Francesco Manfio
Italian leading animation company Gruppo Alcuni is attending MIFA 2022 with new “Mini Pet Pals” and “Mini Dinos” episodes as well as new productions such as “The Black Diamond Race,” the second series of “Leonardo da Vinci,” and “Gateway 66”. “I’m convinced that MIFA 2022 will establish an even greater comeback market”, Francesco Manfio, co-founder and CEO at Gruppo Alcuni, said to Señal News.
Regarding “Mini Pet Pals” and “Mini Dinos,” Manfio asserted that along with Rai Ragazzi, co-producers of the show, they were looking for an idea to launch a new “Mini Pet Pals” season. “After 208 extremely successful episodes, we definitely wanted something original. With our writing team, we came up with the idea that Top Hat (our cute and clumsy bunny) could wander into a cave during a field trip and discover a prehistoric mini dinosaur school. So the ‘Mini Pet Pals’ and ‘Mini Dinos’ begin to have an open exchange about their respective lifestyles. As the episodes evolve, they will realize that diversities aren’t limiting. As a matter of fact, they can be very enriching for everyone”, Manfio explained. “We feel that animation in general, but more specifically children’s content, should promote values like tolerance, respect, and solidarity, which are crucial for living together peacefully,” he added.
Gruppo Alcuni’s writers and designers had fun creating adorable and graphically unique characters for this new production. The cast includes a couple of pterodactyl twins (Attila and Dactyla), a shy stegosaurus (Ego), a triceratops (Smash), and a blue brontosaurus (Bump), a clever saber-tooth tiger (Smilla), and a bold T-Rex (Toothy).
NEW PRODUCTIONS
Gruppo Alcuni is currently in pre-production with “The Black Diamond Race” (9x60’ episodes), a series for older kids. Each episode revolves around the extraordinary adventures of a group of teens from different backgrounds who are forced to rally race against the sinister Elmo Van Der Graaf. Seemingly, the prize is supposed to be the Black Diamond, but there’s much more at stake. “The series takes place in Europe and India at the end of the 1920s. It’s incredibly challenging from a creative and a production perspective. Creatively speaking, it’s a series that involves relentless, exhilarating plot twists. From a production point of view, it means accurately reconstructing the characters, locations, and cars (strictly inspired by the actual 1928 ones) of that time,” Manfio described.
In addition, Gruppo Alcuni recently started production on “Gateway 66”, an exciting project that combines various genres and techniques. The show’s episodes revolve around a scientist who gets lost in another time-space dimension because of a failed experiment. “Thanks to the MUSE (Science Museum in Trento, Italy) research team, the adventures in the time-space portals our characters are hurled through will be absolutely scientifically accurate. The series will combine live-action with animation and authentic and virtual settings to create an extraordinary and fascinating impact," Manfio concluded.
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