For my thesis project, I am making an animated kid’s TV show pilot. I will have all of season one mapped out, but realistically I will only have time to animate the first episode. This is what I have so far: okay just kidding it won’t let me upload my picture 🙁 I was going to upload the picture that I uploaded to the Canvas discussion, so I’ll write it out in case you haven’t seen it.
The plot of my show is 3 friends that have sleepovers in their treehouse. Then, similar to The Backyardigans, they will visit different countries by using their imagination. Each episode will feature a different country, so kids will be able to learn about different languages and cultures. There will be 3 main characters, but each episode will have a special guest from the featured country and that character will act as a leader and do most of the teaching. When the 3 friends return to the treehouse, they will get a postcard from the new friend they just made. The postcard will have a recipe for an ethnic snack that the chef will make and the characters will all eat. The children watching the show can then make the recipe at home with their parents. This will hopefully get kids interested in trying new foods. One problem I am having is finding good snacks from around the world. Ideally I want something that is simple to make and is healthy so that parents will want their children eating these snacks. It’s not healthy, but I know a perfect Israeli snack thats easy and fun to make. The problem with this is that I feel like I can’t start a series off with an episode about Israel since antisemitism is so rampant. This is also something I’m struggling with because I feel like I’m hiding my religion and I don’t like it. I’m currently thinking I’ll make the pilot about Italy and have the snack be bruschetta. I’m going to keep researching and looking for other snack options.
I have also been researching by watching episodes of other popular kid’s shows. This helps me figure out episode structures, scoring, and theme song ideas. Human Drew is good with lyrics, so he is going to help me with the words to the theme song when I get to that step. He will also be voicing the character based on dragon Drew. One of my other friends will be voicing the character that she came up with, and I will be voicing the dinosaur character. I’m not sure who will be singing the theme song yet. In Backyardigans and Wonder Pets (D Major), the characters sing, while Goldie and Bear (F Major) is sung by a narrator type person. Drew and I both sing so we could voice the song, but we might have too much training to make it believable that the characters that are supposed to be kids are singing. Because of this it might be better to have the theme song as more of a narration.
My goal by the end of this semester is to have the script for the first episode completely finished so I can send it to Brooke and Drew so they can record their lines over break. The theme song will also be written. I’m going to hold off on recording this for now in hopes that I’ll have access to the recording studio in the spring. I want to have most of the score written so I have it, but I probably won’t record this until the animation is almost complete. Right now I have list of countries that is still subject to change, but I would like to associate a snack with each country so that if I have time (ha ha) I can start writing scripts for the next episodes. I want to start modeling my characters this semester, but I am not going to hold myself to finishing that. I’m not doing anything over winter break, and plan on knocking out a huge chunk of this project. Ideally, I will enter spring semester will a finished script, fully modeled and rigged characters, scores for specific segments, and a theme song. Maybe some environments too. This way, I will be able to jump right into animating the characters. This is a huge project that usually takes multiple teams of people, and I’m doing almost everything by myself. As long as I can manage my time I will hopefully be able to get everything done. I’m finding that I have too much other homework so far this semester to be able to dedicate the time I would like to developing my project, so next semester I plan on taking a lighter course load so I can really focus on making this come to life.
Hi Adina! I love the concept for your project and I am so intrigued to see the first episode. It’s making me miss the Magic Treehouse series! Creating an entire episode of a show sounds like a huge undertaking so I am pretty impressed. I think it’s a wise choice to plan on only fully developing one episode as that will be a significant amount of work in itself. Definitely do not feel alone in worrying that you are not dedicating enough time to this project at the moment. I can relate to the stress of trying to balance so many different things, especially with the added unfortunate circumstances of this year. I think that your objectives for what you plan to have completed by the start of the spring semester are pretty solid and organized. I plan on creating a written outline of everything that I want to accomplish, the order in which I want to finish the tasks, and a log/checklist of what I have completed so far. I think that organizing all of the steps of a huge project like this in that manner could help you feel less stressed. It is easier to complete things in chunks rather than looking at it as a whole because that can be overwhelming.