Puffins- Animated Series
The Who
While working on the film Waiting For the Barbarians, an unlikely friendship formed between Italian film producer (and my boss) Andrea Iervolino and mega movie star Johnny Depp. Through this friendship and an already comfortable working relationship, we began developing an animated series about four puffin roommates on the outskirts of a small, sleepy town, who neighbor an ex-rockstar puffin living in a camper named Johnny Puff. This world is a spin-off from the 3D animated feature Arctic Dogs, released a few years ago, though the characters—including Johnny—were brand new additions to the intellectual property. Johnny Depp loved the concept and the designs and got involved early on to help define the voice of his character, Johnny Puff. His cadence, expressions, and overall tone were all Johnny!
We were already deep into production on the Arctic Friends animated series, and since many of the same assets (characters, sets, and props) would carry over, it made sense to manage both productions from our Rome facilities. My role as Showrunner expanded, so I divided responsibilities between the two shows with veteran VFX supervisor and good friend Giuseppe Squilacci. He and I had already built the team for our initial series, making it a natural fit to share creative supervision for the Puffins and Arctic Friends property.
As Showrunner, my responsibilities included working with the writers to review and approve episode concepts and scripts, reviewing final animatics moving into layout and animation, and providing final feedback and notes on the animation. I also handled the review and approval of any new visual effects—both specific to episodes and as new additions to the series’ VFX library—and gave final approval on renders. I worked with the sound team to cast the voice actors (excluding Johnny Depp) and collaborated with the composer to establish the score and variations for future seasons. I was also responsible for locking the final edits after guest directors delivered their cuts and maintaining the IP's brand and art direction with the marketing team to ensure consistency across distribution platforms
The What:
Every day was just regular fun for our puffins, Didi, Pie, Tic, and Tac - until they touched a meteor and unleashed incredible superpowers of speed, strength, intelligence, and empathy. With help and guidance from their mentor Johnny Puff, they transform into Tactik, Didi Damage, Megapie, and Mystic - a unified superhero team. While they are still just puffins and they have their own disagreements and issues, when help is needed, they are quick to put their differences aside, suit up and fly out to save the day.
The original 2d versions of our main characters, Didi, Tac, Pie and Tic
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