What are your Oobly Dooblies called?

The Oobly Dooblies are part of Rainbow Dragons. They are jumping, bumping, squeaking, sneaking, grooving 'things' of different colours and textures. They are a device for representing number. Without ever mentioning one, two or three young children will literally 'see' (and 'feel' if they have the toys) numbers in action solving everyday problems during Rainbow Dragons stories. The kids can manipulate these creatures with their hands or in a virtual space to get a better understanding of them and put their very own dressed up set into action for them in many different puzzles and games . The kids may even incorporate the Oobly Dooblies into their mental mathematics (ie what is worked out in their heads.) Here is my Oobly Dooblies T-shirt. (And no I don't know what an iron is. My passion for the idea gets the creases out when I wear it!) For the record MY Oobly Dooblies are called:
Bop
Squeak
Iggle
Bounce
Squiffle
Bummy
Rolley
Orange
Pearly
Long Tall Sally Yellow

To name yours watch the Rainbow Dragons promo (scroll down the posts or go to Jelly Jym at BlipTV .)

Gracie Lou

Last week I contributed to a workshop for the development of a pre preschool series - Gracie Lou. Gracie Lou is originally the creation of Graphic Designers Helen and Darren Simpson. They made it for their daughters. When they teamed up with Two Camels Music in London they ended up with animated nursery rhymes which are being distributed by the ABC. Darren has now teamed up with kids TV producer Susie Campbell to develop it into a series.
The show is aimed at kids aged 0-3 years old. This is a potential new growth area, as baby TV channels spring up all over the world. Whatever you may think of children this age watching television, they are watching this young, so it would be better if what they were viewing was aimed at them. There are a number of preschool shows that arguably children grow out of, or get bored of, by the time they are three anyhow. Zero to six is a big age range for children that are going through such massive development so it is actually great to be able to focus in on the delightfulness of three year olds or two year olds or even one years olds (and having one of those myself at the moment I am particularly focused on that.) The workshop was a great excuse to explore these age groups. I am quite inspired to explore aiming younger with some series concepts myself. I was particularly impressed by our visit to Nedlands School of Early Learning and the woman behind that Sarah Lovegrove.
Gracie Lou has a very simple graphic look and animation style, check it out, I have linked to it. I will keep you updated as to it's progress but it is not up to me to tell you the great ideas we came up for for it except to say it celebrates everyday achievement moments of three year olds!

funding frustrations

I have had several months now of attending courses and doing research and posting videos and blogs to develop the potential of my projects. I think I desperately need to do some writing or creating.
Last time I wrote a script it was the short film "Visious Cycle." With the help of Alan Murphy we very quickly crunched this into a cracking final draft ready for a funding application (link funding through the FTI.) Last week we were shortlisted and this week I had the interview. Unfortunately I was unable to convince them that we would be able to make this, ambitious stop mo/puppetry/flash modern re-telling of the Elves and the Shoemaker, within the allocated time and within budget. Unfortunately the animations that have gone before me for this funding have not delivered on time.
Animations are at a disadvantage with this type of funding as the funding is not enough to employ people full time and animations require full time work by several individuals or take a very long time. I will have to spend more time on the producer aspects of the application next time around (its too good a script to bin, as Alan says maybe we need to do something smaller first) Ie Full on schedules and contracts signed in blood before even a whiff of money. Ah well such is this film making life. The interviewing panel were very complimentary and encouraging about the film and concept!
So like I said it is time to do some more creating.

Back in my first post I talked about how there were only a few places that I found myself in my life in WA. Well two elements of my life here collided last night when I attended the launch of the WA animated series Dogstar at Scitech Discovery Centre. The launch was put on by Screenwest where my friend Hilary Lambert is now working. We worked together at Scitech years ago. Also at the launch were friends from the FTI and of course WAnimate and the animation community - it's a very small place WA. Check out Dogstar, it's fun and funny and its flash animation pushed to the limit - I've linked to it.

Jelly Jym on Blip TV

You can now watch Jelly Jym episode bubbles in five minute installments on Blip TV, look for the link on the right of the page at the top. Part one available for viewing now! I am very excited to see if these get an audience. I think teachers and parents should find them useful for;

• explaining science concepts,
• showing to the kids to engage them with ideas and activities,
• ideas on fun activities to try.
  

They are aimed at children aged between about three and eight years old. They are a mixture of puppets, presenter, kids doing stuff, all sorts of animations, stories, singing snails, grumpy rocks.....why am I describing it, just go and watch them!

Rainbow Dragons 2

Here is a promo produced for showcasing Rainbow Dragons in an interactive form. I decided to use the limited time available to do animations to show how the Oobly Dooblies and Fijity Wiks would work because I thought this might be an element people would find hardest to grasp. I am now working on the script which will illustrate the potential for great stories and interaction between the three personalities...

Click To Play

Island of Wild Hope

Here is a children's film I made with Ian Tregonning and the Museum of Western Australia. It is a pilot of sorts for a series where this character Jenny would always be going to the museum to find a solution to a problem or worry she had through stories inherent in the museum exhibits as revealed by her mysterious friend Gappa. What Jenny 'sees' in her head on hearing these stories is shown as animation - done here by the very talented Stephen Grant.
If you think it makes a good way to communicate history - let me know.

Kit and Kerboot to Jelly Jym

I got into animation because I was looking for a way to make an animated series idea I had had while being an at home Mum with a couple of little kids. I was watching programmes like Thomas the Tank Engine, Maisy, Teletubbies and Bob the Builder and thought hey I could come up with a way of putting science concepts into a kids series. I came up with Kit and Kerboot - Kit is a little kid who likes investigating his/her surroundings and has a boot as a comforter. A boot? yeah well I had this old pair of shoes that were starting to split at the seams and started to get a face.... Anyway kids choose all sorts of things to be there go everywhere with them item and Kit chose a boot! In a Calvin and Hobbes type way Kit talks to her boot and the boot - Kerboot replies in a caring fussy grandfatherly way. But Kerboot usually ends up the fall guy when Kit needs a vital piece of equipment in some experiment she conceives.

Anyway one day I saw a small add in the local newspaper calling out for people who wanted to get involved in animation (CADSA at the FTI) and as I had experience in television production and puppets (from previously writing puppet shows) I got in. I did not get to make my Kit and Kerboot idea for almost three years when after working on the Adventures of Duncan Rat and making one episode of Jelly Jym, all as part of CADSA, I finally had the opportunity to use it. I had found people who would realise it for me, Christian Clegg, Shannon Li and Ian Tregonning. I put it in Jelly Jym episode two - Bubbles. It is now an interstitial length... hopefully inside or outside of Jelly Jym it will get more episodes!?

Whatever happens to Kit and Kerboot it was the first in the line of many ideas that relaunched my interest in making TV but now I came at it with new knowledge and passion for early childhood education and entertainment.

Jelly Jym is a half hour show which is a mixture of a presenter and two puppets, little sequences of real kids doing things and short animated stories. The show has a fresh approach to preschool programming. It uses all the tried and tested techniques of songs and activity modeling and stories but it ventures to do something little kids also love doing; investigating and experimenting. Kids that have seen it - love it and watch it time and again and ask for more.

Jelly Jym is a half hour show but second time around I also split it into five lots of five minutes as well as a half hour - so a broadcaster could (and did) show one each day of the week and the half hour on the saturday. (This episode won an Antennae award.) The five minute format also gives a handy internet sized episode. And even each 5 minutes would break down again into smaller packages like the animations, the songs and the explanations.

Science is best done for real by little kids so I want Jelly Jym to be inspirational for the kids, putting ideas of things to try and concept seeds in their head. Jelly Jym also puts science into story, so making it more accessible. Plus I want to provide something for teachers and parents to draw upon to help them do early science with kids. Would you like to see more?