NICKELODEON VENTURES INTO THE MONSTERVERSE IN ORIGINAL ANIMATED SERIES OLLIE’S PACK, PREMIERING MONDAY, APRIL 6 AT 4:00 P.M. (ET/PT)
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BURBANK, Calif.—Mar. 30, 2020—Ollie, his two best friends and an otherworldly backpack embark on monstrous adventures with the premiere of Nickelodeon’s original action-comedy series, Ollie’s Pack, on Monday, April 6 at 4:00 P.M. (ET/PT). Produced by Nelvana, the 26-episode, 2D-animated series combines the struggles of tween life with the responsibility of controlling an entire dimension of monsters. Nickelodeon will air premiere episodes of Ollie’s Pack Mondays through Thursdays the weeks of April 6 and April 13. The series is slated to debut internationally later this year, reaching over 170 countries and territories.
“Ollie’s Pack is filled with excitement, humor, and heart, and we are thrilled to welcome Ollie and his friends to Nickelodeon’s incredible family of original characters,” said Nina Hahn, Senior Vice President of Development and Production, Nickelodeon.
Chris Rose, Vice President of Animation Production and Development, Nickelodeon, adds, “I can’t wait to introduce a new generation to the timeless tale of a boy growing up and finding his place, while simultaneously trying to save the world.”
Ollie’s Pack follows Ollie and his backpack, which doubles as a powerful portal allowing an array of monsters to travel from the Monsterverse into Ollie’s world on Earth. Throughout the series, Ollie and his two best friends must protect the earth from the horrifying monsters that have escaped, while often utilizing the helpful monsters who assist with their everyday tween problems, like sneaking into a movie or winning their school’s Battle of the Bands contest. No matter the circumstances, Ollie’s thirst for adventure undoubtedly gets him into trouble that only he and his friends can resolve.
In the first episode, “The Chosen One…Stinks,” Ollie’s stinky sweat is a hot commodity in the Monsterverse so he exchanges it with a monster who offers to do his laundry. Then, in “Not Another Superhero Movie,” Ollie and his friends utilize a monster’s powers to make an epic superhero movie for their film club.
The series stars James Hartnett (Cupcake & Dino) as Ollie, an ordinary, impulsive, and creative kid who has been given the status of Chosen One and Keeper of the Pack; Ana Sani (Mysticons) as Cleo, the brave and adventurous comic relief; and David Berni (Rocket Monkeys) as Bernie, the nervy and logical voice of reason.
Along the way, audiences will be introduced to some larger than life monsters including Andre and Bev, a bounty hunting double act; Major Snooch, a high ranking official in the Ministry of Chosen One Affairs; and Rance, a weaselly petty thief in utter denial about his boldfaced stealing.
A pre-released episode is currently available on the Nick App and Nick On Demand, and will be available on YouTube starting Saturday, April 4.
The series originated from “Monster Pack,” an original short made for Nickelodeon’s 2013 Animated Shorts Program. Creators Pedro Eboli (Cupcake & Dino) and Graham Peterson (Rick & Morty) met at the Vancouver Film School and have now been friends for over 10 years. Pedro is a creator, producer, director and animator from Rio de Janeiro, while Graham is an animation supervisor and instructor at local and overseas studios.
Ollie's Pack - Theme Song (Audio)
About Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon, now in its 40th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The brand includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, digital, location based experiences, publishing and feature films. For more information or artwork, visit http://www.nickpress.com. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks of ViacomCBS Inc. (Nasdaq: VIACA, VIAC).
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Original post:
Nickelodeon will premiere Ollie's Pack, a brand new animated series very soon! Check out the trailer above!
Update (3/26): Fans can stream the first episode of Ollie's Pack, "New Kid on Campus/The Chosen One(s)" now on the Nick App!
Ollie's Pack follows the adventures of Ollie and his Monster Pack. With the help of his friends, Ollie uses the pack to get monsters back to their own universe.
Ollie, his two best friends and an otherworldly backpack embark on monstrous adventures with the premiere of Nickelodeon’s original action-comedy series, Ollie’s Pack, in April. Produced by Nelvana, the 26-episode, 2D-animated series combines the struggles of tween life with the responsibility of controlling an entire dimension of monsters. The series is slated to debut internationally later this year, reaching over 170 countries and territories.
Ollie’s Pack follows Ollie and his backpack, which doubles as a powerful portal allowing an array of monsters to travel from the monsterverse into Ollie’s world on Earth. Throughout the series, Ollie and his two best friends must protect the earth from the horrifying monsters that have escaped, while often utilizing the helpful monsters who assist with their everyday tween problems, like sneaking into a movie or winning their school’s Battle of the Bands contest. No matter the circumstances, Ollie’s thirst for adventure undoubtedly gets him into trouble that only he and his friends can resolve.
The series stars James Harnett (Cupcake & Dino) as Ollie, an ordinary, impulsive, and creative kid who has been given the status of Chosen One and Keeper of the Pack; Ana Sani (Mysticons) as Cleo, the brave and adventurous comic relief; and David Berni (Rocket Monkeys) as Bernie, the nervy and logical voice of reason. Along the way, audiences will be introduced to some larger than life monsters including Andre and Bev, a bounty hunting double act; Major Snooch, a high ranking official in the Ministry of Chosen One Affairs; and Rance, a weaselly petty thief in utter denial about his boldfaced stealing.
Lienne Sawatsky (ToonMarty) serves as a co-executive producer on the series, and Mike Girard (MTV Live, Cupcake & Dinosaur: General Services, Camp Lakebottom) serves as a writer on the show.
Ollie’s Pack is created by Pedro Eboli (Cupcake & Dino) and Graham Peterson (Rick & Morty), with Graham also serving as the show's executive producer and show-runner.
The series originated from Monster Pack, an original short produced at Birdo Studio for Nickelodeon’s 2013 Animated Shorts Program. Creators Pedro and Graham met at the Vancouver Film School and have now been friends for over 10 years. Pedro is a creator, producer, director and animator from Rio de Janeiro, while Graham is an animation supervisor and instructor at local and overseas studios. Pedro and Graham served as writers and directors for the short, with Graham serving as well as an animation director for several additional projects.
Ollie's Pack synopsis:
"Thirteen-year old Ollie, with the help of his best buddies Cleo and Bernie and monster trainer Captain Wowski, protects and controls a backpack portal to the world of monsters."
ViacomCBS (under Viacom International Inc.) has applied to register a patent for the property with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under NICE Classes 41 - Education; entertainment: Entertainment services in the nature of continuing program series, featuring animation, comedy and drama provided through cable television, broadcast television, internet, video-on-demand, and through other forms of transmission media; providing online information in the field of entertainment concerning television programs. The patent was filed on Monday, January 27, 2020.
Check out a sneak peek on Animation Scoop!
Nick has been turning to animated shorts as a source of new content recently. In January 2020 it premiered the 2D-animated comedy series It#s Pony (20 x 22 minutes), which was submitted in Nick’s 2015 International Animated Shorts. In March 2019, Nick debuted Corn & Peg, an animated preschool series, which begun life as a Nickelodeon Preschool Short. In June 2019, it launched the Intergalactic Shorts Program, which aims to drive new comedies for six to 11s that could be turned into long-form programming. It’s now producing the live-action original TV movie The Loud House: A Very Loud Christmas!, which is a spinoff of the animated series that also began as an animated short in its 2013 program.
From Animation Magazine:
Creatures in a Backpack: The Charming World of ‘Ollie’s Pack’
***This article originally appeared in the April ’20 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 299)***
A magical backpack serves as a portal to a world of monsters in Ollie’s Pack, a new show debuting on Nickelodeon in April. The 2D-animated show is created by Pedro Eboli (Cupcake & Dino) and Graham Peterson (Rick and Morty) and produced by Nelvana studios in Toronto.
Eboli and Peterson met at the Vancouver Film School and have been friends for over a decade. The series originated from Monster Pack, an original short produced at Birdo Studio for Nickelodeon’s 2013 International Animated Shorts Program. “Ollie’s Pack first came to be from a series of idea sessions between the two of us,” Eboli and Peterson tell us in an email interview. “We started off with a question that we felt we could explore in a compelling and meaningful way: ‘What if a kid was bestowed a great power but had no instruction manual on how to use it or control it?’ That was eventually followed by: ‘Now, what if there was no evil to fight with it?’ The one thing that stayed pretty consistent throughout the development process were the characters’ personalities, their friendship and the dynamic between them.”
The two creators are big aficionados of sci-fi and pop culture. “We felt inspired at the time to tell a compelling science-fiction story with a supernatural vastness to it,” says Peterson. “It can be easy to get carried away sometimes with that, so we always come back to the most important ideas that the characters need to be the focus of the story, and the issues relatable and grounded, and that it needs to be funny. This allowed us to poke fun at our own seriousness, while still feeling fun and heartfelt, and those tend to be some of the best moments in the show.”
Clean Lines, Memorable Monsters
The show is produced using Toon Boom Harmony software for all animation and VFX work, and overall about 225 people work on the show, including management and voice actors. The producers point out that the overall look of the show was a constant evolution of the style and tone from the first pitch all the way to the development process.
“For the short, the backgrounds had a slight expressionist approach in both the off-kilter lines and focus on bold colors and a fully textured and painterly color style,” they note. “The goal was to make the locations elaborate and full because of the limited scene count to help expand the world and also to contrast the character designs. While it worked for the short, the show needed both a more production-friendly style of backgrounds, but also something that reflected the updated character designs and storytelling we were going for. We wanted to go for thinner and cleaner lines to ground the world in reality a bit more, while also still keeping it full and intricate with details.”
Pedro Eboli and Graham Peterson
The challenge was to do so without making it too sharp and graphic or overdoing the details and depth, which puts lots of strain on the artists. “We love painterly textures, so we tried to keep small amounts of it where we could to help create depth and some looseness to the backgrounds,” says Eboli. “The goal was for the color pass to keep the bold colors we love, and then push for more environmental tone and lighting pass to help express mood, ambience and the feel of the grandness of the world, while still feeling grounded in the lines. The designers did a wonderful job balancing all of this on the show.”
As audiences get ready to unpack their backpacks for the summer, the producers hope they will have a connection to Ollie’s world and the characters they have created. “We really explore some timely and relatable issues in our stories, and we hope that our audience can see themselves, a family member or a friend in those situations and can get some perspective out of that,” they note. “Mostly, we’d like to see our audience sitting down to watch the show to catch a funny and heartfelt story and follow along with characters that could easily be like their friends and neighbors in real life and just have a bunch of laughs!”
Ollie’s Pack premieres on Nickelodeon in April. It will debut internationally later this year.
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More Nick: Nickelodeon Upfront 2020 Roundup!
Originally published: Monday, March 2, 2020 at 20:31 GMT.
Special thanks to @PinkiePie97 for alerting me to a mistake!; Additional sources: Anime Superhero Forum /@ToonJay723, @nomoregroundhogs, @kanc, @Magitroopa, Zap2it TV Listings, Kidscreen.
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