TV Series - Children
Ginger and the Vegesaurs - Season 3
Cheeky Little Media
In Season 3 of Vegesaurs, Ginger and her trio of baby Pea-Rexes embark on a whole new set of adventures in the vibrant and colourful Vegesaur Valley. From a timid pack of Asparagusaurs to the cheeky Dragonfruitflyus, this season the gang discover a fresh new cast of Vegesaurs they never knew existed. They’ll even experience some seasonal treats, including a glowing honeysuckle harvest guarded by a grumpy Pumpkinsaurus and a chilly snowstorm on a winter's night, which all the Vegesaurs of the valley must brave together.
This latest season of Vegesaurs represents the culmination of over three years and three seasons of development, refinement, and innovation in the Unreal Engine space. While we’re proud of every season we’ve produced, Season 3 has truly reached new heights in quality and polish, delivering a visually stunning series that continues to captivate audiences both locally and internationally.
UE as an animation tool
Since Season 1, Vegesaurs has pushed the boundaries of using Unreal Engine as a longform animation tool. It has given our creative directors more oversight and flexibility through all parts of the animation process, enabling greater opportunity to ideate during pre-production all the way to finessing the final look during post. We pushed this even further in Season 3 by polishing some of our long standing processes and rebuilding others from the ground up.
Pre-vis
For Season 3 we made the decision to rebuild our entire set from scratch. This involved breaking down the valley into distinct areas and dedicating significant previsualisation time to the modelling, staging and dressing of each environment. By segmenting our approach during previs, we gained a lot more control over how sets could be used in episodes, which proved invaluable for enhancing our storyboarding process and getting clearer visualisation of the final product from the earliest stages of pre-production.
From here, we also firmed up our pre-visualisation tool during storyboarding. This allowed for a staging process where the directors and board artists worked together, moving around the Vegesaurs set to select key camera set ups for each scene. By utilising Unreal Engine's real-time rendering capabilities, we were able to visualise the scenes in a dynamic 3D environment during the storyboarding phase. This not only allowed for a more immersive and accurate representation of the final product but also enabled the team to make informed decisions about camera angles, shot compositions, and overall visual storytelling.
Once the camera setups were selected, all the camera data was saved and integrated into the studio's layout stage. This approach has revolutionised our layout process, significantly reducing the margin for error. With the camera data readily available, the layout team could accurately reproduce the chosen camera angles and compositions within the virtual environment, ensuring a cohesive and consistent visual narrative.
Look development/lighting
This season we handled all set builds, look development and mastershots in Australia and limited outsourcing to animation and implementation of lighting set ups. In a traditional CG pipeline with the need for expensive render farms and a large crew it wouldn’t be viable for a TV series budget to handle so much of the work in Australia. But due to the new pipelines possible with UE, we have been able to achieve an immersive cinematic world on a TV series budget.
Through the creative utilisation of Unreal Engine's landscape tools and foliage systems, we have been able to craft a vastly diverse ecosystems for Vegesaur Valley. The integration of these tools has allowed us to seamlessly blend various elements, such as custom prehistoric flora, fauna, and geological features, to create several vibrant and distinctive environments for our characters to explore.
Furthermore, Unreal Engine's advanced lighting and weather systems have enabled us to create dynamic day-night cycles and realistic seasonal patterns within Vegesaur Valley. From the warm glow of sunlight filtering through the canopy to the ethereal ambiance of moonlit nights, the dynamic lighting system has contributed to the exciting and immersive experience of the series.
FX
One of the standout features of Ginger and the Vegesaurs continues to be the integration of Fluid Flux, Open Land, Niagara and Houdini, cutting-edge technologies that simulate realistic water interaction, mud, and snow effects. With these tools, Cheeky Little's VFX team have been able to further enhance the immersive environments of Vegesaur Valley, bringing a heightened level of realism to the series. Audiences can witness the splashes and ripples as Vegesaurs interact with water bodies, the muddied footprints left behind as they navigate through muddy terrain, and the delicate layer of snow that blankets the valley during winter. Fluid Flux, Open Land, Niagara and Houdini, have truly elevated the visual experience and transported viewers into the vibrant world of Vegesaurs.
Training & Development
This year during production, we took on three new trainees who followed our new UE training pipeline developed by Liam O’Leary (Unreal TD). We built this trainee team from the ground up, bringing artists together from different disciplines, none of whom had prior experience using Unreal on a long form series.
Software
The main tools used in the production of the series were as follows:
Character and Prop Designs were all created in Photoshop & zBrush
Modelling and Animation created in Maya & zBrush.
Textures and materials developed in Maya, Substance Painter and Unreal 5.
Storyboards created in Storyboard Pro and Unreal 5.
Storyboard layout and previs in Unreal 5.
FX created in Houdini and Unreal 5.
Final Renderer Unreal 5, Lumen.
Animatics and fine cuts created in Premiere Pro.
Audience response
Early audiences have been absolutely blown away by the quality of this third season and we at Cheeky are feeling very proud of what we have all achieved.
In the UK Vegesaurs Season 1 had an incredible 3.2million BBC iPlayer requests in the first 10 days, launching on 27th February 2023.
This fantastic number lifts Vegesaurs up to the TOP 5 CBeebies brands on iPlayer
The campaign for the CBeebies launch was also a huge success reaching more than 100 million contacts in just one week.
The original series launched in Australia in May 2022 very successfully followed by a second season in May, 2023. The first series in Aus has received over 1.4 million views per episode. Series 3 has just been released on 24th June 2024 and we’re excited to see our audiences enjoy more vegesaurs etc.
Commercial outcomes
It is always our intention as an animation producer to create evergreen brands that have a life beyond the series, however this always has to start from great storytelling and beautiful animation. We feel that we have produced a very unique-looking show with the potential for longevity in the Australian and International market and we’re excited to follow the progress of the series and the brand as it rolls out Internationally.
• The Official YouTube channel has 44k subscribers.
• A large German Retail Chain with global reach has picked up Vegesaurs for 3 regions in late 2023, more regions in 2024.
• 20 million collectables, 250,000 plush ordered.
• Pan Macmillan picked up global publishing rights and released books in late 2023.
• Consolidated figures, including iView show Vegesaurs is the ABC’s No.7 most watched program, across all channels, all genres.
CREW
Liam O'Leary
Samantha Alvarez
Aki Clayton
Ramona Bottiglione
Seungyeon "Polly" Baek
Monica Sloane
Abhi Gupta
Software
Unreal Engine
Maya
Perforce
Houdini
Substance Painter
Photoshop