Tell us about your organization. How big is your team? Where are you based? What is your organization’s specialty in the film and video space?
We are a small independent animation studio. We have 40 talented animators and creatives scattered around the country, with a large chunk based in Atlanta. Our specialty is creating high-quality content that gets kids excited about the reading and writing process. We just launched our newest literacy initiative, The Blue Witch Readalong which is a fully animated readalong with professional voice acting and karaoke-style writing to facilitate fluency and comprehension.
Why do you do what you do? Was there a transformative moment that solidified your career choice, your org’s success, or your commitment to storytelling?
I have been passionate about telling stories and getting kids excited about reading since my then 12-year-old son asked me to write him a book. Along the way, we discovered there wasn’t just one path to telling stories-that we could find multiple paths to reaching kids in exciting new ways to engage their imagination and their own creativity.
Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?
We have won several Telly Awards over the years. We won several Gold Telly Awards for our Between The Pages videos that help kids understand how authors write stories. This particular Telly Award was for our Smudge series which features a young inkblot character determined to become an author in their own right. The story centers around the famed Inkling Society, a group of authors who guard the World Book which contains all the great stories of the world. In this episode, Smudge is facing the consequences of trying to sneak their story into the World Book, and discovers that stories come to life in the Parlor of Passages through the greatest power of all-imagination.
Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?
There is never anything easy about working in animation! It is exhausting, time-consuming, exacting, and wonderful. It takes an entire team of people to help it through the process from developing the script (my part along with my co-writer) then storyboarding, character design, backgrounds, animation, compositing, music, sound effects and final editing. It’s like a train moving through stations, it can’t be rushed and you can’t skip any of the parts. You can’t understand the significance of a tiny strip of white on a character until you see how it creates depth and shading and emotion when properly done.
What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?
Biggest challenge is always making sure the story carries the day. If you’re not telling a good story it doesn’t matter how good your art is. The biggest challenge throughout production was agreeing on the storyline and finding ways to compromise among the writers to get the best of everyone’s input. Our biggest regret was not knowing the ending of the series ahead of time (we just wrapped script on the final episode) Had we known where we were going to land it would have made decisions along the way A LOT easier.
What are you most proud of about this piece? What is the most memorable response you got from this work?
It’s so full of imagination and shows a real love of all the great stories out there. It highlights how important imagination is, and how stories really do give us hope. How important it is to hold onto stories that light that fire in humankind.
You won a Telly Award for this piece. Why is recognition important for you, your team or your work?
We are an independent studio out here creating art for the sake of inspiring children. We do not use generative AI, we are real people creating real magic using our passion for storytelling and creativity to light the way. Recognition just lets us know we did okay. But our real reward comes from the kids who engage with our content and are inspired by it.
Tell us what you’re up to! If there’s a new project, launch, or milestone you’d like us to celebrate with you, let us know, and we might share it with our community.
We are so excited to be launching our latest literacy-focused project, The Blue Witch Readalong! The Blue Witch Readalong is a fully animated adaptation of Alane Adams’ fantasy novel that lets kids watch, listen, and read along at the same time, with professional narration and synchronized on-screen text. Each chapter is paired with a fun Watchalong hosted by Alane that invites kids to explore characters, uncover clues, ask questions, and make predictions—turning reading into an interactive storytelling experience. It also comes with 300+ pages of free curriculum for teachers to use in the classroom.
