Flanimals

Flanimals is a children's book series written by comedian Ricky Gervais. The book, illustrated by Rob Steen, depicts a list of seemingly useless or inadequate animals, and their behaviour.

The cover Flanimal is the Grundit. The book is published by Faber and Faber, which has also published the sequels More Flanimals, Flanimals of the Deep and Flanimals: The Day of the Bletchling. Flanimals: Pop Up was published October 2009 by Walker Books in the UK and March 2010 by Candlewick Press in the US.

Several models of different Flanimals are available on the official site.

List of Flanimals

• Coddleflop: A green mush puddle that flips over to protect its soft top. However, since its bottom is equally soft, this strategy is never successful.
• Plamglotis: A purple ape-like Flanimal with no legs so swallows its hands to walk around to find food, which it can't eat because its mouth is full.
• Mernimbler: A fluffy, pink, round Flanimal that turns into an aggressive adult stage when someone comments on how cute it is.
• Adult Mernimbler: ogre-like adult stage of the Mernimbler.
• Grundit: A heavily built blue Flanimal with a bump on its head.
• Puddloflaj: A pink water balloon-like Flanimal often ridden by Grundits for no clear reason.
• Flemping Bunt-Himmler: A mimic and predator of the baby Mernimbler, only wider and flatter.
• Underblenge: A gray blobby Flanimal that can't move from the spot it was born due to it having extremely strong suction cups on its underside.
• Blunging: A yellow dinosaur-like Flanimal that lives in large family groups.
• Munty Flumple: A brown humanoid Flanimal that stares at every Flanimal it sees.
• Splunge: A brain-like Flanimal so terrified of everything that it "splunges" at birth.
• Honk: A small, pink, tapir-like Flanimal that sleeps all day until it randomly wakes up to make a loud honking sound and then goes back to sleep.
• Hemel Sprot: A green blobby Flanimal that always looks where it's been and never where it's going.
• Sprot Guzzlor: A large blue Flanimal that preys on Hemel Sprots.
• Clunge Ambler: An ape-like Flanimal that hugs everything it sees.
• Wobboid Mump: A blind eye in jelly that spends its entire life looking for the reason of its existence.
• Sprine Bloat-Trunker: An orange Flanimal that erupts from Sprog and Hemel Sprot recycling plant, and then joins the queue to be recycled.
• Print: A humanoid Flanimal that dives off high places but always manages to land on its head.
• Gum Spudlet: A Flanimal that resembles a solid version of the Coddleflop and is eaten by Grundits.
• Sprog: A vicious beetroot-like Flanimal.
• Munge Fuddler: A crab-like Flanimal that "fuddles" everything it sees.
• Frappled Humpdumbler: An octopus-like Flanimal with an eye on one side of its head and a nose on the other.
• Offledermis: A Flanimal born inside out to escape its own smell. It has a heart above its inside out eyeballs and constantly leaks.
• Plumboid Doppler: A round green Flanimal with eyestalks.
• Blimble Sprent: A yellow, fast-moving Flanimal without arms that sprints everywhere, always avoiding its destination until it dies of exhaustion at exactly the same place it started running.
• Glonk: A green reptilian humanoid Flanimal that does absolutely nothing for its entire life.

Originality dispute

In August 2010, Norwich-based writer and artist John Savage issued a High Court writ, claiming that the original book is based on his own work, Captain Pottie's Wildlife Encyclopedia. The writ claims Savage's artistic and literary copyright has been infringed by Gervais. A spokeswoman for Gervais said the concept and illustrations existed before Savage's work.^[1]

Adaptations

Originally ITV had commissioned a television series based on the books, which had a predicted air date of 2009, but it was later scrapped.^[2]

On 28 April 2009, Variety reported that a 3-D, computer-animated feature film is in production at Illumination Entertainment, known for its 2010 summer blockbuster Despicable Me. Gervais will executively produce the film and also lend the voice to the lead character, while The Simpsons writer Matt Selman will write the script.^[3]

References

External links

• Official site
• Pictures from the book in the BBC website
• Flanimals on Ricky Gervais's site
• Flanimals on Rob Steen's site
• Flanimals on MySpace
• Flanimals at the Big Cartoon DataBase