The Ilhas do Rio Project, carried out by the Mar Adentro Institute, launches, on Sunday (27), the swell, his first animated series focused on children’s environmental education. The launch will take place at 11 am, as part of the Coastal-Marine System Week event: the Garden on the Sea, at the Environment Museum, in the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro. Admission is free and classification is free. The first episodes of the series will be available, free of charge, from the 27th, on the project’s online platforms, with audio description and translation in pounds.
The objective is to expand the communication of the Ilhas do Rio Project with children and to help teachers and educators use the tool for ecological awareness in classrooms. By the end of December, two more episodes will hit the platforms.
The series has a script by Gabriella Mancinni and was directed by Felipe Grosso, from the animation studio Cabong, with the collaboration of researchers and environmental educators in the creation and revision of its content.
The films tell the story of the whale Ju, the teenage protagonist who makes her first trip without her mother, leaving the sub-Antarctic region in search of a warmer place and other humpbacks. She has the company of her best friends: the grumpy and genius octopus Mol, who finds fault everywhere; the fearful seahorse Marinho, who doesn’t find any safe place, because he dies of fear of being extinct; and the Fraga, a frigate in love with the Cagarras Islands. Along the way, the gang goes through several adventures, providing information about marine conservation in a fun and engaging way.
The technical person responsible for the Ilhas do Rio Project and creator of the animation series, Aline Aguiar, stated that it was quite challenging to produce an animation series with so much information about the marine environment in a fluid and understandable way for younger children. “The characters’ dialogues, the scenarios and even the jokes were thought in a way to convey information about our ocean”, she reported. In addition to the drawing, real images were also used, captured by professional cameramen along the Brazilian coast and around the world. Aline said that the real images help the viewer to perceive the reality that is being illustrated by the cartoon.
education
swell is part of the material produced for the environmental education and communication activities of the Ilhas do Rio Project, with free access by the Youtube channel and fur project website. The idea is that, in addition to entertaining the kids, the content can be used as a teaching tool, especially for the 1st and 2nd classes of elementary school.
All episodes have audio description, translation in pounds and subtitles in English. The project will provide a didactic guide for teachers with suggestions for activities on the topics covered in the series.
The Coastal-Marine System Week: Jardim no Mar will be on display at the Environment Museum, in the Botanical Garden of Rio, from March 27 to April 2, from 8 am to 5 pm. In addition to the series, the program includes conversation circles with children about the animation and presentations of the children’s play. The Battle of Nature.
Visitors will also be able to see and feel animals from the coast of Rio de Janeiro up close, especially those found on the Cagarras Islands, such as corals, starfish, fish, among others, which are part of the didactic-scientific collection of the National Museum, of the University Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). There will also be available photos and videos of the biodiversity of the islands and research by the Ilhas do Rio Project.
Project
The Ilhas do Rio Project is carried out by Instituto Mar Adentro, sponsored by the IEP and JGP Association, and technically curated by WWF-Brasil. The project has partnerships with the Chico Mendes Biodiversity Institute (ICMBio), the Fishermen’s Colony of Copacabana-Z13, the National Museum (MN/UFRJ) and the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Research Institute.
To watch the Marulhada animation online, readers can access the internet address