China’s Tencent Video is once again teaming with Up Studios, this time to release CG-animated miniseries Piggy & Friends. 

Launching in April on the heels of longer-format series Piggy‘s first season (13 x 11 minutes), Piggy & Friends will be comprised of three-minute comedy shorts.

Piggy is based on a character created by Up Studios CEO Trevor Lai, franchised across books and downloadable emojis. The TV series sees Piggy use compassion and knowledge to help his friends and neighbors with everyday challenges.

Tencent and Up Studios plan to start marketing both the TV series and miniseries to international broadcasters and distributors later this year.

The two companies previously partnered on 2019’s Super BOOMi Hockey Hero, a CG-animated series designed to teach Chinese kids about a winter sport that has traditionally been more of a Western pursuit.

Tencent is also gearing up to add three new co-productions with European partners to its kids lineup later this year. In late 2020, the platform signed separate deals to develop original animated series with Zelit Productions (Luxembourg), Sixteen South (Ireland) and Silvergate Media (UK). Farthest along in the pipeline is Zelit’s Deep in the Bowl (52 x five minutes), a live-action/3D-animated adventure series for eight to 12s about a group of fish living in an aquarium.