animation i n korea
Meet Leafie And Balloopo … In Cannes, Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) is throwing the spotlight on Leafie, A Hen Into The Wild, which will be feted at the MIPJunior closing party, and Balloopo, also to be screened at MIPJunior. Both are properties the agency believes exhibit enormous talent and international promise.
LEAFIE, A Hen Into The Wild, is a 90-minute animated tale based on Korean author Seonmi Hwang’s runaway pre-teen novel of the same name. In South Korea the novel’s classic tale of adventure, love and sacrifice sold more than a million copies, and the home grown animation pulled in record breaking box office admissions when it opened in late July. The animation, about a laying hen named Leafie who wants to escape
Leafie, A Hen Into The Wild, based on author Seonmi Hwang’s runaway pre-teen novel 20 I
Animation In Korea I Ocotber 2011 I www.mipcom.com
the repetitive life of being confined to a chicken farm, has been six years in the making. It is the work of a group of talented Korean illustrators with some hefty credentials to their names, including working for Pixar and Disney. Leafie’s story opens with her living in a cage on a chicken farm, where her lot in life is to spend her days laying eggs while confined to a small space. She yearns to breathe free and finally escapes the chicken farm — but then is hunted down by a weasel named One Eye. Leafie meets Wanderer who helps her get adjusted to life in the wild. But one day, One Eye kills Wanderer and his beautiful mate, a female duck with white feathers. Leafie finds a duck egg and hatches it. When the baby duck is born with a green patch on its head, Leafie names it Greenie and adopts it. To avoid the fate of Greenie’s parents, Leafie moves the baby duck to a swamp where they will both be safer. However, being a mother chicken to a baby duck proves a daunting challenge, especially when Greenie is captured by the chicken farm owner and Leafie has to save Greenie from the very fate from which she once fled. The film has a star-cast of Korean talent, including voice-overs by veteran actors Choi Min-sik and Moon So-ri and rising teen star Yoo Seungho, who also dubbed the voice for Astro Boy in South Korea. Who doesn’t like balloons? Our universal love of these pretty flying objects filled with hot air is what POV Digital and KOCCA is counting on for Balloopo, a 52 x 11 mins pre-school CGI animation series still in pre-production.