I started with animation, the 2D hand-drawn kind. At a certain point, I recognised a built-in difficulty with the 2D animation system: the dilution of drawings. While setting up a scene, a storyboard artist sketches a character pose. Then a layout artist draws a tighter on-model version of that pose. An animator uses that as a basis for their rough key poses. Then in-betweeners fill in the drawings that are still missing, using the key drawings as their starting point. Finally a clean-up artist redraws all those drawings again with a clean line.

In each one of those steps, the energy that was once in that storyboard pose gets harder and harder to keep. It’s like a far less interesting version of Chinese Whispers, where the end result is a bland approximation of the starting point. It doesn’t always happen, of course, but the chances are pretty high in every single scene.

So people tackle this in different ways. Often the storyboard artists get to put a lot more life into their drawings. They don’t have to stick exactly to what the character looks like so they can be more playful. That way, we hope that they capture an energy that survives in part all the way through, albeit in a diluted form.

But the best way I found to beat this problem is one I saw employed by some making the crazier cartoons of the ’90s – encourage everyone at each stage to push it further.

You don’t just aim to capture what was in the previous drawing. You don’t aim to equal it. You take it to the next level. Got a strong storyboard pose? Try to make it even stronger in the layout. Then again in the animation and so on. Each artist adding to the energy rather than just repeating or, more likely, losing the energy altogether. And you have to keep doing it. You have to push every drawing actively. The second you stop doing it consciously, the energy fades again.

So I realised this many, many years ago.

What I hadn’t realised at the time, however, is that it applies to far more than just hand-drawn animation. It applies to just about everything. It applies to story. It applies to character. It applies to writing. It applies to directing. It even applies in ways to production systems. You have to keep trying to push things further at every stage. Make them more interesting, stronger, better. And you have to do it consciously and keep reminding yourself to do so. Because the second you stop, things slip. They start to get far less interesting and, eventually, stop working altogether.

So keep pushing it further. Do it at every stage. And use every bump, every criticism, every do-over, every problem as an opportunity to ask yourself how you can push it even further. Do this and you’ll end up with something interesting, better and truly alive.

Very early on in my career, I spent a short time at a games company back in the early Playstation 1 days. Making games required long hours, it seemed, and people stayed at the studio until around 10pm every night. Anyone who dared leave early was judged as they left because it’s hardly fair to leave your comrades working, is it? You have to pull your weight.

But it didn’t take long to notice that most people spent a large amount of their day not working. They chatted about football and Ministry of Sound and DJs. They made lots and lots and lots of tea and others were out for cigarettes every half an hour. It didn’t seem entirely productive. And it was easy to see why. There was a mentality of: well, I’m working late anyway so I can have these breaks and I’m still working hard.

And that rendered the late nights pointless. They were working late for one reason – because a working late culture had crept in. The truth was that nobody really valued the time.

Good time management is essential. And for you to be good at managing time, you have to be aware of its value. Every minute has to mean something to you.

A culture of working productively is fantastic. One of working long is not the same thing. Which is why I’m sure you all know some studio somewhere that has its people working late most nights yet constantly misses deadlines.

All time must be assigned a value. It’s how we can manage development and it’s certainly how we can manage production – juggling stories, scripts, animatics, animation, sound, editing and more on multiple episodes at once. And if things go wrong, the values assigned to specific blocks of time must be reassessed and redistributed. When you have solved that problem and are back on track, you then reassign the values yet again so that you’re not spending time doing things that now aren’t needed. None of that happens if you don’t value time as a precious commodity.

You also have to be aware that the same activities can carry different values in different situations. For example, wandering around a house with a coffee can be essential think time for a writer. For a train driver, it means they have skipped work and there are a lot of angry people waiting on a platform somewhere.

The same rules don’t always apply.

So to achieve good time management and get stuff done, appreciate the value of time. Evaluate and reevaluate it. Never take it for granted and never just slip into the habit of using it up for the hell of it.

One last thing: it is also imperative that you don’t take the time of others for granted too. Value their time. If you send someone a work email on a Sunday, for example, and it doesn’t go frontloaded with an apology you’re effectively saying you don’t value their weekend time unless it’s about a project you are both working on together and have agreed to communicate on over those periods. Even if they are choosing to work, that’s their time (thank them for that later). Draft the mail and send it on Monday. If you do have your team working the weekend, feel bad about it. Really. That will help you get better at managing the situation to avoid it happening in future. The worst thing is that you start to take it for granted. Because when the value of time slips, so will effectiveness and productivity.

Time must be valued and treated as sacred for you and everyone else to stay productive. And if that’s not reason enough, keep in mind that it eventually runs out for all of us. You’ll want to feel you used it wisely.

Just a little note today on scripts and why they are so important when developing a concept. Now when I say scripts, that can be the traditional written form or, as some prefer in animation, a fully working storyboard instead. Either way, it is the document that sets out the story. For me, they are more important than how great the concept itself sounds and certainly way more important than what’s in the show bible.

Here’s why:

If it doesn’t work in the scripts, it doesn’t work.

That is all.

And tomorrow at Animation Dingle, I’ll be giving a masterclass going through my whole development process as a creative producer. If you’re at Dingle, come along! It is just one of many great things happening there this year. Details HERE!

NOTE: This piece was written for Irish parenting site Dad.ie when my two daughters were very young. It gained a lot of attention and struck a chord with many parents, fathers and mothers alike. Unfortunately the site is no longer around so, for International Women’s Day, I thought I’d repost it here.

I was waiting in a shop queue a couple of weeks ago. Beside me was a card rack with personalised birthday cards, each one with a child’s name. Of course I looked for the names of my own girls.

Daisy. Ooh, a princess. Alice. Another princess.

And then I looked at the others.

Every card with a girl’s name featured a princess, mermaid or ballerina. Well that’s pretty, I thought. Beautifully pretty and pink. But I couldn’t help notice that there seemed to be much more variety in the cards with boy’s names. Those cards featured pilots, firemen, policemen, mechanics and more. Real jobs. Active jobs.

That got me thinking about role models.

I have two young girls, princesses of my very own. Giving them every chance at being anything they want, doing anything they want, is a priority for me. But I don’t think the pretty pink princesses are doing my girls any favours.

Why?

Is there a problem with the princesses? Girls love princesses, right?

Yes. They do.

But what are princesses? What do they do? Mostly nothing. They wear pretty dresses. Being beautiful is a priority. But really, what is important about a princess is how they become a princess. Unless you’re a king reading this right now, the unfortunate truth is that your daughter isn’t actually a princess. So how does she become one?

Well that’s simple. She marries a prince.

And that’s the glorious end to the story. She find a man, he falls in love with her (her love is optional) and he asks her to marry him. They have a big wedding, she gets to wear a beautiful dress and they live happily ever after. That is how your daughter or my daughter becomes a princess. Just like the lovely Kate Middleton. She needs a man to make her a princess. Without finding a prince, she can never realise her dream. Will never have that lovely wedding. Will never live happily ever after. So on top of not really doing anything, it seems a princess is defined by her man.

What kind of message is that to our girls? How does that affect the power in their relationships? Their priorities in life? Their self-confidence?

So what about mermaids? They just sit on rocks and are total fantasy. Ballerinas, well, at least they’re real and girls can put the work in to becoming one. That’s got to be a good thing. But then… they’re performing for the adoration of their audience. They might need the validation. I’m really not so sure about that one either.

But look at the role models for boys: pilots, firemen, policemen, mechanics and so on.

They’re not just sitting around like mermaids or princesses. They’re active. They’re real. They’re getting stuck in and really contributing to society. Unlike the princess, these role models say to boys – there is a place for you in the real world. You can make a difference. Get active. Get involved.

Where are those real life role models for girls?

I wonder how many little princesses on their pink tricycles know they can actually be a pilot? A fireman? Or even an astronaut? Some girls do become these things of course. But they have to fight a world of gender stereotyping to do it. They have to break away from their own perceptions of themselves that have been formed from what they see around them. That’s a whole other battle for our little princesses that they don’t need on top of everything it takes to do those jobs.

Now I know the ‘market’ will tell me that girls love pink. Love princesses. Sure they do.

But I have to smile when I realise that the biggest preschool hit of the last ten years has been Dora the Explorer. An active role. Dora is not about pretty dresses. She’s about getting stuff done. The market went for Dora in a big way. It turns out that going against an outdated passive princess gender stereotype can be a winner. Well that’s good news!

So I find myself wondering why a rack of cards still only presents the view that girls are just princesses, mermaids and ballerinas?

This difference between female and male role models is something that, once you see, you’ll see it everywhere. Toy aisles, ads, posters. I even found myself taking steps to de-pink the bedtime stories. And, to be honest, my kids get so much more fun from ‘Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus’.

As the men in our girl’s lives, perhaps fathers like us can really think about the pink, the princesses and the messages they give our girls, and we can filter some of it out. Mix in some better role models. Make clear to our girls that they can be whatever or whoever they want be it mechanic, scientist, astronaut, anything. And they can lead happy and fulfilled lives doing so, prince or no prince.

Recent figures in Ireland have revealed that women still earn less than men doing the same job. To an extent, it is still a man’s world.

Hopefully we and our lovely, bright, funny, hard-working, curious daughters can change that.

Children’s media is is like a warm, difficult, thrilling, heartbreaking, wonderful vortex of conflicts. Too many to cover in a single post. The obvious example is: what is the product? If you’re making television shows, that’s the product, right? No. Because that’s not what most people are paying for. Your target audience gets it free. Commercial broadcasters are selling ad space and so in a way the audience is the product while others sell products to that audience. What were once secondary revenue streams in licensing are now primary revenue streams for many in the business so toys are the product. And it goes on. That realisation can taint everything. It could make you disillusioned and cynical, unable to put your heart into it. Or it could motivate you to milk those kids for all they’re worth and I’m not sure that’s a good thing either.

What about the audience themselves? Who are you making the content for? Regular readers will know that audience awareness is a huge thing for me and years of time, experience and research goes into shaping content that works for my audience: young children. For me, they always come first.

But the buyers are adults.

TV channels are run by grown ups. Distributors? Yep, grown ups. Even parents who are the gatekeepers of content in their own homes are grown ups. And as is well covered on this blog, children and adults are not the same. They like different things. Some of those adults are very in tune with kids. But not all. And even those who know kids well can still be swayed by their own adult sensibilities just as we all are. That’s normal and to be expected.

So you can pitch to the adults and get your show on television but will it work for kids? Or you can make the best content for kids that few adults see the value of so it never gets a chance. Can you satisfy both? Should you?

These are just the tip of the iceberg. Conflicts everywhere.

So how we resolve these conflicts? Unfortunately most of them can’t be resolved. They are tied into the very core of kids’ media. What is important as you work in this area is that you recognise the conflicts when you find them and you make an active decision on where you stand with them. Otherwise you are navigating at random. For me, my focus is delivering the best for the children themselves. On forming Mooshku, our mission became: if it’s not good for your kids, we don’t make it. On content not being the actual product, I made the decision years ago to treat it as the product regardless. That way I know I’m always aiming to deliver the best package in a TV show, app or anything else. But these are not the only ways to look at children’s media. The conflicts still exist.

Your approach, your own stance on all these conflicts will be your own. What is key is that you have a stance.

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A couple of other things:

Next week on Thursday the 12th, I’ll be presenting a case study masterclass at Animation Dingle titled FROM BLANK PAGE TO THE BIG PITCH. Using MILLIE AND MR FLUFF as a case study, I’ll be talking through the process of taking a concept from the beginning of an idea all the way to being ready for that green light – development, pitching, tips and pitfalls and a glimpse into our rather unique production methods for Millie. Details will be up on the ANIMATION DINGLE site!

Lastly, it’s great to announce that a few of my projects have been nominated for the Irish Animation Awards. Planet Cosmo is nominated in the Kids’ Choice category and Best Writer. My app Dino Dog is nominated for Best Animation For Apps And Gaming. And Punky, which I script edited and was creative director on is also in the Kids’ Choice and Best Writer (Andrew Brenner) categories. So that’s nice!