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| You are reading about: > Firedog / Our
work / Digital media & web / The adventures of Kara, Winston and the Smart Crew |
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The Smart Crew and their ship, The Explorer!
Stills from the animation
Animated footage was required to cut to live action footage of the 'Real' SMART crew; A group of peers offering sound online advice
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| Firedog deliverables:> Story concept and IP • Animated series • DVD |
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| Who is the client? |
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| Childnet International – a non-profit organisation. Their mission is to work in partnership with others around the world to help make the Internet a great and safe place for children. The project was managed by Childnet, but also funded by the government agency BECTA |
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| What was the brief? |
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| To produce a teaching resource in an animation and video format, highlighting the more dangerous aspects of the digital world based on the existing five SMART rules created by Childnet. The media required needed to be distributed by an online channel and also by DVD. The learnings were to be conveyed in an interesting format that would encourage active engagement from the young audience. |
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| What was Firedog's solution? |
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| Firedog set about creating a wonderful and imaginative environment for a group of protagonist friends and their adventures. Loosely based on a ‘steam-punk’ pirate theme, Kara, Winston and their robotic monkey sidekick, Cookie, travel the high seas in search of treasure. We used the metaphor of sea adventure as a parallel to the experience of browsing the internet. Seas become the web, islands become sites and apps and games become treasure. The crew set sail on their very own advanced ship, the Explorer, using all their modern day gadgets at their disposal, such as the iNav, the Sea-Station games console and their handy intership mobiles. The story is broken into five chapters based inherently on Childnet’s SMART rules (Safe, Meeting, Accepting, Reliable and Tell) which educates the audience on how best to approach the internet. The five animations (totaling around twenty minutes), can be watched individually or as a single sequence and are supported by a separate teachers resource; An interactive CD Rom to assist teachers in presenting the animation. Included in the deliverables were supporting print materials such as branding, cover design and an accompanying 16 page booklet all presented in a DVD pack to arm teachers and parents with everything they need to teach 7-11 year olds about internet safety. |
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Firedog was responsible for the entire remit beginning with full scriptwriting, storyboarding and concept development. The world was created and characters skinned, rigged and built in a 3D environment and animated according to the chosen shot selection. A number of passes were outputted and composited separately in layers, giving us control over all the separate elements in shot. The result is a natural looking ‘toon’ style which softens the hard nature normally associated with software. From there, a studio recorded voice-over was dropped into place alongside a composed music and sound track, all to add extra weight and presence to the feature. Both films are hosted on the Childnet website and the DVD pack was supplied to 25,000 primary schools across the UK. The project was supported and funded by BECTA, TDA, UCCIS and is endorsed by Professor Tanya Byron.
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Watch the videos below:
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Have a look at the animation microsite on the Childnet International website
Like the look of this and would like us to do the
same for you? Get in touch with
Firedog...
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| View similar projects to
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