Rastamouse Makers Boost Welsh Creative Sector

The Welsh company behind BBC’s highly successful Rastamouse series has been commissioned to produce a new £1.3m animated series for pre-school children.
Dinamo Productions is co-producing the new series with Dublin based Kavaleer Productions while support from the Welsh Government will ensure the majority of the production is undertaken in Wales, providing an important boost for the creative sector.
The Treforest based company has been offered £150,000 of repayable finance, which Dinamo’s Commercial Director Hywel Williams described as a crucial part of the funding to complete their financial model.
It means that 70% of the production will be carried out in Wales which is expected to generate a guaranteed spend of at least £800K within the creative sector in Wales.
The series will also be the first project CBeebies, RTE and S4C have collaborated on together and will be premiered concurrently on all three channels on October 24, 2011 as well as appearing on Gaelic language channel MG Alba in Scotland.
The new series, Abadas, is set in the magical world of a pop-up book when young children are transported to the playful world of Pop Up Island and join Hari the Hippo, Seren the bat and Ela the Fox.
Series Producer, Siwan Jobbins, explained that Abadas is designed to help the language development of youngsters through the use of visual comedy, music, songs and interactive word and sound association.
Using live action sequences mixed with animation, the programme will initially be available in Welsh, English and Gaelic and can be adapted for use in any language.
The series has already been pre-sold to Al Jazeera who will re-version it into Arabic whilst Target Entertainment have been appointed to distribute the series internationally.
Business Minister Edwina Hart welcomed the news and said she was pleased that business finance from the Welsh Government had helped the company.
(BMcN/DW)