One of the things with this business is that you can rarely talk about the cool stuff you’re making while you’re making it. It’s often top secret stuff. As we approach Christmas, I desperately want to shout about what we’re making at Mooshku… but I can’t. Next year.
What I can mention, however, is how we make what we make. How we’re trusted to deliver the best for young kids and how we pass that trust on to our fantastic team, allowing them to bring what is special to them to our work. How we explore character, life, acting and how crucial the setting for all this is. How we like to encourage people to do more than that one thing they were hired for, how we have to do that as a small team. And how we look to see where everyone can bring something more, something extra to each part of the process. Always looking to make it better and doing so with a smile, enjoying the making.
All of this has made the latter part of this year a joy and makes me excited for next year as we take this production to the next level. We’re making something special.
A break gives me that space to step back and look at what we’re doing and how fortunate we are to do what we do. How fortunate we are to work with the people we work with. And how important it is that we make something incredible for kids, to make them smile and laugh and brighten a day. Giving them something positive. So thank you to all our team and everyone we work with. We’re doing something wonderful.
And to everyone else stopping by my little blog, have a wonderful Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate. No doubt 2017 brought its challenges but I hope that, when you step back and look at what you did this year, you see progression, something fun or that you know you have laid the groundwork for something fun in the future. Find the victories and allow yourself to acknowledge them and enjoy them for what they are, no matter how big or small.
Have a fantastic break and I wish everyone the best for 2018!
Oh, one last thing. The Fluffy Gardens Christmas Special is airing on RTE 2 on Christmas Morning. The 11th year running! Quite a Christmas tradition now.
We’ve added some new colours to our Mooshku logo. Yes, that’s pretty exciting but not as exciting as our new showreel! This gives a really good look at what we do at Mooshku, with a particular focus on our animation because that’s usually what you do with a showreel. I can guarantee you that there are some things in here you haven’t seen yet.
So check it out below!
Like it? Feel free to pass along the link and share it and show all your best friends. We’re pretty proud of it.
What is harder to show in something like this video is all the development and writing work we do, especially as most of that happens on new projects that haven’t been launched yet. We consult on concepts, help write and put together show bibles and pitch work, define early scripts to set the tone for a show and work out the kinks and answer the inevitable questions and we do this on many types of shows. And not just shows too – the formats are different but the various forms of children’s media often share common goals.
What’s great about doing this is that a) we’re really good at it and b) we love making good stuff for kids. So it is hugely rewarding to help others give their good stuff for kids every chance it can get. Next month, Mooshku turns three years old. Because I’ve been doing this for decades, it’s quite odd to think about how new that feels – it’s barely older than my dog! But really, as a company, we’re young and I was doing a little stock take recently and all those services we decided to offer when we set up our company we have managed to do for people over the last few years. So I’m taking that as a victory.
It’s not an easy business. Anyone in it knows that. But it’s fun. It’s rewarding. It’s always changing. And, as I say in the video, if you can put smiles on the faces of kids… well, you know the rest. If you ever need our services, get in touch.
One last thing to mention. That music track you hear in the reel is a song called Electric Isle by Dream Fiend. You should check out that whole EP and more HERE! Beautiful dreamy happy synth. It brightens up my day.
Now go on. Have a good day and show off our showreel somewhere!
I normally only post on a Wednesday so this might upset the entire fabric of the space-time continuum but, in advance of heading to the Children’s Media Conference, I thought I’d get in a little update on me and Mooshku. Why? Because I don’t often talk about my current work here and it’s no harm to remind you about what it is that I do.
So what have I been up to? And Méabh? And all of us at Mooshku generally?
Mooshku have been consulting on 3 lovely early stage children’s properties for third party companies. That entails evaluating existing content, focussing it for the right audience and also broadcasters and partners and putting it together to make a really strong pitch for a really strong concept. That has included writing concept documents, show bibles, storylines and also sample scripts. Simply put, we have been making lovely ideas even lovelier!
We created, wrote and produced Trufax Tot Cop for the Nickelodeon shorts programme, just one of four international companies selected. It is absolutely KILLING ME that I haven’t been able to show this yet or say more about it. There are very good reasons why I can’t but I’m so eager to show it to you.
Update: I’m now okay to add an image so here he is, Trufax Tot Cop!
We produced animation for a live science show for the Edinburgh Fringe last year and, around this time last year at Mooshku, we were just finishing production on a pixel art music video for GUNSHIP. You probably know I love my pixel art.
And we have been developing our new IP and producing some new animation samples to show them off. They are really pretty and fun and we’ll be bringing them along to the CMC next week. We’ll post some online soon too, I promise! In the meantime, some pictures:
Sticking with our Mooshku mission of collaboration, Méabh produced the live-action for the 52 episodes of Little Roy for our wonderful friends at JAM Media. And Méabh is currently producing The Overcoat for the talented guys at Giant Animation, featuring the voice talents of Cillian Murphy and Alfred Molina.
And on top of all this, I have been doing a huge amount of writing. Over the last 18 months or so, I have written…
5 episodes of the upcoming Wild Adventures of Blinky Bill for Flying Bark in Australia.
4 episodes of a lovely new show I can’t yet name for Submarine in the Netherlands.
2 Gråtass live-action theatrical children’s feature films for Cinenord in Norway.
More than 10 scripts for top secret early development projects for Ireland and the UK (early development for 3rd party companies is a lot of what we do in Mooshku).
And I have been writing the full 20 episodes of the new Karsten Og Petra series and a Karsten Og Petra feature film, also for Cinenord. This is one that is particularly dear to my heart. This series is so lovely. If you haven’t seen anything from it yet, you should look it up. It is preschool perfection (I can’t take credit for that – it was perfection even before I got involved!).
And I’m working on something lovely for Karrot (of Sarah & Duck) and a nice new show I can’t yet mention but will be a lot of fun.
That post turned out even longer than I expected. We’ve been busy! Really, we’ve been doing what we love to do: make really great stuff for kids. We have our mission to bring kids something really good and we’re strong on that. And we also love collaboration and working with others. We don’t see competition – we see a community. So far, that ethos is working wonderfully for Mooshku.
So that’s the update. If you’re at the CMC, do say hello! It will be lovely to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones too.
Almost break time! Well that turned out to be a busy year. On Friday, I should deliver the final draft of the last episode of a 20-episode live-action children’s series I have been writing. A gorgeous television show for Norway that has been a joy to write. Also this year, I have written for companies in Holland and Australia. So my 2015 writing output looks a little like this:
29 TV episodes
2 features from blank page to final draft.
1 feature to first draft.
That is on top of our other Mooshku work: consulting on a couple of projects, creating and animating segments for a live science show, producing a rad pixel art music video for Gunship, developing some of our in-house IP and creating, writing and producing a pretty special little animation we’re not yet allowed talk about (more on that next year!). Oh, and Méabh has been busy producing Little Roy with the wonderful Jam Media.
Together, we have lived in many worlds and made friends with many characters, some established and some completely new. We have had stress and struggles but also fun and play. And it is the fun and play that we want on screen. That is what kids will respond to.
That is why we test our work with children. We note what is working, not working. Where they laughed, where they looked away. What they talked through or what they talked about. For us, it is about giving children the best and, when it comes down to it, no matter what our opinions are, no matter who is throwing notes at us, it is important that we ultimately defer to the true experts: the children.
So as Christmas approaches and the year draws to a close, I would like to thank all the kids who watched our work this year and listened to our stories and gave us comments such as “make this into a whole movie”, “can you finish it today?”, “my favourite bit is the bit with the pants”, “why does it say he is green when it isn’t coloured in?”, “will the drawings be better?”, “did you forget your glasses?”, “it was my sister’s birthday yesterday” and many more insightful gems. Especially to the children of Rathfarnham Educate Together.
You kids all rock and you make our work better.
I hope everyone has a calm and peaceful Christmas or whichever holiday you choose to celebrate!
Minimum viable product is, like the current Cult Of Failure, one of those concepts I find tricky given my experience and what I do. Why? Because the standard of children’s media is generally INCREDIBLY high. Sure, we hear people complain about the reboots and the more generic Team Dora shows and there are many areas to improve. But really, a massive amount of kids’ media across books, apps and television is pretty impressive. In books we have a level of artistry and writing that can amaze kids and adults alike. Apps have brought us some astounding creativity and a high level of polish. And kids’ TV is built on 60 years of history – learning, experience, research and hands-on production – and still delivers new surprises all the time.
So I get the concept of minimum viable product but, in kids’ media where the current standard is so high, I find we always need to be aiming much higher. Minimum awesome product or whatever you would like to call it.
While at MIPJunior last weekend, I saw some new concepts and shows from friends and colleagues that hit much higher than what we could ever call a minimum viable product. Some wonderful things that I have no doubt will be hitting various screens in the next couple of years, hopefully along with some of our own work at Mooshku which, as an aside, went down brilliantly during MIPJunior.
Not everything was fantastic, of course. One trailer, for example, was mentioned over dinner as an idea that then was terribly let down by the animation quality. There are other companies with impressive production experience and can make pretty trailers but not always the expertise to create content, story and characters from scratch. And some excellent would-be content creators just don’t know how to get stuff made. There can be parts missing that can let down that push to get well beyond minimum viable product.
So the standard is incredibly high, a minimum viable product is rarely good enough and usually no one person can reach the necessary quality alone.
That’s tough, right?
Sure, but you know what else I saw at MIPJunior? A large community of people helping each other out. Offering advice. Sharing stories of successes and failures. Hints and tips. And the offer of services and expertise where needed. I very quickly realised we all have a lot more in common than it might appear. We are just at different stages or have different strengths. Aspects some find difficult, I’ll realise I struggled with for a long time too in those early days. Other things that even now I could find daunting, others who seem so confident in the industry will reveal they share those feelings too. The important thing is that we find our strengths and use them well, while working with those who have complimentary strengths. And with so many great people around to work with, it’s not as hard as it may sometimes appear.
When I started up Mooshku with Méabh, one of our first goals was collaboration, not competition. We wanted to work with other people, other studios, people we admire with strengths different to ours and helping others out where we could lend our strengths and rich expertise. Now that we’ve got things moving and have momentum, it is so clear that was the right choice. And no better place than kids’ content to get collaborative and reach far, far higher than just minimum viable product.
And related to the topic of collaboration and sharing information, I’m delighted to announce a fantastic event from Animation Skillnet and Creative Europe on the erosion of lines between books, apps, games and TV shows. Our panelists are Eric Huang, publishing legend from Made In Me, Curtis Jobling, creator, author, illustrator and designer of Bob the Builder (proper Bob, not new Bob), Miika Tams, Rovio’s VP of Games of Angry Birds fame, and Julie Fox from Awol Animation, international animation distributor. Each speaker will be offering a presentation which will no doubt inform and inspire and then I’ll be chairing a panel discussion with our guests. It is happening at the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on the 29th of October. Details HERE!
Last week we brought Millie and Mr Fluff to the Cartoon Forum. I have mentioned Millie in my last two posts but I don’t feel I have really told you a huge amount about it, partly because I like this blog to be informative rather than just a platform to promote my projects. But Millie is really important for me and I think it deserves a bit of space here.
So why is it so important? Well, Millie is not the first project of mine to make it out into the world since my big move last year (that would be DINO DOG) and it is not the only Mooshku project in development. But it is my first new TV project. Even bigger than that, it is the first Mooshku project to be revealed to more than just a handful of people. That’s a big deal to us at Mooshku. Mooshku’s first stamp on the world of good children’s entertainment is Millie. It is the first project that can now make it to what would be a Mooshku showreel. That’s important, right? It’s the beginning of a new life chapter that could turn out to be a very big chapter.
Here’s the show concept…
Millie is playful child (just like your child) who runs a zoo (okay, not exactly like your child). Her one aim: make sure everyone has a great time at the zoo. So when an animal is sick or needs the morning off to pick up their dry cleaning or is missing for any reason, Millie calls her very good friend Mr Fluffington-Strypes to stand in for the missing animal. Fluffington-Strypes (Mr Fluff to his friends) is an actor, a gentleman and a rather large cuddly tiger. He dresses up and assumes the role of any animal at the zoo.
Anything but the monkeys, who are noisy, playful and terribly messy and far beneath a professional such as Mr Fluff. More often than not, it doesn’t quite go according to plan and so Millie has a day of fun trying to make it all work out and children have lots of laughs along the way.
Millie and Mr Fluff is a short, snappy preschool comedy show. Comedy is one of those things talked about a lot and there are certainly a few great preschool shows that are genuinely funny for young kids (Peppa, Gigglebiz, Ben and Holly, Pingu going back a bit). But there aren’t all that many. So we worked really hard to get the Millie comedy right for preschoolers in the scripts, the voices, the design, animation, music and sound. And it works. It’s funny. That kids also find out about animal traits along the way is a happy bonus feature.
After LONG development, testing and tweaking, Millie and Mr Fluff has really come together to become something special. And we finally revealed the show to the world (well, to Europe) at the Cartoon Forum.
The pitch went like this: adrenalin kicked in, I started talking about the show, showed a lot of clips and I could see some people smiling which was nice and then it was suddenly over and people were saying lovely things and writing even more lovely things on little purple cards. The show went down great with a lot of people. They got it. In comments, the strength of the core concept was something people could see. They loved the comedy, the look, the music and a few mentioned in particular how well we knew the characters and how that came across.
One aspect that intrigued people: all of the art assets were created on iPads.
All the interest and positive comments were great to hear given the amount of work we did in development – it paid off.
Huge sigh and a sense of satisfaction… before realising that this is just one stage in the process and we now have a lot of following-up to do. And so it’s off to MipJunior with Millie next. A step in a longer journey but a very important one to me and we came away with the results we wanted. And on top of that, we really enjoyed the Forum and got to hang out with old friends and new friends and that was lovely.
So would you like to see some of Millie? Sure you would! Here is the extended megamix of our trailer with little glimpses of Millie stories and scenes. You can watch it in higher quality by clicking the little Vimeo logo on the clip. Here’s Millie and Mr Fluff:
The Cartoon Forum 2014 is next week and we at Mooshku will be there presenting our new children’s show Millie and Mr Fluff – a comedy about a little zookeeper and her tiger friend, full of fun, disguises and mischievous monkeys. We have lots of animated scenes to show, some great funny moments and a fantastic soundtrack (you’re going to LOVE the music). So I’m really looking forward to the presentation.
There is something special about showing your work to the world, especially in a presentation/pitch scenario where you get to reveal in a way that can offer up the odd little surprise. Presenting is fun. It wasn’t always that way for me. I have pitched many times and the early days were tough. Speaking in front of a room full of people can be a tough thing to ask of even a high-functioning introvert and, truth be told, my early presentations left a lot to be desired. But I learned from experience, watching other presentations and also learning from my own – where they went right and where they didn’t.
People have their own methods of course but for me one simple thing changed presenting from being a nerve-wracking horror to being a rush: more preparation. Preparation firstly in making absolutely sure your concept is ready (I wrote a post on that once) and then actual pitch preparation. Writing it, rewriting it, saying it (because writing is not the same as talking), knowing it. You hit a point where you know your material well enough that you can veer off or answer a question when required and not trip up. You can ad lib and tell a story of something that happened that morning because you know the key points and the material rather than just learning words. At that stage, you’re not reciting. You’re in communication with your audience.
And like a show itself, communication is what it’s all about.
If you can communicate your show well, you’re giving it the best chance. You have to have a great show of course but even the best shows need to be presented well. There will still be hiccups. I still get nervous. I may stumble over a word or two. A video might not play when it supposed to. I might realise I’m still in my dressing gown and slippers. Having written this post about enjoying presenting, I have pretty much guaranteed something will go horribly wrong to make me regret that. But if I’m really prepared, I can pull it together and keep going.
So what about Millie and Mr Fluff? Well it’s a lovely funny show for young kids with a strong hook (I’ll tell you more about that some other time!). We’ve had a fantastic response so far and did some testing early on and refined it and the reaction from kids and their parents has been amazing. We’re excited about bringing it to the Forum and getting to show it off and we have some really entertaining clips to show.
If you’re coming to the Cartoon Forum, I hope we’ll see you in our room: Friday the 26th at 9.45am in the Pink Room.
And if you’re presenting there yourself, enjoy it. Go prepared, have fun and good luck.
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the muck-flinging going on in gaming over the last few weeks. I’d forgive you for steering clear of it. The short version is that a small group of gamers jumped on an opportunity for sexism and harassment and a large group of gamers enabled it. I wasn’t remotely surprised by the small group but I must admit to being pretty taken aback by the larger group – the enablers. I have been aware of these issues of course and have written many times on gender role models but this seemed worse than even I was expecting.
I couldn’t help but think of Scott Benson’s short film ‘But I’m A Nice Guy’ (watch here).
It made me sad.
And then, like any stimulus to the creators among us, it motivated me. I asked myself “how can I make things better?” This is one of the wonderful things I see in other creators and there are so many of us. Instead of just tearing things down or criticising or arguing, we get constructive. We learn. We make. We contribute.
So what can we do?
Well in preschool media we start early and this, in my opinion, is the best place to start. In preschool, things are actually pretty good. Some of the biggest hitters (Dora, Peppa, Doc McStuffins) work across genders and don’t rely on gender stereotyping that might widen the divide or build perception that men and women are entirely different beings. Female role models are in a much better place in preschool than they were some years ago and this is working well for everyone. And many broadcasters and producers are working even harder and actively looking for varied, interesting and positive characters with a better gender balance. This all has a positive effect among both girls and boys.
So let’s keep that up. Watch your male/female character ratio, make sure characters of both genders are actual characters rather than their personalities being their gender and watch for lazy gender signifiers (this happens so often without even realising it and I’ve been guilty of it in the past).
One problem is that, for all the great work we’re doing and improvements we’re getting in actual preschool content, we seem to be seeing an equal and opposite effect in marketing. I see more gender divides than ever in commercials and products. What can we do about that? Well as parents we can try to reject it and as creators we can aim to make our content as gender-inclusive as possible. How can that help? Well what I’m finding in preschool is that the better the actual content, the more it exposes the worst of the commercials around it as archaic and wrong. I’m sensing a much greater awareness of these issues among parents and the better things get, the more the anomalies will stand out. There have been great campaigns to make children’s books more gender-inclusive, for example. And now those big ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’ titles begin to look weird in that landscape.
So let’s keep improving the content landscape.
Can we do more? Sure. We can always do more. For me, creating content for children that would enrich and contribute is part of our core mission statement at Mooshku and these recent events have pushed gender issues right up to the top of our list. So some things that were simmering in the background will be shifted to the foreground as soon as we can. If we get it right, we can help children, boys and girls, come out of their preschool years as confident as possible, as well-rounded as possible and as open and accepting as possible.
And then after the preschool years? Well that’s where I’ll challenge those making content for older children to do better. There is a problem. So let’s see what difference you can make.
Wouldn’t it be great if, one day, people will ask, “Violence? What’s violence?”
Oh, some of you are going to say it’s in our nature and it will never end. The real monster is man and so on.
In our nature? Perhaps. Now. In the past.
But we evolve. We change and improve. Walking on all fours was in our nature until we evolved to walk upright. Grunting was part of our nature until we created language or moved beyond our teenage years. We have all changed for the better.
We can always change for the better.
Many years ago in darker times when dragons walked the earth (maybe), I was making a health informational safety video for children. It was a general subject that affects us all but they wanted to wrap it up in a fun cartoon for kids. Why? Because that’s where they could make a difference. In a single generation, they could make real change. That stuck with me. I knew it to be true because I grew up on Sesame Street and look what that show did. Media has an effect and that can be positive or negative – regular readers will know that’s a running theme on this blog.
So I aim for positive. And the great thing is that I know so many others are aiming for positive too. But when our Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with horrific images that shake us to our core, worrying about our colourful shows, silly characters for cartoons and apps may seem indulgent. Trivial. Pointless.
It’s not.
At the very least, for a brief moment we can give some children a smile, maybe even a laugh. But it’s much more than that. What we offer children now through media becomes part of the world view of the next generation. We can do some really great things for kids, in very big ways or just in small ways. It all counts. Going back a few years, the messages in Fluffy Gardens weren’t really designed to help kids be better kids. The hope was that the stories would help those kids have the chance to become better adults. Will they? Well, those stories are just such a small part of some children’s lives and the characters will likely be long forgotten about as children grow but it all contributes. So for me when I’m coming up with new developments now at Mooshku one of my main missions is to offer kids something funny and exciting today while contributing positively to the adults they will become tomorrow. This is something I try to carry through all my work.
And if you give something positive, a message that can get children thinking, that many adults should already be thinking about, or you are inspiring a love of learning and exploration and a desire to do better, you stand a chance of making some change in a single generation. No, it’s not the same as getting on a plane and volunteering to be an aid worker or taking to the streets in protest right now and the effects are certainly hard to measure and rely on a lot of faith and time but that doesn’t make it trivial or pointless. If anything, it just serves as a reminder of the importance of getting it right.
As strange as it may seem sometimes when we’re hunched over our desks creating funny little characters, we have the potential to do some good. It all counts. In the meantime, be excellent to each other.
This time next week, I’ll be at the Children’s Media Conference. One of the things I love about the CMC is the wide scope of the M: media. It is not the Children’s TV Conference, App Conference or Book Conference. It is a place where people delivering good content to children in any form can come together in a relaxed setting and just learn from each other.
A couple of years back, I posted about a CMC talk from Ian Livingstone on gaming. It got me thinking about my views on narrative and just how that works for children. I come from a television background and, personally, I love narrative. I love telling stories and children love hearing, watching or experiencing stories. But it is not the be all and end all of children’s content. Not by a long shot.
Toca Boca, Sago Sago and more show that you can give children a toy and let them construct their own narrative through play. Any experience can be a narrative. A town built in Minecraft may carry a fictional narrative in the head of the builder or it can simply be that the trials of building that town is a narrative in itself, with its own challenges, failures and successes. This isn’t new. Lego of old didn’t come with a backstory. A Fisher Price garage didn’t need an accompanying comic to make clear who the characters were.
When it comes to imagination, kids simply don’t need our help.
But they still love a good story, which opens the door to merging these approaches: narrative-driven interactive content. We have been making faux-interactive entertainment for many decades in children’s television and the next natural step is of course genuine interactivity. A child still experiencing a story, a constructed narrative, but being part of it through the characters or getting to take part in activities or games. As both a content creator and as someone who just loves gaming, I find this mix incredibly inspiring. And now I have something fun in the works that will be revealed very soon – a partnership with leading children’s app publisher Storytoys, who have made the merging of storytelling and interactivity their specialty. More on that another time but, for now, Storytoys have released this teaser image:
Ooh, dinosaury!
So this year, I attend the CMC with the buzz of some exciting Mooshku projects, as script editor on wonderful TV shows, this new dino-filled collaboration coming soon and, most importantly, with a far wider picture of the M across all of that. And this is what I love about what we can do for kids. We can sit them down and tell them a story or we can throw them some blocks and see what they come up with themselves. Or we can do anything in between. If you’re attending this year, I hope you pick up some fascinating insight and maybe I’ll see you there.
