Meet the brains of Brisbane’s smash hit Bluey and the simple concept behind it all

With an international deal with Disney and a Logie nomination, Brisbane’s own Bluey has seen phenomenal success. Meet the man, and the simple concept, behind it all.

It’s play time. But, in a way, it’s what they’ve been doing from the start.

Overlooking the curious amalgam of avant-garde and abject that is Fortitude Valley, the creatives at Ludo Studio have spent years “giving everything” to their pet project, the phenomenally successful animated preschooler series Bluey.

After a string of major announcements, including an international distribution deal with Disney and a nomination in the 2019 Logie Awards, the Bluey crew now get the chance to take a breath and take stock of what they have achieved.

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For the uninitiated (of whom there are few), Bluey is a Brisbane ’burbs-based TV series centred on six-year-old blue heeler Bluey, her four-year-old sister Bingo, and their parents, dad Bandit and mum Chilli. It’s been praised for its down-to-earth representation of modern family life and its unforced humour.

But as creator Joe Brumm clarifies, it isn’t a show with a moral or message. It is a show about the concept of play.

Bluey creator Joe Brumm for ABC Kids.

“I didn’t want to teach kids anything, this isn’t a show about learning,” says the 40-year-old married father-of-two (daughters aged seven and eight to wife Suzy, a storyboard artist).

“It didn’t set out as a message; it set out as a fascination, I guess, of how amazing it is just how much stuff kids that age, four to six, learn through playing games with each other and their parents.

“Just from a psychological point of view, play is fascinating. This can give the story some heart. And the weaker episodes, I think, are the ones that stray back into that moralising.”

Tonight, just down the M1 highway from where Bluey plays cricket in the back yard and watches fruit bats swoop over the family’s Queenslander, the Ludo team will be at the Logie Awards on the Gold Coast where the show has been nominated in the Most Outstanding Children’s Program category.

It is up against Mustangs FC, Teenage Boss, and two Queensland productions — the fantasy drama series Grace Beside Me, filmed in the Scenic Rim region; and The Bureau Of Magical Things, from Gold Coast-based kids’ series veteran Jonathan M Shiff.

To celebrate the nomination, U on Sunday commissioned the team to produce our exclusive cover artwork of the Heeler family in front of the Brisbane skyline.

Ludo Studio’s created this exclusive cover art of Bluey in Brisbane for U on Sunday.

Ludo Studio directors Charlie Aspinwall and Daley Pearson were “incredibly delighted” by Bluey’s nomination.

“The whole team in Brisbane have given everything to make Bluey such a brilliant show and this kind of recognition for their work is fantastic,” they said in a joint statement to U on Sunday, “We’re so grateful to be nominated and are looking forward to a very special evening.”

What started as a germ of an idea by Brumm in 2010, became the crowd favourite when pitched to industry buyers at the fifth annual Asian Animation Summit in late-November 2016 when the event was first held in Brisbane. The ABC had helped Ludo fund the pilot episode, and while international distribution talks were ongoing, production began on the first batch of 52 episodes. Bluey launched on ABC KIDS in October last year and rapidly built into being the broadcaster’s strongest kids’ product. It is now the most watched series ever on ABV iview with more than 90 million plays, leaving stalwarts like Play School, The Wiggles, and Bluey’s closest comparison, the UK-series Peppa Pig, in its rear-view mirror.

In May, the ABC and BBC announced the commissioning of a second 52-episode season. This month, the result of negotiations from the 2016 summit were finally announced — from late this year Bluey will premiere internationally on Disney Junior and the upcoming streaming service Disney+ in territories outside of Australia.

Bluey series from ABC TV

“The power of family is a cornerstone of Disney storytelling, and the warmth and authenticity of Bluey’s family dynamic is what first captured our interest in the show,” says Disney Channels Worldwide’s senior vice-president Jane Gould.

The announcement also included news that a range of Bluey toys will hit the shops in time for Christmas with Australian company Moose Toys named as global master toy partner.

But Disney’s decision to come play with the wide-eyed, pointy-eared dog family who have bodies shaped like mobile phones, was not where negotiations began.

“When we pitched it at the summit, they (Disney) actually weren’t on our list,” Brumm laughs. “Right at the beginning, all the other main ones (showed interest) and the BBC started talking to everyone and then suddenly Disney just came back on the radar.

“So then it was kind of like a big — well, not a bidding war, it wasn’t just about money, it was about conditions and terms and things like that — and one by one it sort of narrowed down. A long process. At least a year and a half.”

Initial fears the show, particularly the accents, would be “Disney-fied” for the US market, proved groundless.

“They wanted to keep it as close to what the creatives made,” says Brumm. “All these guys did their testing and found out that the accents weren’t a problem. In fact, from what I heard, it was a bit of a plus. It was a novelty they wanted to keep.”

Actor Melanie Zanetti, who voices Bluey’s mum Chilli, says the show is so “intrinsically Australian” it would have lost something in the translation if it had been Americanised.

“I look at things like Peppa Pig and they haven’t changed the accent for that, and that hasn’t been a problem in the American market,” says Zanetti who works between Brisbane and Los Angeles, doing stage, screen and voice acting.

Melanie Zanetti. Pics Tara Croser.

“Honestly when I first saw the animation for the pilot episode I worked on, I had a feeling. I didn’t know it was going to blow up like this, but there was definitely something special. It was like, wow, this is so beautiful and hilarious and true to life, which are the things that people really love about it: how funny it is; how sincere; how much it reflects parents’ and children’s actual relationships — but in dog form.”

She says getting into character as Chilli is pretty easy, and a lot of fun.

“I’ve got to say the writing is so beautiful, it is all really there on the page,” says Zanetti who will next be seen on stage in the QT production of L’Appartement in August, and later in the year in the Foxtel series The End. “Occasionally I’ll think, how would my mum say this? And I’d go, OK, OK, that’s where we’re at.

“But not everyone realises when you are in the booth, to make it sound right, you have to act everything out. If someone was watching, you look like a crazy person! Cartoon work is so much fun, it’s fabulous.”

Her on-screen “dog husband”, David McCormack from the Brisbane band Custard, also has no trouble slipping into the role of Bandit.

“In the show, he has two young daughters and I’ve got two young daughters. I don’t really have to act, I just read it — it’s pretty much my life,” says McCormack whose kids, Rose and Grace, to wife Lucy, are huge fans of the show.

Dave McCormack, voice of Bandit in ABC Kids Bluey

“Oh, love it! Initially they thought it was pretty weird — why’s dad’s voice coming out of a dog on the telly? — but now they love it and if it’s on we’ll watch it and have a giggle.

“I genuinely think it’s a pretty clever and funny show. It’s well written.”

While McCormack also writes screen music — his work features in the recent film Top End Wedding, and TV’s Jack Irish and Rake — he has no intention of extending his Bluey voice gig into an acting career.

“No, no, I hate it (acting),” he protests, saying the onscreen cameo he did in an episode of Rake as a singer in a Christian rock band was an oddity. “You see that Rake cameo’s OK because we’re just being a band. But acting? Oh God, no way.

“That’s why the Bluey thing is good, it’s just an extension of singing or whatever, you don’t actually have to be in front of the camera, which I like.”

While McCormack has been recognised for his voicing of Bandit, Zanetti has managed to fly under the radar. She says even her dad told her he had to close his eyes to tell that it was her.

“It’s one of these really interesting cognitive dissonance things that happens when someone is a dog, especially with little kids,” she says.

“With Dave, it’s a little bit different because he already had a profile with his voice beforehand — but with mine, I’ve got a bit of a chameleon voice.”

While the artists voicing Bluey and Bingo are kept secret, other cast members include TV and radio presenter Myf Warhurst, singer Megan Washington and comedic actor Ian McFadyen, while Layne Beachley has made a cameo as a surfie sheepdog.

Myf Warhurst

The affinity between the worlds of humans and dogs in the show, stems from Brumm’s childhood and his love of dogs. He grew up in Winton till he was five, then attended primary school in Cairns, before the family moved to Brisbane when he was about 12.

“I grew up with dogs. We had kelpies, two blue heelers, a dalmatian called Chloe,” he says, adding he hasn’t a dog at the moment, “We’re waiting on the kids becoming slightly less work,” he laughs, “they’d knock it around a bit for now.”

He’s also a bit busy to play fetch. There are all those second series episodes to write, and the business commitments that come from being the brains behind the Bluey.

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“I do a lot of research and a lot of reading about play and what kids are learning while they are doing it. I try and make episodes that are about one particular facet of playing,” says Brumm, who also got a unique insight into what was happening in the playground at his children’s school. “My daughter was having a little bit of trouble settling in at school, and my wife had to spend a good chunk of the year sitting in (lessons), and luckily we had a school that allowed that. And she just came back every day with like, oh my God, this is happening, this happened and then this. I did a number of sit-ins and a lot of talking with the teachers — a few in particular who take the subject of play very seriously — and picked their brains.

“I also talk to child psychologists and they might offer a different point of view. And then just a lot of reading. There’s quite a lot of interesting research that was done in various places. And I never thought I would find myself reading it, but books written by like 50-year experience kindergarten teachers about their experiences. It’s fascinating.”

Bluey pics from ABC TV

Earlier this month Brumm was guest speaker at an Australian Writers’ Guild event in Brisbane where he explained the process of writing for animation and the benefit of being a director on the series.

“I was trying to impress upon them that the show’s only any good if I get to direct it as well,” he says. “I feel so sorry for a writer who has to hand their script over and they watch it go. I’ve learnt, so much, that every step along the way can make the final product depart from the script. I don’t know what the solution to that is, I’m just lucky to be writer/director. I can see how it could very easily be a heartbreaking process.”

For now there are a few other show ideas that Brumm would like to develop. But, again, finding time is the issue.

“Mainly they are only little sketches in my head at the moment. But for quite a while I’ve wanted to make a sci-fi feature — maybe for teens and up — that has that sort of video game capacity. It’s a weird one and it would take me probably a few hours to take you through it,” he laughs. “But hopefully when Bluey wavers that might be what I get to play with.”