The Adventures of Marco & Gina

The Adventures of Marco & Gina is a children's television animated series produced by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and France Animation. It was created by Romano Scarpa (and his final project until his death in 2005), and it was aired in 2003.

The Adventures of Marco & Gina
Created byRomano Scarpa
StarringFederico Di Pofi
Valentina Mari
Gianni Giuliano
Maria Paiato
Piero Tiberi
Oreste Baldini
Luigi Ferraro
Giuliano Santi
Country of originItaly
France
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes26
Production
Running time25 min.
Production companies
Original release
NetworkRai 2 and Rai Gulp (Italy)
CBBC (UK)[1]
Release9 June (2003-06-09) –
11 July 2003 (2003-07-11)

Plot

edit

Pigeons, doves, sparrows and seagulls live and work together in nearly perfect harmony, way above the madding human crowd in Venice. Venice-Above has existed since time immemorial... or at least as long as Venice-Below. All is not peace and harmony, however, in this miniature replica of the famed city of romance. In each episode, our pigeon heroes Marco and Gina must dodge and foil the sinister Count Yagor and Sgarry, his dim-witted henchman (actually, "henchbird" would be more appropriate).

Production

edit

Before The Adventures of Marco and Gina, Romano Scarpa was known as Disney comic book's artist. He was also hired to work on DuckTales episodes, Scarpa pitched his own test to the series for Disney, but, the initiative was halted after one test because animating the series in Italy, while guaranteeing best quality, would have taken more time and money than the Asian studios that Disney supported itself on.[2][3]

In 1988, Scarpa began to developing his own animated series, initially titled as The Winged Venetians with featuring two main characters, Wiggy and Peggy (both names were changed to Marco and Gina), and the show's set taken to Rome. Scarpa wanted to make The Winged Venetians as an animated short film, but he expanded the materials (including concept arts) for 10 years.[4][5] Lanterna Magica bought the right to The Winged Venetians in 1998, and the show was retitled as Gone With the Wings, until RAI, the Italian television broadcaster, picked up the series.[6]

References

edit
  1. ^ "Search Results – BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  2. ^ "DuckTales - Test di Romano Scarpa". YouTube. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  3. ^ ""Duck Tales - Avventure di paperi"". AntonioGenna.net. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  4. ^ "Le avventure di Marco e Gina (Sopra i tetti di Venezia)". RomanoScarpa.net. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  5. ^ "Sopra i tetti di Venezia in TV". RomanoScarpa.net. October 2000. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  6. ^ "Cool new shows - Kidscreen.com". Retrieved 6 February 2023.
edit