Watching and writing

I took my four year old to watch Tangled yesterday evening. I enjoyed the film but for him it was a traumatic event. It reminded me that not all preschoolers want life and death conflict in their media. We both loved a beautiful scene where thousands of lanterns are launched into the night sky from a picturesque island based city with castle atop (of course.)(tangled image) It was a great bit of animation but another reminder, that young children can appreciate moments of emotion and beauty. Although for my son it might have just been a break from the stress of danger and scary characters. Although in the end everyone in the film turns out to be good hearted, bought out of them by Rapunzul's glowing nature, except of course her two faced 'mother' or at least the woman she believes to be her mother - Mmmmm. Very scary concept, discovering that the woman that says 'I love you' everyday is in fact using you.
Of course Tangled is a Disney Princess movie, so a love story, rags to riches (though reversed)a finding of self etc So not really preschool themes. Well maybe finding one's self, managing to do things by ones self, developing an understanding of the world - these are as true to preschoolers, and to bigger children as to adults.
I ponder all this today as I sit down to write a short film aimed at Preschoolers. This is about a little boy who finds a strange creature and sets about trying to look after it. So yes about finding oneself and the ability to think about how to do things for another person and from a Science point of view it is about the essentials for life; food, rest, shelter... and what all living things do; eat, grow, poo...

Spikey Dee gets a big brother and she is up and running

Another story idea I had way back which has only recently found wings is Spikey Dee now called My Extraordinary Little Sister, and this one even predates Kit and Ker-Boot. In fact Spikey Dee started off as a set of children's stories (unpublished) I wrote after my eldest daughter was born and they were based on her - she is now Eleven. Now that she is Eleven I saw how to make the story work for bigger kids. A friend of my eldest daughter is Sam and he is the inspiration for Spikey Dee's older brother affectionately called Matty Pat by his family. Sam is a great cartoon artist and it is his great drawings that inspire me. I think one day Sam will be a film director.

In My Extraordinary Little Sister, a day dreaming eleven year old boy, Matty Pat has to look after his baby sister Spikey Dee whose unusual hair gives her enormous energy boosts when it picks up radiation from machines nearby.

I was lucky enought to score one of the small grants going in the Nick Short scheme (FTI/Screenwest/Nickelodeon Australia) so a three minute pilot is currently in production to be shown on Nickelodeon Australia. I am also lucky to be working with the very talented, very experienced (and a little bit too busy) Stephen Grant. Plus Susie Campbell has worked her magic to help me get the script into shape.

Look out for updates.

Funny, innovative and educational

Drama, puppetry and animation....
From babies to teens, fantasy and reality....
Kids on camera to dragons in the park.....
A showreel of my children's concepts.

Rainbow Dragons and Key Frame at the FTI

I was able to develop the Rainbow Dragons through the FTI's Key Frame program. Although I find it hard to watch (because of listening to myself) the FTI made this little piece on me and Rainbow Dragons in which I explain the concept and the Key Frame program;
http://www.fti.asn.au/make/made/keyframe/91
The Key Frame project has just opened up to applications for projects for 2008.

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!

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?