Over the last week, I have been completely buried in Cosmo animatics – the stories with voices but just in storyboard form, rather than fully animated. Cosmo is a greater challenge than my previous shows due to the number of elements that all have to flow together – adventure, characters, three songs per episode, two planet information sections, several interactive sequences and more. Vastly different segments that all must come together as a whole in just thirteen minutes.

For guidance, I find watching with an audience can make all the difference.

Not just asking opinion, or even watching their reaction. There is something simply in being in the presence of an audience that can completely change how we ourselves perceive what we are seeing. We get a new perspective. Even if the children sat with poker faces and never said a word, the act of just watching with an audience can make so many things clear.

Then of course, we have the added bonus that our audience rarely sits with poker faces (generally not a good sign) and we can ask them questions. What did you like? Who is your favourite character? What did you learn about the planet? We can learn so much about what is working and not working about our shows from just asking our audience and listening carefully to the answers. If you have your own kids, you have that access to that feedback all the time but, even if you don’t, an audience isn’t hard to find. So why not seek out that feedback?

Well, for me, I find if I’m resistant at all to even looking for the feedback, it’s a sign that somewhere deep down I know something isn’t right and I just don’t want to hear that. So I have to push through it and look for the feedback anyway.

But having children can also show us the limitations in such feedback. As anyone with a child will know, show the same child the same thing on a different day and you will most likely get completely different feedback. Children are incredibly complex beings and prone to such dramatic changes even in just the space of minutes that, when crafting a television show, it can sometimes be a mistake to react to their whims too quickly. What you get back in feedback at any given moment may actually be about something else entirely. This is true for an adult audience too – what they say they want may well not be what they’ll like if you give it to them.

Focus groups can be of very limited value. If they weren’t, every show ever tested would be a huge hit.

Entertainment is an inexact science. Or, at the very least, the science is so complicated that it is well beyond our total understanding right now. Whether from those in the audience themselves, or from those who claim to know what they’re talking about (like me), it’s all just a best-guess scenario.

So feedback is important. But it’s not a replacement for our own independent thought. It shouldn’t be a crutch, an excuse not to make our own decisions, an out-clause if something goes wrong. They are still our own decisions.

So watch with an audience. Listen not just to them, but to yourself as you gain a new perspective.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, Cosmo

Character is everything. At least, that’s what people say.

But, having created over 40 characters for one show alone, I’ve realised that some of the characters people initially love turn out to be the hardest to find stories for. The attraction to a character can actually be just a surface trait, or a design quirk rather than being a really well-developed character who will lead to many good stories. Some characters get exhausted rather quickly, whereas others remain fun to write forever. And when they’re more fun to write, I’m pretty sure they’re usually more fun to watch.

Here are a few examples of Fluffy Gardens characters easy or tough to write for:

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PAOLO THE CAT

Everyone took a shine to Paolo early on and children really respond to him when he crops up in other character’s episodes.

But, beyond his initial series 1 episode, Paolo was very difficult to write for. The thing is, because he is set up as being so clever, he’s a living deus ex machina to any story. Can’t solve a problem? Go to Paolo and ask him! He’s a ruiner of good stories. So in series 2, you’ll see Wee Reg the Puppy immediately jump to the idea of asking Paolo about rainbows – but Paolo isn’t in (he’s out buying milk) because, if Paolo is in, the story ends there and not in a very interesting way.

Of course, what I came to realise is that part of what made Paolo so endearing in the first place is how insecure he is about his own talents. I made use of that in a series 2 episode that became one of my favourites.

Still, Paolo wasn’t easy to write for.

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THE SMALL GREEN THING

Another very popular character with children. But let’s be honest here, even the word ‘character’ is stretching it a bit. He’s cute, he’s green and he squeaks.

Part of the challenge with this character is that I achieved what I wanted to say with the Small Green Thing in the very first Fluffy Gardens episode ever aired – Paolo the Cat. In that, I show that even though he is small his help can make a big difference. I feel that’s a strong message and I delivered it and then the poor ol’ Small Green Thing became tough to write even just as a guest character. Nevertheless, he remained popular among fans of the show and I think he’s an example of the importance of simplicity. In ways, it’s sometimes easiest for us to relate to the blank slate characters because we can project ourselves on to them.

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MAVIS THE PONY

Mavis, on the other hand, I could write a thousand episodes about. She is one Fluffy Gardens character who could easily carry her own show. She is no (please excuse this) one trick pony. She is very careful (positive?) but that makes her nervous (negative?), prone to panic (negative?) and unwilling to take chances (parents could see that either way depending on just how many scrapes their children get into). So her main trait, being careful, instantly results in a whole bunch of conflicts without her even having to do a thing. And, as most of these Fluffy Gardens character traits lend themselves to moral tales, Mavis exists in a grey area because it’s easy to argue that being careful is a good thing and equally easy to argue that taking chances is a good thing.

To add to that, she has hay fever and Michael Maloney’s voice delivery makes her sound like a female Irish Richard Nixon, which I love.

So Mavis can be thrown into just about any story and be entertaining, often very funny but also come out of it having learned something about the merits of being careful or the exact opposite – about taking chances.

As a result, you’ll see there are more series 2 episodes about Mavis the Pony than any other character. She was just too much fun. I had to keep writing Mavis stories.

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Early on when pitching Fluffy Gardens, many people asked me ‘could you just make the show about Paolo the Cat?’. If I had, the show would have wrapped up after about three episodes. What we perceive as character is often much simpler than we imagine, and other times much more complex. But of this I’m pretty certain – there is a lot more to making a connection with children than character. It is just one layer in a far larger creation.

Filed under: Fluffy Gardens by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, design, Fabulopolis, Fluffy Gardens, writing

In one of my articles from last year on Dad.ie, I mentioned one of the problems even the most responsible parent has with TV shows that may not be age-appropriate (or even appropriate in any way ever) – we can pick and choose what our children watch but we can’t really shield them from what other children are watching.

Since writing that article, my once-little Daisy has moved up to ‘big school’ and when that happened there was a pretty big explosion in violent expression. Not actions for the most part, but definitely words. Now kids are kids and they aren’t always nice to other kids. But you know the way big content producers make sure children know the brand and the elements unique to their product? Well, the side effect of that is that it often makes violent influences pretty easy to track.

Like the lightsaber example in my article, this isn’t just kids exploring violence as part of being kids. There are often sources, influences, inspirations. A huge amount of action shows for kids older than my girls, for example, don’t just show violence as an acceptable solution, they make it the solution of heroes. The way of champions.

It’s what the good guys do.

But I guess I do need to face one thing: TV didn’t invent violence. It’s obvious, I know, but important to point out. Just because studies show a relationship between viewing violent television and aggression (and they do), that doesn’t mean television can be a scapegoat for all the evils of the world. Same with music, or videogames or Ozzy or Lionel Ritchie or anything else.

The Vikings didn’t watch Power Rangers.

The Spanish Inquisition didn’t listen to Judas Priest.

The Huns didn’t play Grand Theft Auto.

They discovered violence all by themselves.

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But that doesn’t mean we can’t aim for better, right?

That our biggest threat is still ourselves, that people inflict pain and death on other people around the world all the time bugs the hell out of me. It is not something we should just take for granted. Not something we should accept. Look at the amazing things we can do and how far we have come already. We’re pretty fantastic in so many ways, and can do so much better.

Unfortunately, as the Vikings, Spanish Inquisition and Huns have shown us, removing television violence isn’t going to solve the world’s ills. I wish it were that simple. But we do know people learn from the television they watch as children. So, as an idea, how about this – let’s not make it worse. Positive messages, showing alternatives to violence, reinforcing how amazing we all are and that, as it happens, not everyone is out to get you, may go some way (even a very tiny way) to eventually leading to a time when we’re all just good to each other.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, education, hopes, media literacy, Messages, parenting, role models, violence

With COSMO up and running, my job shifts into managing a production. Sourcing people to fill those last few roles, hiring them, scheduling the production and setting up systems to work within that schedule, tying up those last few loose ends (I don’t like loose ends) and running the preproduction as the countdown begins to full-on production. Getting this show produced. During this time, the little indulgences become important. They keep the creative brain cells firing and help achieve a management/creative balance along with the writing and directing.

So today, after a fun Paddy’s Day weekend with the family, here is a little gallery of iPad doodles. Some of you may have seen a few of them on Twitter (find me on Twitter here). Imagine them presented with that Tony Hart music.

A huge amount of the concept work for COSMO was created on an iPod Touch and the iPad and this is one of the iPad pieces, so not really an indulgence here. Keeping the images small naturally tends to lead the design to a cute and chunky look so this method worked really well for the show. This is Cosmo and her Dad on Mars and it established the design for their buggy. I may have shown a bit of this one before but here is the whole thing.

Another COSMO image next. This time, on stormy Jupiter…

Next up is a tiger in the zoo. This particular tiger is a character who has been with me for quite some time. It’s like he keeps coming back to me, demanding his own story. I haven’t quite found it yet.

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. This next image illustrates the potential dangers of the transporter. I love pixel art. Adore it. There is something beautifully pure about creating an image square by square. I’d really like to explore the form further and see where it takes me. This one is a rather simple one but, once the pixels were in place, I added some textures and amended the colours a little. This was all done on the iPad using about four apps from start to finish.

I do love my Star Trek!

My favourite movie monster now. Behold the terror…

Another pixelart image now and another Mars picture, albeit not COSMO related. Here are a couple of space explorers making the decision to do the only thing they can. The more I have been working on COSMO, the more I see just how much interest there is in space from little girls. In a world bombarded with princesses, little girl astronauts seem like a far better role model to me. So here they are…

And here they are again on Venus. Venus is a fascinating planet. It’s incredibly hostile and that actually made it quite difficult to write about when developing COSMO. Very few child-friendly stories involve acid rain. Nevertheless, I managed it and we now have two stories about the searing toxic yellow world. And yes, the acid rain is featured. I’m looking forward to seeing what we learn from the Venus Express.

Last up for my little gallery is a drawing of my family. Me, Daisy, Alice and my lovely wife Meabh.

So there it is. My little gallery. If anyone is curious, most of them were made in the Brushes app and the pixels were done in an app called Tiny Pixels. Hope everyone has a great and very productive week ahead. Go create something amazing!

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, art, Cosmo, indulgences

An old story from back in 2009 here. I didn’t have this site up then so here it is, a few years late…

As Chairman of the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland’s Animation Alliance, I had to address the Guild at the 2009 AGM. Just an update on what our group of directors was doing and how things were in our end of the entertainment world. I mentioned at the time that, after a meeting with the Irish Film Board’s then Chief Executive, I came away concerned by what I felt was a dismissal of television for young children.

At which point, someone chimed in that it possibly had something to do with children’s television just existing to sell plastic and that the IFB shouldn’t be supporting it.

How does one react to that?

Well, if I’m anything to go by, one initially gets flustered and then explains that television for young children is the most important television of all and cannot be dismissed. Children are learning, they do watch television and the television we make for them can affect their whole world view. And more eyes are seeing our shows each week across the world than probably any other content from Ireland.

As for selling plastic?

What likely rubbed me up the wrong way most about this accusation is that, for portions of the global industry, it is true. It often has to be true because the economics of making a children’s show rarely work on their own.

All the more reason why public funding bodies must get involved in supporting GOOD children’s television. Television that exists to provide children with good quality, enriching age-appropriate entertainment. Culturally-relevant, even better. Educational, better still.

The more support that’s there for local content, the less children’s shows are bought in from elsewhere. The less those shows have to rely on licensing and merchandise to justify their production costs. The less anyone needs to think about selling plastic. Children’s shows selling plastic is precisely why local funding bodies can’t dismiss one of the most important areas in programming.

Today, several years after that little AGM incident, we have a new animation team starting on COSMO. It is going to be a busy day and an exciting one. Because we’re all working together on a show that exists for one reason: to give children the absolute best. We are very fortunate that it can exist for that one reason and, as it happens, we have the Irish Film Board to thank for that, especially Emma Scott and Andrew Meehan. The IFB were so supportive of COSMO and put so much faith and funding into the show that it simply would not have happened without them and it is why we get to make a show right here in Ireland, with an Irish creator, writer, director, all the top-line creative processes being done here in Ireland, the animation team being right here and, from a business perspective, all ownership remaining right here. For all the right reasons, it matters to Ireland and yet it’s a show that can give to children all over the world. If Fluffy Gardens is anything to go by, it will travel.

Right now, our little area of children’s TV is the poster child for Irish production in many circles.

The support makes all the difference. It makes a difference to sustainability, to the types of shows we can make and the reasons we make them. It makes a difference to children here and, hopefully, to children everywhere.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, business, Children, Cosmo, Irish Film Board, licensing