By now, you will have all seen Commander Chris Hadfield’s version of Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded and filmed on the International Space Station. It is truly amazing. More than two hundred miles above the Earth, a man floated in a tin can, played his guitar and sent a song down here to those of us still on the planet.

My mind is still blown, not just by the amazing imagery, but the whole idea of this happening and what it means.

Go on, watch it again…

This world is changing so much. Things we take as normal could be gone in a couple of generations and things we can’t even imagine could be part of everyday life. Don’t believe me? Okay, yes, I too am disappointed we don’t yet have flying cars and robot butlers. But just consider the effect of 3D printers. Right now, for several grand, you can get a device that prints objects. Actual objects. Sure, they’re expensive and are limited in what they can do but what about in ten years? What if they’re in all our homes and capable of making much more than a pretty plastic model? Already the implications are becoming apparent with plans for 3D-printed guns hitting the Internet. More positively, we can print our own tools. Our own toys. Our own parts for almost anything.

What will that mean for industry? What value will manufacturing have? And if manufacturing has no value and plans are shared freely, what value has creation? Innovation? How will our economic models that served us well during industrial times stand up to change of that magnitude?

I don’t have all the answers. I am just using that one single device to illustrate the potential for society-altering change. Those of my age, of course, have seen such huge changes already. We are the generation who knows what it is like to live before the Internet and after it. I watch Mad Men and notice the lack of computers on the desks and I have to remind myself how we possibly got any work done without computers.

It is all changing.

So in a world where all is changing, what do we teach our children? What do I teach my girls? How about these – creativity, adaptability, problem solving. All good. Empathy, the will to do good. Great, I can see already we’re going to need each other as our planet changes. A love of learning, a search for knowledge, understanding, focus. Absolutely. Change can be influenced, steered, and a greater understanding of our world, our universe and just who we are can help us direct that change towards the positive, helping to make our lives better. Inspiration and aspiration, the belief that we can do amazing things and are capable of things thought previously impossible regardless of gender, race or social standing. Yes, yes, yes.

Commander Hadfield played a guitar in space and I think he has awed a whole generation. He entertained us. But he has done so much more – he has inspired us. The International Space Station is just the beginning of an amazing journey.

We can all play our part. I won’t get to space any time soon but I can inspire children to learn, to enjoy the wonders of our planetary neighbours. That’s why I created Planet Cosmo. It is entertainment first and foremost. Kids have to love the show, they have to laugh and smile and have to want to watch it. And they do. I have lovely mails from parents on how much their children enjoy it but those mails tell me the effect goes beyond the entertainment. My little show inspires – a love of learning, a new interest in space. I’m no Chris Hadfield but the reaction to the show tells me that our team at Geronimo Productions performed our space mission well. Our hard work paid off. And I have been so fortunate to work with such a dedicated team.

As I prepare to leave Geronimo at the end of this month, something that will be one of the biggest changes in my own life, I reflect back on what we have achieved and I can smile. But I’m also looking to the future, at what awesome gifts we can give the next generation to entertain them and inspire them, to enrich their lives both as children and adults.

It’s an adventure. Almost like packing my guitar and blasting off into space.

Well, not quite. But exciting nonetheless.

Thank you Commander Hadfield for entertaining us and inspiring us. And reminding me of two of the most important goals when creating content for children.

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Tags: animation, astronomy, Children, Geronimo Productions, hopes, Planet Cosmo, role models, writing

I have previously stressed the importance of visual simplicity when creating content for young children. But rather than taking that as a given, it is better to get familiar with why this is important.

The answer is not that children are simple.

Quite the opposite. The answer is that children are incredibly complex and, at certain ages, interpret visual information differently. And knowing more about this answer will inform your design choices.

On top of learning new things at a ferocious rate, children are very quickly processing what they see based on what they already know. This can greatly affect how children perceive design. One thing young children try to do, and usually succeed, is put form to abstract shapes. They ace Rorschach tests. They will see monsters in dark corners, faces in patterns, and a whole zoo in their drawings where we adults see nothing but scribbles.

Simply put, they often can make something out of nothing.

So if you have a detailed rock texture, for example, you see it as adding richness. To a young child, you are potentially throwing a whole set of new pictures you never intended. While your characters are busy telling the story, a young child could be staring at that rock texture and seeing snakes, or a clown, or socks, anything, and completely missing your story. Does that mean you shouldn’t use texture? No, not necessarily. But once you start getting detailed, you have to become very aware of the clarity. The edges and shapes become all-important to make sure your audience really put the right forms to what you are showing them. You have to work harder to make each visual element clear to children, while being careful not to overwhelm them.

Another interesting part to this is that children often process their visual information in a certain order. They can work their way through that order and stop when they have enough information to process what they are seeing. That order may well vary from child to child but I have found that shape, silhouette, is usually much more important to the younger end of preschool (two, two and half) than the colour and details within that shape.

So what does this mean for design? Well, it means that if you are using the same character model for more than one character and are relying on colouring and details for kids to tell them apart, you could be in trouble when it comes to the youngest children in your audience. They may well have already categorised the characters before getting to your details, leading to confusion over which character is which.

Varying the silhouette of your characters is really a must for young children.

This really just scratches the surface of things to consider when putting a visual form to your preschool project but even keeping these in mind will help your audience take in your content. You don’t want them confused. You don’t want them looking at one thing while you’re trying to show them another. You do want them to enjoy your story and soak up the entertainment and whatever goodies you are offering them.

What is important to realise is that, by getting more familiar with how your audience thinks, you will be better able to approach your project in a way that makes that easy for them.

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Tags: animation, Children, design

There are huge challenges writing scripts for young children and I think many of them come from the simple reality of what we are doing – working with just words. Words can very quickly become abstract, lose meaning. As I went through in an earlier post, descriptions can fall away until you have just talking heads in a void and they all sound like the writer.

I think a good test of character is whether you would know who is speaking if the names were removed. Do the characters think and act differently? Do they speak differently?

They should.

We engage different parts of our brain when dealing with spoken word than we do when reading and writing. So just because something looks okay on the page doesn’t mean it’s going to sound okay when recorded. I write my stories out loud, saying each sentence over and over in different ways until it sounds right. I have done that since the very first Fluffy Gardens story and do it to this day. I’m not the only one. Ken Levine and David Isaacs (of Cheers/M.A.S.H. fame) dictate their scripts, working them out verbally as someone else types them out.

But saying them out loud in your voice may not be enough.

Writing in character voices is key to making those characters sound different, to get their personalities to come through in the dialogue. Because their voices will greatly affect the choice of words you settle on. If you’re just writing in your voice, you will pick words you will use. If you try words you would never use, they’ll sound awkward and weird. Put on a the voice as you write and you’ll very quickly find yourself putting sentences together differently.

For example, I recently rewatched an episode of Planet Cosmo and found myself laughing at Lifter’s choice of words – “Are you sure, sweetie? I can rustle up quite a breeze!” I thought, oh that’s good, I would never use the phrase “rustle up”. Then I had to remind myself that I wrote those words. But in a way, I guess Lifter said them. I just listened and wrote them down.

So it’s really important to write in character voices.

But I would take this a stage further and say that those of us reading scripts (script editors, producers, directors etc.) should try to read in character voices. You might not yet know exactly how they should sound but give it a go based on what you know of the characters. It will make those lines read very differently. For example, Cranky in Punky (written by the wonderful Andrew Brenner) has lines that can look very harsh and not age-appropriate on the page. But Cranky’s voice (Paul Tylak) gives her a comic quality that completely disarms the lines and makes them work beautifully. They become very funny. Similarly when I wrote Dad in Planet Cosmo, some of his lines looked rude, selfish and sometimes even mean. But say them in Dad’s voice and they become light and funny, losing their weight. How those words sound out loud in a character voice is what counts – that’s what children will hear.

It is always a challenge to make characters work and a greater challenge to make them work well. Working with the character voices is a way of helping their inner personalities and differences come out, and a great way of getting those words on (and off) the page.

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Tags: animation, Fluffy Gardens, Planet Cosmo, writing

I have been Creative Director of Geronimo Productions (formerly Monster Animation) for well over ten years. During that time, we took Monster from being a small studio making commercials to being a studio with a mission, with a drive that reflects my need for the highest-quality children’s programming and an impressive catalogue of shows – Roobarb & Custard Too, Fluffy Gardens, Ballybraddan, Punky, Planet Cosmo and more. Along with producer, Gerard O’Rourke – who I have worked with for eighteen great years – I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved with this studio, what we have built and all the content we have created and produced.

And now I announce my resignation as Creative Director of the company.

Why? Well, the short answer is simply that it is time.

It is time to explore other avenues. Time to build and manage new content within new frameworks. Time to open myself up to different collaborations. Time to make a new leap.

With Geronimo Productions, I have achieved what I set out to achieve all those years ago. It is now a studio that is very different to the one I took on when I stepped into the role of Creative Director. One with tried and tested methods, a strong catalogue with so many success stories and new shows that I have no doubt will become the next success stories. The studio has its own momentum and drive and will flourish.

And for me, on top of the business of building a studio with Gerard, creating and refining production methods, guiding the creative vision and choosing and managing projects, I have seen more than five shows – over 23 hours of television – shaped, pitched, produced and sold. My own Fluffy Gardens went to over 100 countries and Planet Cosmo is now building its own sales with a wonderful reaction from the industry and, more importantly, from children and parents.

I have been and will continue to be a champion for positive preschool entertainment across all areas from creation to screen and beyond.

And so it is time.

I will be with Geronimo Productions for the next month, making sure that the current Geronimo projects are all in good hands and will support them and lend my expertise after I leave. Geronimo Productions will continue to deliver great shows for children and I wish them every success in the future. Thanks to Gerard and all Monsters and Geronimites past and present for being with me on this journey.

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Tags: Geronimo Productions, news

Many years ago, when I was just moving into children’s programming, I saw what was then Tell-Tale Productions (veterans Iain Lauchlan, Karl Woolley and Will Brenton) pitching a show called Where’s Boo? at the Cartoon Forum. They discussed the design and how their research showed that the simple shapes, clear colours and heavy lines made the character much easier to read for small children. Now sometimes people make outlandish claims at the Forum but this made sense to me and the (now ex) Tell-Tale guys know their stuff.

In the years that followed, I dug into research on how children perceive visual information and conducted quite a bit of my own testing on show concepts and designs. It was only then that I could truly appreciate how right they were. As adults, many of us tend towards complexity, the details, texture and polish. Many of these things have no relevance to preschool children and may even cause problems.

Young children need clarity. Visual simplicity.

I have written before about how I first found the Fluffy Gardens look – I drew the characters with a mouse. It prevented me from using some of the shapes and details that would be pleasing to me as an adult. I ended up with basic, crude drawings. Almost like those a child might do.

Children reacted so positively to these images and I found they were drawn in particular to the large eyes (hence them getting even larger in refining the look). The flat colours, the hard black lines on the characters and the simple easy-to-read expressions all contributed to it working for children, yet often far from what we look for as adults.

Since making Fluffy Gardens, different shows have had different needs. You can see, I’m sure, how Planet Cosmo is an evolution of the same ideas. Aiming at the higher end of preschool age range, Planet Cosmo needed to demonstrate the wonders of space. It needed to feel a little more beautiful, less crude. And yet still we have basic shapes, large eyes and flat colour on the characters. The balance took a long time to find and, throughout development and production, we had to remind ourselves of our purpose.

Because as we work, we tend to drift.

Often we drift towards old habits, sometimes we drift towards new ones. But we drift. This is across all aspects, not just design. It is why we so often play back old character samples when recording voice work for a show – even the actor who defined a voice can find themselves drifting away from it, just a little bit each recording. In classical animation, it is how characters might change when animating straight ahead, each drawing being just a little different from the previous one.

So it is important to reset.

Important to take us back to an earlier realisation and remind ourselves of what we learned. To relearn it. It is rarely enough to learn something just once.

For me, that means pulling out the very early Fluffy Gardens concepts, even more basic than the actual finished show. Appreciating the simplicity, the lack of details. And recognising that what I’m looking at is very different to what we often strive for or appreciate as adults. And that’s a good thing.

So, when working for young children, never fear simplicity. Keep in mind the drift, no matter what end of the craft you are in – writing, designing, directing, animating. Sometimes in our quest to get better, we can forget what is important to our audience.

Reset and relearn.

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Tags: animation, Cartoon Forum, Children, design, Fabulopolis, Fluffy Gardens, Planet Cosmo, writing