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Amazon Streams Domo Creator's Stop-Motion Feline Show Pilot

Amazon posted a pilot episode for The Curious Kitty & Friends (tentatively titled Waku Waku koma-chan in Japanese), an animated stop-motion project by Domo creator Tsuneo Gōda, as part of its seventh pilot season on June 17. The pilot is available for free streaming in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, and an Amazon Prime subscription is not required.

As with previous pilot seasons, the pilots are based on scripts submitted to and chosen by Amazon. User feedback will determine if Amazon picks up a project for a full series or a feature-length film.

Amazon describes the story:

Komaneko is the cutest little kitty a preschooler could ever meet. And she's sooo curious to explore her world! With her movie camera in hand, Komaneko and her friends explore and understand their world by making movies about the people and things they encounter in their adventures.

Tsuneo Gōda, the creator of NHK's famous Domo-kun (Domo) mascot character, conceived Komaneko in a 2003 short "Komaneko Hajime no Ippo" (Komaneko: The First Step) for the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography with his Dwarf production studio, which also handled this pilot episode. Komaneko's popularity grew after Tokyo's Shibuya Cinema Rise theater screened the first of five annual Komaneko shorts before its feature presentations in 2004. Komaneko has also appeared at film festivals in Locarno and Chicago. The shorts and features have since spawned DVD, character goods, picture books, and even a Nintendo DS game.

As with previous Komaneko shorts, Gōda directed the pilot. Like the Domo shorts, The Curious Kitty & Friends' pilot episode is made using stop-motion techniques, resulting in a production timeline that results in a few seconds worth of footage every day. The 11-minute pilot episode has about 14,400 frames (at 24 frames per second).

Noriko Matsumoto is the producer for the pilot, and Hirokazu Minegishi is credited as one of the stop-motion animators. Kent Redeker (Doc McStuffins, Hero: 108) wrote the script, and Kevin Kiner (Star Wars Rebels, Jane the Virgin, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Transformers: Robots in Disguise) composed the music.

Amazon recently green-lit the Lost in Oz 3D CG animated project, with animation by Polygon Pictures (Knights of Sidonia, Ajin). The project's pilot episode appeared in Amazon's fifth pilot season in June 2015.

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Source: Animate Times