Context
Dive In is a children's content series that I originally worked on with KidSpring Ministries back in 2016 but got the chance to revisit in 2020 during the Covid-19 crisis. The problem was: if kids could not attend on a live production on Sunday how could we reach families at home?
It was previously decided we wanted to revisit Dive In at some point this year and the team felt that during this time Dive In was a strong series to lean in to. I knew that I had helped create some nice animated pieces with underwater characters for the original series and wanted a way to nicely tie all the pieces together for a 25-ish minute long "episode" on YouTube, so I pitched the idea of a human host character in a submarine to take the place of what would have been a live actor to transition to the previously created videos.
Once this idea was approved it was up to the writers to edit the original scripts in a way that would fit the now on screen animated character. On that note, during this series I also lead the charge in helping the team know how to better format script for a fully on screen "episode" as opposed to live play with media ques for a technical crew. This would lead to clearer communication and an overall more efficient workflow. While this was going on I began working on the design of the character and her environment. Because the expectation would be that the host character would only be speaking in one location I knew a storyboard was not necessary however I did want to have visuals and preliminary sketches to provide for the script read through. It was important to me to design the character in a way that would bring greater representation to our KidSpring cast of characters as well as provide more tie in to the previous pieces by rigging our host character in a way that she could peer out of her periscope to talk with her "fishy friends". I also thought it was important that we see the outside of her sub at the beginning of each episode for an establishing shot.
Introduction
During the original Dive In series I helped to guide the art team in the creation of the overall aesthetic for the preschool series. I was greatly inspired by the show Puffin Rock, and wanted its textury appearance to be incorporated into our work in some way. I helped to hunt down specific brushes I felt worked well and established an art style guide alongside two other artists. This helped us coordinate what brushes were to be used and when. While another artist personally created the fish characters, I tackled the creation of the environmental elements like the ones you see below. All this gave me the confidence to now step into creating all the necessary assets for our new host character and her environment. As the only artist on the team with a Cintqi at home, I knew it was up to me to see this project come to life.
After the scripts were written and passed off through an official team read through and approval was given for my original designs, I got to work on cleaning up our now host character "Sandy" and her background. During this time I also worked with our Programming team on hiring a suitable voice-over. My goal is to always do as much as I can to have the character fully created, approved, and rigged in their environment so when voice-overs are delivered, I can get straight to animating. This is why for me communication is the lifeblood to the living organism that is "the team".
Once, voice-overs were passed off to me I began animating. After that I'd submit small samples along the way to my supervisor for approval but once all the segments were finished I passed them off for sound design and later for them to be finally edited into one long "episode" with the original videos incorporated.
