Dennis in Oz

[Joan]

Was sitting here having my coffee, half watching the tv, when the breakfast show finished and the kids' shows started.  This cartoon came on and a boy with a shock of black hair standing on end, a red and black striped top and black shorts appeared.  My favourite Beano character - Dennis the Menace!  Naturally, I expected him to speak with some sort of UK accent, so imagine my surprise when he opens his mouth and out pops an Australian one.  All of the characters, apart from one English friend, have Australian accents.  Very strange - wonder what Ginger Meggs has to say about that?  The credits say Beano Productions and D C Thompson so it's the real thing, but just doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

[Tarquin Thunderthighs lll]

I'm shocked by this, Joan. But then over here he has a distinctly English voice when everyone knows he was born and raised in Dundee.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ginger Meggs cartoonist, James Kemsley, a few years back at the Shrewsbury cartoon festival which he had flown over to the UK with his young son, Sebastian, to attend. Very sadly, James died two years ago, almost to this day, and the strip is now drawn by Jason Chatfield. The really weird thing though, is that even though James was the fourth artist to draw Ginger Meggs, and the strip started long before he was born, young Seb was an absolute ringer for Ginger Meggs himself, redhead mop, freckles, the lot. In my ignorance of the strip's history at that point, I had assumed James had originated it and based it all on his son, whereas in fact, he took over the strip more than a decade before Seb was even born.

[Malc]

Dennis was animated in Scotland (Red Kite) and Australia (Sticky Pictures) but I only got that from Wiki, I don't have any knowledge of these studios. Keith Scott and Rob Rackstraw are voice artists on the show, and I have worked with both. Keith is Australian.

I have no idea why they would re-voice the series for Australian TV, unless the original English voices were deemed to childish or not childish enough, whatever.
The series is jointly produced by an Australian network, and these days TV is more and more like the car industry - A Rolls isn't a Rolls any more, neither is a Bentley or a Jag, they're all amalgams of foreign parts and companies.
Almost all drawn animation these days is done in the far east or in eastern Europe. The Simpsons is animated in Korea, Australia sends huge swathes of it to be done in China or the Philippines. It's only really the scripts and voices which are done in the credited country.

This is one of the reasons I got out of animation. The handing over of production to overseas animators (as far as Australia is concerned) basically gave away the only job that Australians did well. They certainly can't write animation scripts and the pre production is a travesty, yet they have sequestered these very lucrative positions for their idiot, incompetent, untalented selves, leaving the coolie labour to be done by sweatshops overseas.

[Joan]

Very interesting about James Kemsley's son, TT.  How wierd - genes can't be influenced by your brain, can they?  The red hair usually skips a generation, though - if you have it, it came from your grandparents.

That explains a lot, Malc.  It didn't look like Australia - the houses were wrong, etc.  I don't like the "look" of most kid's cartoons these days - drawings too sharp and their movements are artificial.  Not that I've seen that many recently.  Don't hold back on your opinion of Australian animators, will you? 

[Tarquin Thunderthighs lll]

Very interesting about James Kemsley's son, TT.  How wierd - genes can't be influenced by your brain, can they?  The red hair usually skips a generation, though - if you have it, it came from your grandparents.

Not a hard and fast rule, Joan. I had fiery red hair until fairly recently, when the white invasion gradually turned me into a natural blonde. My mother had the same, as did her father, both my brothers and two of my daughters. It can be rampant!

[Joan]

You're right, TT - another one of those myths, not sure where I got it from.  Here's an explanation - he says at the beginning he's simplified it.  The complicated version must be really complex.

http://www.derm.med.ed.ac.uk/06_teaching/redhairgen.htm