somehow stumbles through even the simplest of jobs in a series of frantic "sqwarks". Along the way he was regularly assisted / pestered by a trio of short bearded men, who seem like a cross between Bill Oddie and the Oompa-Loompas...  =P

Ric's career started out as a series of 30-second shorts - as were most of King Rollo Films's shows at the time, these were animated in a "cut-out" style; similar to Oliver Postgate's Ivor the Engine, for example. Then soon after, Ric was extended to five-minute shorts with full hand-drawn animation. All in all, it's a terrific series, which features the sparkling talents of Duncan Lamont, David McKee and David Bull, and which follows the comical spirit of the Pink Panther / Looney Tunes very nicely.

Ric originally aired first on Channel 4, then GMTV Kids for ITV, and then Tiny Living for Satellite Television, but he remains very popular in Germany to this day - so much so that he even has his own Digital Channel plus Website, which also airs a variety of other European cartoons. Suffice to say, it's impressive how far that little Raven has flown since 1989!