After two decades of making hit live-action series for kids, Sinking Ship Entertainment recently produced its first fully CG-animated series Builder Brothers Dream Factory for Corus Entertainment, which premiered the show in March 2023 on Treehouse and STACKTV.

Now the Toronto-based studio is building another new set of skills, taking on its first-ever book adaptation. Sinking Ship is developing a CG-animated show called Hilo, which is based on a bestselling graphic novel series by Judd Winick. This 20 x 22-minuter is aimed at six- to nine-year-olds, and Winick, who wrote the pilot script, is attached as an executive producer.

Like the same-name Penguin Random House book series that spawned it, the animation concept centers around a youngster from outer space who has superpowers.

After landing on Earth and losing his memories, Hilo befriends some human kids and embarks on adventures ranging from battling giant monsters, to simply surviving a day at school. Sinking Ship currently has a bible, a script and several animation tests available, and is looking for financing partners.

With nine titles currently in print (and book 10 due out in February), the Hilo publishing franchise has sold more than two million copies since the first book launched in 2015.

The popularity of the graphic novels and the potential to tell a variety of stories (both in space and on Earth) are what make this IP appealing, says Sinking Ship partner and EP Matt Bishop, who also oversees the company’s VFX and animation department. “I think of Hilo as Calvin and Hobbs meets Guardians of the Galaxy,” he says. And it helps that Winick is a well-known comic book talent who wrote stories for Batman and Green Lantern before originating Hilo—which he did in order to provide his young kids with graphic novels that were more age-appropriate.

Hilo’s fish-out-of-water story reflects Sinking Ship’s own efforts over the past year to forge new paths for growth, says Bishop. The company has a proven track record of producing and selling popular live-action series worldwide, including Odd Squad and Dino Dana. And its second feature film project, Dino Dana The Movie, was picked up by Amazon in 2020 after launching through transactional video-on-demand deals.

However, the pandemic was hard on the studio because of its singular focus on live action, says Bishop. While Sinking Ship managed to pivot and produce timely YouTube Original Lockdown (shot on webcams and smartphones), the experience emphasized the need to diversify into animation.

The company has wasted no time getting into this new business stream in the aftermath of COVID-19. It did some service work on Nickelodeon’s animated feature Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, which is set to premiere on Netflix in April.

As for future plans, the team is looking to do more film service work, and is starting to develop its own animated movies, says Bishop. “All of this new work is part of our evolution, so we can level up our game for what’s next.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s February/March 2024 magazine issue.