The Secrets of Her Success

The creator and exec producer of Super WHY and co-creator and exec producer of Blue’s Clues reflects on the essential steps you need to take to create a successful animated preschool show.

Success in the animation business is all about passion. My passion is to create quality educational media that appeals to kids while inspiring them to think and actively participate in their own learning. We have a few guiding principals we use when creating quality animated media: They have to be founded in strong curriculum, they tell child-centered stories that speak directly to kids, and they have an innovative look and feel.

Even in live action, it is integral to have elements of animation to make the shows visual, understandable and engaging to a young audience.

Blue’s Clues, co-created and designed by Traci Paige Johnson, is as fresh today as it was when it premiered in 1996’which is the goal for all good design. We wanted to present a world that was ‘yummy’ and that kids would want to reach out and touch. We featured Traci’s signature cutout design to present a fantastical world where inanimate objects talk and sing, and Steve (the live-action host) spoke directly to our audience and waited for them to respond to a question or encouraged action. We called it ‘storybook animation’ because the look and content was as clean, beautiful and engaging as a classic storybook.

For Super WHY, we combine a 3D animated world with a 2D pop-up book environment. The Super WHY characters live in a storybook world where the designs are textured and tangible with a fantastical bent’a shoe shop is shaped like a shoe and the tea shop is a tea pot. In addition, our 3D characters soar inside a pop-up book in every episode. This design gives us a new way to further the effectiveness of 3D by having it live within a 2D world.

Since I create programs for preschoolers, making everything visual is crucial, and animation allows us to do that. What is Steve (of Blue’s Clues) thinking? We can show it using animation. What is the storybook adventure inside books? With animation, we can soar with Super WHY inside a book to reveal the visual world that exists beyond the words on a page.

The creative process is incredible and a joy, but animation is still a business. There are budgets, risk and few available time slots, making breakthroughs atypical. The challenge is to set yourself apart by creating standout design and distinctive animation which perfectly blends within the show’s mission and goals.

Succeeding in the animation business involves many factors. I suggest the following:

Have a strong vision and assemble a smart, creative team who believes in that vision and build upon it. Organize an animation staff that is creative and open to innovation.

Find your own unique style that takes the vision of the show and the writing to a new level. The animation and writing teams must work together.

Be budget conscious. There are many ways to get the show made. Money isn’t always the answer. It’s about being creative with the resources you have.

Invest in strong character development. The show’s characters need to move and ‘act’ with the passion, integrity and depth with which they were written.

The creative process must follow logical stages. Here are mine:

‘ The ‘fat’ script: The script delivered to the animation director and animators is full of visual notes and direction, including everything ‘in my head.’

‘ Close collaboration with the animation director: We walk through every line of the script, talking through the vision of each aspect of the show.

‘ Key frames: The animation director or creative collaborators draw key frames from the script. This is the first step to making the script visual.

‘ Hands-on design process: We collaborate continuously, looking at every design element as we prepare it for animation.

‘ Storyboard/Animatic: The script becomes a black-and-white visual. This is very important to understanding the overall pacing, appeal, story, character development and humor of an episode.

‘ Animation: Collaborating on the early animation frames to ensure we’re all on the same page.

Another crucial point: we tweak a lot’all along the way. We test our scripts with kids, our black-and-white animatic, early animation tests and complete episodes to guarantee each show meets our goals. If the kids are not engaged, then all of the work is irrelevant. We always tweak based on the feedback.

Ultimately, successful animation is about the content and vision coming to life. Be creative in every way possible to get your work made and in front of your target audience. There are many ways to ‘test’ your ideas and get them to consumers. It is imperative that animators, writers, directors and producers of kids’ content know kids! Find some kids and play with them. Read your ideas to kids or play your animations for them and get their feedback. You can’t have an ego in this business; it’s all about the kids.