Project AMI: Interactive Art Education and Playful Prototypes

Three museums, 10 prototypes, 12 months: that’s the hefty goal for Project AMI, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Project AMI (Art + Museums Interacting), the brainchild of Kellian Adams Pletcher, FableVision’s Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), is taking the possibilities of interactive installations to the next level in Switzerland. With the sponsorship of the Max Kohler Foundation, Project AMI partners and collaborates with several Swiss museums to elevate art education by creating prototypes for innovative and interactive experiences. Switzerland serves as an exciting new arena for educational innovation due to its diverse cultural influences, tight-knit community, and burgeoning museum infrastructure supporting imperfect play and interaction. 

Project AMI has many goals but, most importantly, aims to help museums foster an idea from conception to completion that results in an engaging prototype. Each museum has 30 days to develop an idea and execute a prototype that helps it achieve its goals of play, community, and creativity, while utilizing available supplies. 

Kellian brainstorming with the team at Fondation Beyeler

“We wanted to expand the vocabulary of what a museum can do with games and programming in Switzerland and maybe get visitors (and staff!) to become more comfortable with the idea of casual, imperfect play in museums,” says Kellian. “It’s a way to give Swiss museum educators a little more freedom to be playful and fun.”

The project’s first year will focus on three Swiss museums – Museum Rietberg, Creaviva Children’s Museum, and Fondation Beyeler – with a special feature on the U.S. museum, SFMOMA. Totaling 10 prototypes, each Swiss museum has three opportunities to go through the prototype process and exhibit an interactive experience. The first round of prototypes is complete with the second round already underway, and we are eager to share what each museum has created.  

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Museum Rietberg

Museum Rietberg is a non-western art and anthropology museum located in Zurich. Its first project, Ragamala Lab, had participants react to art by documenting their feelings through creative responses on postcards. Traditionally, Ragamala combines Indian music, poetry, and painting and is the focal point for Rietberg’s interactive experience. Participants would listen and look at the Ragamala and then use their encounter to inspire their own artistic response of words, poetry, or drawing. 

Traditional Ragamala

Rietberg’s Second Prototype

Their second prototype was inspired by a popular German TV show in which children have to describe objects and adults try to understand them. Museum Rietberg's interaction designer went one step further and proposed to develop both a physical and digital game where players see the content on a screen but can react with physical objects. The final prototype combined RFIDs (allowing contactless data exchange) and Phidget controllers with videos and a game rating mechanism. A truly playable prototype emerged, with players reaching out for descriptions of Ragamala paintings, competing, carefully listening, and discussing. Additionally, players played once in their native language and again in a foreign language to practice their language skills.

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Creaviva Children’s Museum

A part of the Paul Klee Center, the Creaviva Children’s Museum is a contemporary art museum in Bern. The goal for its first prototype was to make something accessible to all people, even outside the museum. The museum used Instagram to source volunteers’ photos of colors, shapes, and textures found in everyday life and then compiled those images to make an NFT. To share the NFT, pillows with QR codes were placed in the parks surrounding the museum so that the larger community could appreciate the collaborative art piece.

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Fondation Beyeler

Fondation Beyeler in Basel took this opportunity to target the untapped demographic of young teenagers through Project 13. With the premise that something special about 13-year-olds helps keep the Fondation Beyeler Museum alive, Project 13’s first prototype used art challenge cards secretly tucked away in labeled envelopes to ignite ingenuity through simple prompts. Participants had limited supplies and specific directions, such as “Draw what’s in the window, but only use three colors,” to spark their unique creativity. The responses to the challenge cards varied drastically, demonstrating the infinite possibilities of a well-cultivated imagination. 

Project 13 Art Challenge Cards

Scavenger Hunt Clue

Planning on testing in the near future, Project 13’s second prototype is a scavenger hunt-based mystery game. Players must decode symbols hidden around the museum grounds to reveal clues to their next location and clue. Through this prototype, Foundation Beyeler’s goals are to teach kids how information can be shared through images instead of words and have families engage in the outdoor museum grounds and its art pieces. 

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SFMOMA

As a special feature, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) had the opportunity to participate in Project AMI. SFMOMA took the challenge head-on and created an interaction that included digital and theatrical elements for an alien adventure scavenger hunt. Its goal was to create a safe and inspiring place for visitors to socialize, and it drew in more than 600 participants. 

While Project AMI has already accomplished a lot, the next round of prototype testing begins soon and more museums are planning to join the project in the near future. The featured museums will have the opportunity to learn from and improve on their past prototypes by repeating the brainstorming and creation process to make another immersive exhibit for their patrons. FableVision looks forward to creating more immersive experiences and collaborating with museums looking to promote play through prototype building in the future. Check out our portfolio of other museum interactives, contact Kellian with questions, and be sure to stay tuned for more Project AMI and G.L.A.M. Innovation updates!

FableVision Shines at Games for Change

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Games for Change (G4C) Festival in New York City brought together industry leaders, game developers, executives, and fans to share best practices from the best impact-making games and the creative minds behind them. 

As frequent festival presenters, attendees, and award nominees and winners, FableVisionaries are no strangers to G4C. FableVision has attended and been involved with the festival from its early years, as it perfectly aligns with the studio’s mission to move the world to a better place through positive media. We’ve proudly collaborated with G4C in the past and have been honored to showcase our work in its arena. In previous years, FableVision’s Caduceus: Staff of the Alchemist, created with Children’s Hospital Trust, was nominated for the Direct Impact award, while Quandary, created with Learning Games Network, won the 2013 Game of the Year award.

FableVision shone at two studio project briefs, featuring our games Nunaka and The Plastic Pipeline. Read on for a recap. If you have questions about these projects, please reach out! We’re happy to chat.

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Nunaka!: Games for Indigenous Cultural Heritage Preservation
FableVision Presenter: Anne Richards, Producer, Game Designer, Co-Creative

Created with Chugachmiut, a non-profit that serves Native tribes in the Chugach region of Alaska, Nunaka is an early childhood mobile game that excites 3-5-year-olds about the Alaska Native Sugpiaq culture, teaches the Sugt'stun language, and targets key school readiness goals. The game recently won the Formal Learning (Elementary) award at the James Paul GEE! Learning Game Awards. 

Anne Richards, who produced the game, has deep expertise in developing children’s media for television, publishing, games, edtech, and more. Her experience and game design background contributed to creating a fun, engaging, and beautiful game. Anne’s presentation emphasized the importance of making communities like G4C more accessible to the Indigenous people who are inspiring conversations around representation in the edtech space – also how we can travel to meet knowledge holders where they are.

In the story-driven game, players take on the role of a Sugpiaq child living with their grandparents, Emaa and Apaa, in a fictionalized version of a community based on villages in the Chugach region. Players create an avatar and explore the village, completing activities and minigames, while collecting items and interacting with other residents, including human characters and animals from the region. 

To make the game as culturally accurate as possible, FableVision co-designed and co-developed Nunaka with Chugachmiut and the Sugpiaq people during virtual Elder meetings. Studio members also visited Alaska multiple times for meetings to get feedback in person from the Sugpiaq Elders and village Head Start students. 

Nunaka stands out from other cultural games by preserving an endangered language. “There were a lot of intricacies of working with Sugt’stun,” said Anne. “This language has been passed down via oral tradition rather than as a written language, and there is an extremely small number of master speakers remaining, many of whom have lost some of their knowledge of the language over time.”

To ensure that Nunaka captured Sugt’stun correctly, FableVision gathered groups of speakers to help each other with script translations and to collectively navigate dialectical differences, which could be significant even within a small geographic region. It was also important to investigate the cultural context behind translations to make sure details weren’t getting lost in the process. “One of our favorite examples: ‘Akutaq,’ which is translated as ‘Sugpiaq ice cream’ in English, is a dish of potatoes and seal oil. Very different from the ice cream we are used to,” said Anne.

Anne acknowledged the limitations of her ability to represent the Sugpiaq perspective on Nunaka’s creation process. “I’d like to challenge attendees and the larger G4C community to engage with ways in which these conversations can be more accessible to Indigenous people themselves,” she said. “It was not possible for our Alaska Native partners to travel a long distance for a brief conference presentation. I encourage the community to consider how to make our spaces more genuinely accessible to Indigenous and marginalized people.”

Play Nunaka today! The game can be downloaded on iOS and Google Play.

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The Plastic Pipeline
FableVision Presenter: Jonah Gaynor, Producer

Considering that the world is producing double the amount of plastic waste as it did two years ago, the Wilson Center partnered with FableVision to create The Plastic Pipeline, an online game that educates and encourages policy change to combat leaks in the real-life “plastic pipeline.” 

FableVision producer Jonah Gaynor utilized his game design background to design Nurdle Alert!, a minigame that teaches players about nurdles and their impact on the environment. “Nurdles are the ‘lego bricks of the plastic world,’ the smallest unit of melted down plastic,” he said. “Staying consistent to the art and style of the game, the minigame centers around capturing these nurdles with a net before they damage the environment and creatures.” 

To engage young adults with the game, players act as influencers in Plasti City who have the power to create change by learning from characters in different locations who interact with the pipeline at every stage and represent different voices within the discussion of what to do about the plastics crisis. The game centers around policy decisions to show that the largest burden of responsibility for lessening plastic pollution falls on legislatures and policy makers, rather than individual consumer actions. 

Director of Wilson Center’s Serious Games Initiative Dr. Elizabeth M. H. Newbury and Director of Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum Dr. Jennifer Turner presented with Jonah to explain the game development process – policy research, iteration and design, and testing, and the next steps, which would involve more testing and further building out of the game. 

While Nurdle Alert! starts out fairly easy, the levels get exponentially challenging, mimicking the real difficulty of the clean-up process, and encouraging replayability. “The levels of the game demonstrate that the clean-up process doesn’t have a simple solution,” said Jonah. “While that is frustrating, players keep returning to the minigame hoping to improve their score. That also allows them to keep exploring the game, furthering its mission in educating players about the plastic pipeline.”

Check out the game and stay tuned for its further development.

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In Summary – More Highlights & Takeaways

The G4C movement promotes using games for social change, and changemakers discussed how games can be more than great entertainment, but can also unite communities, improve players’ well-being, help players express themselves, foster creativity, provide education, and more. To spark change and make the most impact, speakers encouraged game developers to broaden the community by looking into emerging markets, making games available to a larger audience, and creating games with players’ interests in mind.

Among other topics, this year’s festival discussed how games can raise awareness about sustainability and social justice issues. Games like Endling: Extinction is Forever by Herobeat Studios (Game of the Year and Most Significant Impact) and Terra Nil by Free Lives (Most Impact) confronted environmental degradation and restoring nature. 

Meanwhile, Go Nisha Go: My Life My Choice by Howard Delafield International, LLP (Best Learning Game) and (val)iant: or, val’s guide to having a broken vag by Cactus Studio (Best Student Game) focused on sexual and reproductive health, empowering women to make informed decisions about their bodies. The festival’s winners from this year represented eight countries – check out the full list of winners and nominees. 

Grace Collins, a former FableVisionary and founder/CEO of Snowbright Studio, was recognized as the 2023 Vanguard recipient for their work in bringing the game industry to new places, such as the Smithsonian and U.S. Department of Education, as well as their advocacy for LGBTQ+ voices. We congratulate Grace on all of their amazing work! 

Thank you G4C for a great festival. Until next time!

A Baker’s Dozen of Summer Learning Activities

The recipe for a perfect summer includes a myriad of activities for you and your kids to enjoy together, whether at home, on the beach, at a campsite, another country, or grandma’s house. FableVision compiled a list of top notch ingredients, including games, interactives, videos, and more for kids of all ages. Check out our recommendations and start cooking up a fun and educational summer.

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Young Learners, Ages 0-5

My S.T.E.M. Adventure

With the help of Leila Diaz, take your children on an adventure through 10 place-based activities in My S.T.E.M. Adventure, created with Bridge Multimedia and STEMIE. The born-accessible app promotes STEM learning skills for 0-5-year-olds with disabilities as players engage with science around them, emphasizing that science and learning can happen anywhere. Players are prompted to take photos and write descriptions of items, which get compiled at the end for a customizable storybook.

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Learn with Sesame Street

“It feels so good to be kind!” Learn with Sesame Street, an educational app created by Sesame Workshop and HOMER Learning, helps 2-4-year-olds build social emotional (SEL) skills with the help of Sesame Street’s beloved muppets. As kids play through the app that helps them navigate big feelings and everyday challenges, check out the FableVision-created animated music videos written by VP of Moonladder Tone Thyne, each focusing on a specific SEL content area.

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Sago Mini Friends

“Leaf pools, mustache finders, thankful trees, and singing a lullaby to a loaf of bread are entirely commonplace in Sagoville,” says Tone, showrunner and one of the executive producers of Sago Mini Friends. Read his interviews in Animation World Network and Animation Magazine to learn more about the adorable show for 3-4-year-olds focused on gratitude, and watch the series on AppleTV+.

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PBS Parent Activity Videos

For a rainy day, dust off that old box of craft supplies in your attic and check out PBS KIDS’ series of “Find Ways to Play'' educational videos, including 20 live-action videos created by FableVision. The activities, ranging from crafts to games to printables, inspire and guide parents and caretakers through fun, hands-on family activities that are aligned to their favorite PBS KIDS series.

Children Ages 6-12

Cyber Fashion Challenge

Don’t throw out outgrown clothes this summer; instead, upcycle them. Using favorite characters from Cyberchase, born-accessible Cyber Fashion Challenge, created with The WNET Group, PBS KIDS, and Bridge Multimedia, teaches 6-8-year-olds about avoiding fast fashion and encouraging the creative reuse of materials. Players design new pieces by reusing materials, while learning counting, shape identification, and shape characteristics.

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When Things Aren’t Going Right, Go Left

If you or your kids ever had frustrations, doubts, fears, or worries, check out When Things Aren’t Going Right, Go Left, written by Marc Colagiovanni, illustrated by FableVision founder and New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, and published by Scholastic. In their second collaboration, Peter and Marc created an inspirational and optimistic story about overcoming adversity and pursuing dreams. Watch the FableVision-created trailer to learn more and read the book.

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Roasting Vegetables

How do you ensure that your kids eat their veggies? By bringing those funny vegetables to life, of course! Created with audiyo-yo and Pinna, Roasting Vegetables is a rollicking, silly, pun-filled trip into the crisper drawer to see what happens when two vegetables meet in an epic battle of wits and words. The podcast for 8-10-year-olds brings together original beets, a ton of puns, and a cast of characters that are as nutritious as they are delicious.

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Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape Series

Speaking of podcasts, check out audiyo-yo’s other collaboration with Pinna – the Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape Series. Your 7-12-year-old kids are stuck in a spooky haunted house, the creaky cabin of a ship, or a magical marshmallow dream forest, with five minutes to escape. They can respond yes or no to activate their own audio adventure and change the course of the story. Start your 7-day-free trial. 

Tweens, Teens, and Young Adults

“Digital Connections” Video Series

Created by Common Sense Media in collaboration with AT&T and Public Library Association, “Digital Connections” is a free online video series for tweens and families to learn the competencies of good digital citizenship and how to use technology safely and responsibly. FableVision is proud to have worked with Common Sense Media to help bring this project to life. Watch “Digital Connections” today to help young people connect with balance, kindness, vigilance, and purpose.

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Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Documentaries Website and Interactives

Encourage your 6-10th graders to journey through the history and impact of social change. Maryland Public Television (MPT) and FableVision created a website and two interactives highlighting the PBS documentaries Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom and Becoming Frederick Douglass. Check out the multimedia timeline with more than 70 landmark moments in American history, complete the narrated self-assessment “Map Your Role for Social Change,” and watch the documentaries.

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Forest Quest

For older teens thinking about their careers, Forest Quest, created with Project Learning Tree Canada (PLT), provides an engaging and educational online experience about green jobs, sustainable forest management, and wildlife biology. Hear from foresters, wildlife experts, biologists, and Indigenous peoples to discover the secrets of forests.

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Start It Up!

In lieu of a forestry career, maybe entrepreneurship is your teen’s calling. Start It Up!, an online business simulator created in partnership with GPB Education and Georgia Council on Economic Education (GCEE), teaches high school students and young adults the ins and outs of creating a business, while adding mentorship, customization, humor, and vibrant design to the experience.

That Bonus Activity

Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ “King of a Land”

After a long day, relax by listening and singing along to Cat Stevens’ new album, “King of a Land.” FableVision created animated lyric videos for two songs (stay tuned for one more) – “Take the World Apart” and “King of a Land” – featuring artwork by Peter H. Reynolds, who brings the message of finding inner peace to life. Is your entire family ready to sing?

Cue the Conferences: FableVision’s 2023 Guide

Lunches with partners, new meet and greets, enlightening sessions, presentation opportunities, and exciting cities – what’s not to love about conferences? Check out where we’re headed to learn from industry professionals, share our insights, and most importantly, see you.

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MuseumNext Digital Learning Summit

During the virtual conference, learn how museums can keep up with evolving technology to create engaging and immersive experiences for visitors. Keep an eye out for Kellian Adams Pletcher, our Director of G.L.A.M. (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Innovation.

When: Monday, June 19 – Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Where: Online

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ISTELive 23

Visit our friends from FableVision Learning at their tables at the Keystones Technology Innovators in PA session on Wednesday, June 28 from 9–11 a.m. and STEM Playground — Tools for Physical Computing and Making from 12–2 p.m. in the ISTE Explore and Create Playground. Paul Reynolds, Andrea Calvin, and Mary Johnston will provide hands-on demonstrations of FabMaker Studio and Animation-ish. Learn more here.

When: Sunday, June 25 – Wednesday, June 28
Where: Philadelphia

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Games for Change Festival

Celebrate Games for Change’s (G4C) 20th anniversary with a summer festival full of events analyzing the past, present, and future of gaming and XR.

FableVision’s VP of audiyo-yo Anne Richards will present a project brief on Nunaka!: Games for Indigenous Cultural Heritage Preservation on Wednesday, July 19 at 5 p.m.

Producer Jonah Gaynor will present a project brief on Wilson Center’s Plastic Pipeline right after Anne on Wednesday, July 19 at 5:20 p.m. Both presentations will be at the Microsoft Winter Garden.

President Gary Goldberger and Communications Strategist Nadya Karpova will also be attending. We hope to see you at both project briefs! The schedule and more details can be found here.

When: Tuesday, July 18 – Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Where: New York City

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Podcast Movement

At the world’s largest podcast conference, passionate podcasters and industry professionals gather to learn from each other and improve the audio community. Anne Richards and Gary Goldberger will surely tune in — don’t forget to say hello.

When: Monday, August 21 – Thursday, August 24, 2023
Where: Denver

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Ed Games Expo 2023

The  Ed Games Expo is a public showcase of game-changing #edtech innovations developed through programs at IES, the U.S. Department of Education (ED), and across government. We’ve got a few great things lined up for Wednesday, September 20 at Kennedy Center REACH:

• Between 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m., catch FableVision Studios’ Paul Reynolds, Snow Dong, and Nadya Karpova, along with FableVision Learning’s Andrea Calvin and Mary Johnston in Skylight Pavilion at tables S-7 and S-8. We’ll be doing live demos of Civics! An American Musical and Nunaka.

• At 1:30 p.m., Snow will lead a Master Class on Civics! at MoonShot Studio. If you’d like to attend, please register here.

• Between 5:30-8:30 p.m., find us in PT-109 at tables P-3 and P4 for the Ed Games Expo for the Public.

Click here to view the Ed Games Expo agenda.

When: Tuesday, September 19 — Friday, September 22
Where: Washington, D.C.

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Serious Play Conference

Time for some serious fun in Toronto, while learning about creating and using games and simulations for educational purposes and how to move those programs ahead. Make sure to attend Executive Producer Peter Stidwill’s session on Wednesday, October 11 from 2-2:45 p.m. on Five Tips for Researchers Who Want to Make Educational Games. See the full conference program here.

When: Wednesday, October 11 – Friday, October 13, 2023
Where: Toronto

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Hands On! Conference

Hosted by the Children’s Museum Creaviva in Bern, Switzerland, Europe’s largest conference on science education and children in museums will experiment with exhibitions, themes, and learning opportunities. And who’s keynoting? You guessed it — Kellian. More information coming soon — you don’t want to miss this one.

When: Wednesday, October 25 – Friday, October 27, 2023
Where: Bern, Switzerland

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MCN Annual Conference

For MCN 2023, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia will gather over 600 cultural heritage professionals from museums, historic sites, and visitor attractions to advance digital transformations in museums. Kellian and Gary can’t wait to see you there.

When: Wednesday, November 8 – Friday, November 10, 2023
Where: Philadelphia

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This year, Gary, Anne, VP of Moonladder Tone Thyne, and VP of Development Rachel Reade Marcus attended the Kidscreen Summit in Miami. At BostonFIG Online Expo, Kellian presented tips for researchers and developers working together when creating games. We were thrilled to catch up with you at those conferences, and we look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones in the upcoming months.

May FableFriday: Tone Thyne, Vice President, Moonladder

After congratulating Tone on his ninth anniversary at FableVision and the rebranding of Moonladder, FableVision’s film and television division, let’s take this oppor-tone-ity to learn more about Tone Thyne. As Vice President of Moonladder, award-winning creative executive Tone focuses on creating, showrunning, and co-producing animated and live-action properties. By drawing on his personal experiences and meeting children at their level, he sets the tone for his broadcasting work, hoping to create educational, inspirational, and relatable content for kids.

“The best show creators are highly nostalgic in nature,” said Tone. “Reaching into the past to dust off experiences and feelings that we remember as kids (or remembering gems from our own childrens’ growing up) is the best way to create characters and experiences that viewers will relate to. Most of the stories I write are ripped from the pages of the Thyne house.” 

Read on to learn more about Tone’s creative journey, advice for aspiring children’s content creators, his latest hobby, and what he thinks about Woody from Toy Story.

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What’s your “journey to FableVision” story?
Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood have always been some of my greatest sources of inspiration. Each show seamlessly educates viewers by way of engaging characters and compelling stories. The learning is never didactic since the content is so entertaining. How can you even taste the spinach when it’s chopped up and mixed into a delicious milkshake? This kind of dedication to create meaningful content with a whimsical twist lines up beautifully with FableVision’s 200-year mission to move the world to a better place through media, storytelling, and technology. I was thrilled to join FableVision in 2014 to create original content with a studio that embodies my outlook on the positive power of children’s media through purposeful storytelling.

Congratulations on the rebrand of Moonladder! Can you tell us more about FableVision’s newest group? 
It’s an exciting time for FableVision. We are expanding in step with the industry’s growing need for original content. Since our studio creates original properties in the audio space with our audiyo-yo group and original games with our FableVision Games team, we felt it was fitting to distinguish FableVision’s original film and television properties with their own distinction as well. And so, Moonladder was born. 

We know that a kinder world begins with the bonds we form between young viewers and aspirational characters. Today, there is a notable focus on children’s media platforms to incorporate learning goals that lead to positive change in our world: diversity, gratitude, giving back to your community, inclusion, mindfulness, equity, and so on. Creating stories that inspire children to think about and interact with others in meaningful ways is in perfect alignment with Moonladder’s North Star. 

Rachel Marcus joined our team in February of this year and we are thrilled that her creativity and expertise in broadcast distribution and financing will help place Moonladder’s meaningful content with appropriate homes on important broadcast platforms around the world.  

Before you found your calling in creating, writing, and showrunning animated properties, you were an animator. Where did your creative journey take you?
I studied animation at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and cut my teeth in the real world at Walt Disney Feature Animation (great place to work, a little bit of a Mickey Mouse operation). I began there in production on groundbreaking films like The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Over my 12 years at Disney, I worked on other animated jewels like Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, Atlantis, and Toy Story. I left in 2001 to follow my lifelong dream of creating educational content for kids and had the incredible opportunity to animate segments on the “Letter I” and the “Letter N” for Sesame Street (it was my IN!). This eventually led to my producing animation at Little Airplane Productions where I produced animated series such as The Wonder Pets!, among others. While at Little Airplane, I co-created The Adventures of Napkin Man! Fueled by the thrill of creating my own series, I packed up my expertise and headed to FableVision to join superhero forces with the dream team at the studio to create some of the world’s most meaningful content. 

What was your time at Disney like, working on blockbuster films that many kids grew up on and cherish? 
It was unlike any experience I had ever had. The Great Masters of Animation were creating world-famous and culturally indelible characters literally right in front of me. I remember being in Michael Surrey’s office while he was sketching out options for what Timon could look like – or in Ken Duncan’s office while he was dreaming up Jane from Tarzan. I had amazing “front row seats” to recording sessions with notable talent like Tom Hanks, Demi Moore, Catherine O’Hara, among so many others. Music meetings with Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. What an absolute thrill. And knowing that the content that we made at Disney has such a global appeal and can impact people around the world in a positive way is nothing shy of heartwarming. Disney was a Master Class in making something from the very germ of an idea to post production and distribution. Being a part of that process helped mold my production skills, allowing me a 360 degree view of every aspect of creating content.

What attracted you to children’s television?
I was born the same year that Sesame Street was born and literally grew up watching the show. It had a profound impact on me, which helped me realize how effective and creative children’s media can be, especially on television. Creating children’s content that has the power to positively shape the citizens of tomorrow is a privilege that I’m grateful for every day.

Wonder Pets! Schoolhouse

What’s the key ingredient for all of your projects?
Quite simply: PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. Viewers need to connect with content that they consume. The best way to connect with content is to relate to it in some way. The most effective tool for creating relatable content is to draw directly from personal experiences. Viewers can feel that authenticity. 

On a train one day, I was tickled to watch a playful interaction between a mother and her baby. Each time the mother handed the baby his soft toy, he would throw it onto the ground in a fit of giggles. I was mesmerized. So, when Sesame Street called looking for a short film about counting, I drew on this real life experience and created The Silliest Counting Show, a piece showcasing a little girl attempting to count soft blocks with a playful baby who continuously throws them on the floor. I was able to harness the joy and playfulness of the real world experience in our short film.  

Considering the importance of “lived experiences” in creating authentic content, it’s vital to have a broad range of voices at the table that represent the experiences characters portray on screen, whether cultural, historical, or personal.

What advice do you have for aspiring kids’ content creators?
Create what you know. You can’t tell stories or develop characters that aren’t close to you or it will reek of falseness. 

Also, know your audience. When my daughter celebrated her third birthday, I took tons of pictures of the adorable party, but when I looked at them later, I realized that they didn’t capture the magic of what I experienced in person. On her next birthday, I got down on my knee and took photos that were on an eye-level with the kids. Those photos put me right back at the party. Being on the same level with the kids had a real magic to it. There’s a famous clip of Mister Rogers speaking with a child in a wheelchair on his show. Mister Rogers doesn’t stand up and talk down to him, he crouches next to him, asks him if he can lean on his chair, and talks face-to-face with him. He literally gets down on the same level as his viewers. Metaphorically, children’s content creators need to join our viewers at their level.

And finally, give your characters flaws. Young viewers recognize flaws and relate to them. Showcasing “perfect” characters leaves a void between the viewer and the character they should be relating to. Whether a character is too impulsive or impatient or a little clumsy, young viewers should be able to look at a character and say, “That’s me. I know that person, I can relate to them.”

What are some of your hobbies?
I’ve been converting an old potting shed in my backyard into an art studio with an incredible custom floor. I bought 16,000 classic #2 pencils and created a herringbone parquet floor with a layer of epoxy over top. It’s super fun and immensely inspiring. This is where all the great future ideas will be born! 

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More About Tone

Favorite show? Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, of course.

Favorite movie? It’s a Wonderful Life, of course.

Favorite game?
My kids made up a game they call The Chain Game. We play it on car rides or at the dinner table. One person plays a song, then the next person picks a new song that is linked in some way through lyrics, theme, guitar riff… anything. It’s DJ Round Robin. 

Favorite place traveled? Crayola Experience in Easton, PA.

Favorite type of music to listen to while working?
Somehow sad music helps me come up with great creative ideas. The sadder the music, the better. I search Spotify for “Sad Playlists,” “The Saddest Music of all Time,” or “The Weepiest Break Up Songs.” When I put on my headphones and announce, “I’m going into my sad cave,” everyone knows I have some ideas to come up with. 

Favorite practical joke?
I began my first day at FableVision on April Fools’ Day. I came into the studio with a tray covered in foil and announced that I always bring brownies to commemorate my first day on a new job. When the staff pulled the foil away, they discovered a pile of Brown E’s that I had cut out of construction paper. They’ve never forgiven me.  

Concept art for Woody, featuring Tone’s blue eyes

A Tone fun fact that most people don’t know?
At Disney Feature Animation, the characters the artists create always seem to end up looking like the coworkers they spend so much time with. Everyone there is seemingly somebody. It’s like working at a theme park – Gaston and Pocahontas were great friends of mine and Belle was my boss. Woody from Toy Story bears a striking resemblance to me. Thankfully, my boots are free from snakes though.