Benchmarking Guide
BenchMark example: "wheels"
BenchMark example: "wheels"
Embedded Files
About Wheels (The Pitch)
About Wheels (The Pitch)
Problem
Most learning problems are actually emotional problems. For a young child to be ready to learn, they must be able to understand and cope with the normal emotions that all of us feel. Once emotionally stable, kids are ready to learn. It's important to tie this to learning so it can "fit" into the education market, which is much larger than the children's book market.
Solution
Create an entertainment storybook app that helps parents and teachers teach young children about their emotions and associated behaviors. This app will do what no other young children's media does: address the issue of their frequent emotional breakdowns".
Logline
Three road construction toys, just children themselves, come to life and help each other work through typical emotional trials and tribulations. We aim to teach kids, ages 3-6, how to understand their emotions. To move past feelings like frustration and anger to feelings of joy, laughter and purpose.
There will be no text, so the young audience can focus on learning about their emotions . This will also make it easier to export to emerging international markets. The children and parents will be able to empathize and laugh with the characters and find comfort in learning that there are ways to understand and move past distressing emotional states through empathy and redirection.
FUNCTION: teaching aid for parents and teachers.
AESTHETICS: so cute and funny you can barely stand it... taking the edge off the emotional distress of the story.
BRAND: memorable characters with distinct personalities that young kids can relate to.
The BENCHMARKs
The BENCHMARKs
I looked at many disparate sources for inspiration, trusting that a hybridization of those would yield a degree of innovation in structure and originality of style.
Start with Puppet Theatre
One camera view (or from wherever you are sitting) with characters always facing forward. A good way to tell a story with a single camera angle.
An Isometric Layout
where all the assets work on a grid.
Grant Wood
His landscapes from the regionalist period are lyrical.
Bierstadt
Nobody does atmospheric perspective like the early American painters.
Bob the Builder
If your going to do trucks for kids....
Cute
This is a design that Susan Bonner did for Leap Frog.
Expressive
Anime eyes are the really expressive.
The Design
The Design
In my design process it's about knowing which questions to ask, then answering them an innovative way. That usually means going beyond the first idea and developing iterations.
These are my questions and below is how we answered them in this project.
Staging
Staging
How about developing the characters in an exaggerated perspective? Mmmm.. to hard to multi-plane and truck in/out inside of a landscape (that would also need to be exaggerated)... fail ... Cute though!
How about developing all the characters on a 3/4, slightly down view grid. That way they could all fit into the landscape like puzzle pieces and camera moves would be relatively easy? The isometric layout benchmark drives this design aspect.
Art Style
Art Style
How about mixing flat shading with the gridded perspective?... fail.
How about flat shaded characters in a 3d rendered background?... fail.
How about 3d rendered characters in a 3d rendered background? That's it! The Bierstadt benchmark drove the use of atmospheric perspective here.
Motion
Motion
We need to capture and freeze expressions in time so the user (young kids) can get a good long look at facial cues and body language. How about heavy use of squash and stretch and to keep the arc of motion in play while the image is frozen. The puppet theatre benchmark drove the dangling character design.
How about motion thru the use of speed lines?
Lighting
Lighting
Let's start every story at night. The characters can wake up to a new world and a new story every episode? The Grant Wood benchmark drove the choices for the rounded forms here.
The sun and the moon can work like lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling? It might make it feel more like a toy set. This sun needs more development. I do like the way the warm colors make the characters pop out of the background. It should make their interactions easy to follow. The "Bob The Builder" benchmark guided the construction zone concept here.
Character Interactions
Character Interactions
To make the project international... how about using thought bubbles and pictograms in place of spoken or written dialogue?
Emotions
Emotions
We would like to evoke some delightful giggles from the children and parent users. How about using some special effects to exaggerate emotions?
These characters are going to have to emote convincingly if the audience is going to empathize with them. They will need a lot of facial and body-language controls. Sometimes the mood should turn serious...there are lessons to be learned after all.
Guide by Susan Bonner and Bill Fischer
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