SuperTed’s creator, Mike Young, is an executive producer on the series as well as looking after the merchandising side of SuperTed. He also wrote the original SuperTed books. The scripts for the cartoons were written by another Welshman, Robin Lyons. Robin has a varied background ranging from reading Russian at Oxford to singing and writing the music for the revue band, Baby Grand. He first collaborated with Mike on a SuperTed musical before becoming Siriol’s script director.
Although the studio was founded on the SuperTed contract Siriol were determined not to be a one character studio. The new series they came up with was about a mischievous duck called Wil Cwac Cwac. The stories of the 24 episode series are based on a series of children’s books written in the 1920’s. These have become well known to Welsh children over the years. The stories take place in a farmyard setting and Wil Cwac Cwac is the kind of character who tries to do well but seems to end up in trouble. You can be sure that the conclusion of each story will find him up to his neck in pancake mixture, soup or a washtub full of home-made glue. In between times Wil and his cronies are being chased by angry bees or upsetting the local shopkeeper.
The stories are set in rural Wales and have managed to capture much of the local colour. The animation brings to life water colour illustrations similar to those found in children’s books of the period. The animation is being directed by Beth McFali who has had a lot of experience with special effects in TV commercials and is credited with two films made for the BBC; THE SNOW QUEEN and OF BATS AND MAGIC. The story is told in the form of narration with voice over rather than lip-synch which not only makes the sound track easier to do it makes it simple to dub into any language.
