Figaro Pho

Afraid of meteors, elevators and growing old?

Do you have a phobia of hunger, unknown things or just plain boredom?

Or worse yet, staring ducks?!?

You're not alone. Figaro Pho has all of these and plenty more for his return to the small screen in all 39 episodes of The Adventures of Figaro Pho.

Premiered on ABC3 for Halloween last year, it scooped up the AACTA Award for Best Children's Television Series 2013.

This fantastic award is now sitting pretty on creator Luke Jurevisius' shelf next to the AFIs and the Kidscreen awards already connected with Figaro Pho.

For the latest series Luke gathered a fantastic pool of talented people in Adelaide for preproduction on the series with writers, storyboarders, illustrators and more. Creative Director Deane Taylor (Art Director for Nightmare Before Christmas) helmed the look and feel, designing landscapes, assets and interiors. Watermarker Dave Follett storyboarded six of the 39 episodes, each one taking approximately 2 weeks to sketch up each 7 minute episode with another week afterwards to allow for revisions and rewrites.

The biggest joy of working on Figaro Pho felt by nearly every creative involved was that the world of Figaro has no dialogue whatsoever- it's complete pantomime. This meant all the focus had to be put on quality storytelling and heightened visual characterisations, which really pushed the episodes to extreme scenarios and slapstick action. None of the clichéd 'weighing air' poses while characters rattle off inane dialogue!

Storyboarder script meetings with Luke and Deane were frenzied sessions of collective brainstorming of the completed script to milk each scene for the strongest gags and funniest physical humour and emotional impact. Luke's mandate of giving as much creative freedom to the storyboarders to come up with gags was a godsend for Dave. With Figaro being a bundle of exposed emotional nerves and twitchy phobic issues meant Dave had free reign to push his acting skills to the limits making our sensitive hero suffer as much as possible, often times going quite 'off model' for the sake of a gag. Thankfully, Luke, Deane and the animators loved it.

Production was then taken to Sydney to Ambience Entertainment and the Chocolate Liberation Front to do the hard yards of converting the finished storyboards to CG animation, followed by post production brought back to Adelaide's South Australian Film Corporation. Keeping Figoro Pho 'Australian made' ensured the incredibly high standards of quality through every aspect of production.

Figaro Pho has been ABC's biggest ever funded Australian project, and the rewards have been immense with worldwide distribution and international acclaim. The Adventures of Figaro Pho is currently being made into a game for touch screen devices, so stay tuned for more interactive adventures of our scared little friend.