The bright red, tiny shapeshifting pet returns in a 3DCG preschool adventure series, produced by Guru Studio, that explores friendship and imagination; show debuts today, March 20, on Disney Junior and Disney+.
It’s been 12 years since the bright red, shapeshifting Morphle first appeared on YouTube in a grassroots project from Arthur van Merwijk. The 2D shorts, called Mila and Her Magic Pet: Songs for Kids, showcased this tiny animated creature that morphed into whatever Mila wished – like a sleigh that could help Santa transport Christmas gifts, a train for helping teach the ABCs, or a magnifying glass to take a better look at an itsy bitsy spider. Eventually, the shorts ventured out from just nursery rhymes and festive tunes to more story-based entertainment. The animation also earned a new title: My Magic Pet Morphle.
Then, about two years ago, Morphle and his world got a 3D facelift. For the last year, the YouTube series has been produced entirely in 3D by Green Gold and Space Sheep. Now Morphle’s getting a new look – and title – again via the inaugural partnership between CoComelon’s Moonbug Entertainment and Disney Branded Television.
“We acquired the property back in 2019,” notes Olivia Chausson, Morphle GM at Moonbug Entertainment. “Since then, we've been growing it into a popular global franchise by expanding the world and creating linear content that’s now available in over 22 languages to delight kids across the world.”
Creative Exec Kathy Power adds, “It was already doing well and already had an audience following. But there was so much more potential to it. It really fits into the magical, fantasy heart piece of the Disney brand.”
With animation from Paw Patrol’s Guru Studio, Morphle and the Magic Pets is an animated preschool series that follows Mila, her stepbrother, Jordie, and her shapeshifting magic pet, Morphle. The trio uses their skills, smarts, and imagination to solve the town’s problems, keep magic pets out of mischief, and find “magic matches” for each of these unique and hilarious characters. Magic and comedy fuel their adventures, but in the end, it’s the power of friendship that turns Mila, Jordie, and Morphle into an unbeatable team. Moonbug worked closely with Disney to evolve the look and feel of the core characters, benefiting from a glow-up with new outfits for the kids and evolved powers for their pets.
Check out the trailer:
The series of seven-minute episodes releases today, March 20, on Disney Junior and Disney+. The YouTube series of three-minute-length episodes will also continue to be animated and produced as usual alongside the new series.
“I think the CG space is a popular one for kids,” notes Power. “Those original 2D designs were great, but moving to CG gave us more of an opportunity to connect with our audience through the character expressions. Something that we were able to achieve with this longer format and bigger scope is more nuanced in their faces, which you don't really get from the short form. And then taking it from there into the Disney series has been so fun. And that was really about building out the textures and the surfacing and rigging, creating more aspirational outfits for our characters, and even more magic pets.”
Some of the new pets in the Disney+ and Disney Junior series include Thumperduck, a tiny duck with huge feet that makes the ground rumble when he walks; Slowalot and Fastalot, who can make someone go (not too shockingly) faster or slower; and Melodino, a small purple dinosaur that makes characters sing.
The series also features a group of five recurring pets who love hanging around the Magic Pet Center, which functions as a magic pet daycare center during the day. Each one loosely corresponds to emotions such as joy, sadness, fear, love, anger, and so on. There’s the blue canine Telepup, who has the power to transport himself and others; purple axolotl Animi, who brings inanimate objects to life; Chroma, a platypus-adjacent pet who changes the color of anything around him; puffy Catmo, who affects the weather with her mood; and fluffy Gobblefrog, who gobbles uncontrollably when scared.
Working with the new texture and surfacing programs through Redshift 3.5.12 and significantly elevating the lighting, the team was able to breathe even more life into all the pets, but especially familiar furry friends like Catmo and Gobblefrog.
“Gobblefrog is a favorite of all of ours, but he was challenging,” says Power. “He grows as he gobbles and on top of trying to make him feel preschool-friendly and fun and goofy instead of a terrifying giant frog that eats things, there was the challenge of making him and all his fur grow. It was also really hard with his fur being white. There’s a lot of potential for blow out and we didn't want him to feel green or purple. But I think he turned out adorable and looks beautiful.”
Power often tested character designs on her own kids, having a three-year-old at just the right age to offer insight into the show’s delightful but very different characters.
“I have lots of the original concept art of Gobblefrog on my desktop that my son has seen and I think it’s a good sign that, for a really long time, he’s been asking me to turn on this show,” shares Power. “We’ve watched the same small clips over and over and he always just wants to see more.”
Chausson also adds that 3D animation allowed them to expand on Morphle’s transformations, which were previously made up of just a puff of smoke and stars.
“On the 3D front, you could see the details of his transformation and kids could watch him grow, shape, and transform into a dinosaur, unicorn, butterfly, or whatever it may be,” notes Chausson. “We were always looking for ways to dive more deeply into the magical world of Morphle.”
When creating a series for an audience that’s curious by nature and always looking for answers to questions about the world they live in, the team felt it important not to shroud the series in mystery and actually give children the chance to understand how Morphle’s transformations work.
“In the Disney series, Morphle has a key ‘starring’ morph that he does in every episode, in addition to smaller morphs, and we spent a lot of time and back and forth on how we would execute all of them,” says Power. “It was really important to us to get that stretchiness without it feeling weird and had to technically map out how you get from one rig to another seamlessly. So, we have all these different models and different rigs of a half-morphed helicopter and things like that.”
While Power notes the animated features that helped with those transformative moments were the lighting as well as subsurface scattering, it was also the length of the episodes that allowed the animators to give Morphle the time needed to transform. In the past, the Morphle property did produce longer “legacy episodes” but in the last few years has remained at three minutes. The extra four minutes in the Disney series, according to Chausson and Power, has helped elevate the human characters in the show as well as their pets.
“In three minutes, it's very hard to get into who a character is and why they're there, and what they love,” says Power. “Going from our three-minute YouTube content to seven minutes with a bigger scope just opened a whole world for us in terms of story and character, and being able to build out this world, like introducing Mila’s stepmother Gianna and making Jordie Mila’s stepbrother,. We were able to include more about the community of these kids, which adds another level of engagement with our audience.”
Being able to expand on characters that have remained beloved for 12 years by a devoted audience was as much a dream for the team as it was nerve-wracking and a task they took seriously, being sure to address the diversity of families and family dynamics, as well as the varied wishes of children, which has served as the foundation for the Morphle property for a long time.
“That’s been at the core of the Morphle brand,” shares Chausson. “We've kept iterating and evolving it, but it's always been about being able to tap into kids' aspirations to be those everyday heroes. There are a number of things that have remained continuous in the new series, like having friendship and problem-solving at the heart of the show, but I think wish fulfillment is really the driver of the longevity of the brand, and we're super excited to continue growing and building on that as we extend the franchise.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
