Sun and Moon Studios Produce New Animated Character To Help Kids Learn French
Bristol based animation studio Sun and Moon have created the title character for a new series of CD Roms entitled ‘Amazing Milo’s Musical Plays’.
Milo is an adventurous boy who skateboards, surfs and interacts with a whole host of characters on the new series of CD Roms commissioned by Sparkle Speak Language Resources.
Through watching the series, Sparkle Speak hope it will help young children learn the basics of French.
Ruth Wood, co-founder of Sparkle Speak, a small company made up of her and Jennie Wilson, commented that: “It is by relating to these beautifully animated characters and ‘living’ their musical adventures that the children are able to start absorbing and spaking quite sophisticated French at a young age.”
Jennie is a language lead primary school teacher in Devon and Ruth is a journalist and researcher based in Bristol. Between the two of them they have brought together a host of companies to create the series, including Sun and Moon, April Media Productions and singer, songwriter Celine dos Santos.
Sun and Moon Studios previous clients have included Aardman, Hallmark and Kuju. They have been involved in creating the first two disks in the series, ‘Amazing Milo’s Rainforest Quest’ and ‘Amazing Milo’s Under-the-Sea Adventure’.
Speaking exclusively to Animation News, Dylan Shipley told us that one of the biggest challenges they faced in bring Milo to life was recreating the hand-drawn watercolour designs using vectors only in Flash.
He explains: “We worked hard in the build stage to remain faithful to the original watercolour designs yet re-purpose them to be suitable for animation.”
To do this they had to use a semi-transparent watercolour paper texture over the top of the scenes and use mottled colours which “really helped to achieve the watercolour look.”
The characters were then animated using motion tweens. Dylan and the team are most proud of the fact that they brought the whole package together from scratch, working with Sparkle Speak not just on Amazing Milo, but on their website, logo and DVD as well. As he surmises: “it’s really great to be able to have the finished product in your hand and know that it’s now being used to teach French across the UK.