MAGGOTS FOR BREAKFAST AGAIN!

It’s a beautiful spring morning in the Ancient forest. Woodpecker siblings Woody (6) and Pecky (4) are not enthusiastic about eating maggots for breakfast AGAIN! So they set out for a game: the one who collects ten acorns first - wins. On their way to the Great Oak tree, kids encounter various forest creatures in their morning routines, last being the middle aged Mr. Dormouse, who’s soundly hibernating in his cozy hole, atop the oak tree. Suddenly their game is disrupted by a storm. Kids try to warn the stranded Mr. Dormouse, but he’s simply too deep in his sleep. Woodpeckers barely make it to the ground, as the upper part of the Great Oak tree crumbles down. After a moment’s silence Mr. Dormouse appears unscathed: “Could you BE any louder!? Someone is trying to sleep here!” and he falls back to sleep. Kids are worried about the fate of the poor oak tree, but by the time Mr. Dormouse wakes up, the fallen tree has become a home to its new inhabitants and so the life and games continue

Director’s statement
In daily life one might feel that the end of something important is the end of the world, when in practice it’s a beginning for something new. In today’s contexts it’s important to have a conversation about this with our children.
Seeing an overall alienation from nature I think that it would be great to set this theme in the Ancient woods, a place far away from our daily gaze, filled with all sorts of different life forms. As strange as they might look, characters there can still have recognizable character traits or habits. We want to educate our audience about the way different animals live by showing it through a playful form of an action adventure comedy. The idea is to remain honest to the natural world while representing it in a hand drawn style. That’s why all designs should look in some way unperfect: splashy watercolour washes with jaggedy pencil lines on top, creating an atmospherically inviting world, hopefully inspiring the audience to go out and explore nature themselves.