Initial discussion with Alex

After writing the long list of questions I need to ask myself and Alex to properly start the project off, I sent the list to him to have a read over. At first he answered the questions he was able to, which then led to a conversation afterwards.
 

Percy Pirate is aimed at children between the ages 2-5 (preschoolers), and isn’t directly aimed at boys but will naturally interest them more. We discussed this aspect and whether or not a female character needs to be developed to target girls separately in a different range of books. We both agreed that it doesn’t need to be gender specific, and we will ensure his unnamed crew will be a mixture of genders.
 

For this book the crew is made up of Percy, an unnamed pet parrot, the pirate captain and an unnamed crew of 6-7 others. When it snaps back to reality I asked Alex if the crew members are other children or if the characters are what Percy has made out of household objects or even imaginary friends, which Alex replied that they are other children who have come round to play out.
 

When talking about how we could make this more transmedia, we discussed creating a range of items which could be sold with the character branding. This also led to us discussing the possibility of more book in the series and different adventures they could take.

 

When we have a completed book, we have discussed looking to publishers at first to gage an interest, however if this does not seem possible we can then look into self-publishing. It is Alex’s vision that this would be a standard children’s book on any bookstores shelf and not a specialist collectors book. We discussed how we could make the book itself more interactive, by adding pop out and pull tab sections in the adventure aspects of the book, such as the actions “swinging” and “jumping.” He also would like the animation to go alongside the book in DVD format, which he would rather develop into a short series, which makes it more worthwhile to purchase. He gave the examples Peppa Pig and Pingu for animation DVD’s he would like us to go down the route of. This would be necessary as a DVD of the one animation alone would be a bit too small and unworthwhile for parents to buy, as it is hoped that each adventure lasts 2-5 minutes. If this didn’t work as we hoped, only then, would we post it on sights like Vimeo or Youtube.

 

We then discussed entering animation festivals to gain a global audience, and attending the Childrens Media Conference to gain a wider audience there too.
 

In relation to the format, Alex is most interested in having a book created, then an animation and if time then developed into an app. We agreed that the same style should be used across all three formats, which would make it easily identifiable and not too confusing for the children. Creatively Alex has given me full artistic license once we have confirmed the basic imagery. He has stated that he wants bright eye-catching colours, veering towards a hand drawn look rendered in pencil crayons and possibly a water wash, in full colour, with plenty of detail, not in a sketchy drawing style.