First page of the Twinkle Twinkle storybook app

The app originated from Super Simple Learning’s highly successful 3D animated YouTube video, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The video has garnered over 26 million views in less than a year and is the highest-ranking version of the song on YouTube.

After many viewer requests for copies of the video, in January of 2011 Super Simple Learning sought out a development company to adapt the video into an educational app. At the same time, See Here Studios LLC contacted Super Simple Learning to inquire about a possible collaboration. See Here Studios Co-founder Valerie Mih explains, “While we focus primarily on developing our own intellectual properties, we were deeply impressed by Super Simple Learning’s educational track record, audience base and exceptional talent for engaging young children. We are thrilled to partner with them to bring their high-quality educational content to the mobile app platform.”

“When we saw See Here Studio’s The Wrong Side of the Bed app, we knew right away that they ‘got it,’” says Super Simple Learning’s co-founder Devon Thagard. “The warmth, the simplicity, the incredibly inviting images, the use of music and sound effects…it’s a really beautiful app. After talking with them we knew that we saw eye to eye on creating educational content for kids that is fun, with a certain bit of charm and wonder to it.”

Adapting the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video into an interactive educational app involved multiple layers of expertise from three different companies. Super Simple Learning produced all the music and vocal tracks, as well as the storyline for the interactive book. The Texas-based independent production company Fuzz Animation, creator of the 3D animation, produced a special iPad/iPhone version of the original video. See Here Studios created additional animations for use in the app, composited the various assets and integrated all the elements into its proprietary children’s book software engine. The result is a children’s app with three substantial activities:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star interactive storybook including:
* 18 beautifully illustrated book pages – an ideal bedtime story length
* Touch interactions on every page
* Animated movie introductions for key story pages
* Professional narration, music and sound effects
* “Read to me,” “Read myself” and Auto-play options

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star music video with:
* Two voice options, child or adult
* Feature film quality 3D animation and music soundtrack

Interactive counting exercise with:
* Touchable animated stars to aid learning numbers from 1 to 20
* A special animated reward after counting all 20 stars

These three different ways to interact with the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song provide a multi-faceted experience that will keep young viewers coming back again and again.

About Super Simple Learning:
When a few teachers from the U.S. and Canada had trouble finding songs that were both simple and fun enough for their young English learners in Tokyo, Japan, they started making their own. They soon discovered that the same features that made their songs appealing to young English as a Second/Foreign Language learners (simple and useful lyrics, appropriate pacing, easy to learn with gestures, clear vocals), made the songs appealing to emerging English speakers of all stripes, including native-English speaking toddlers and preschoolers, children on the autism spectrum, and hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. Several award winning CDs later and with over 210 million view of their videos on the SuperSimpleSongs YouTube channel, Super Simple Learning remains focused on creating educational content for young learners that makes learning simple and fun.

Device Requirements:
* iPhone 3GS or above, iPod touch 3G or above and iPad
* Requires iOS 4.0 or later

Pricing and Availability:
Twinkle Twinkle 1.0 is $2.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Books category. Super Simple Learning provides discounts to educational institutions.

Click Here to view Twinkle Twinkle in the iTunes App Store

About See Here Studios
See Here Studios combines world-class visuals with new storytelling technologies to create inspiring reading experiences for children. The company’s Tickle Book(R) apps for iPad and iPhone aim to promote a life-long love of reading. Co-founder/Creative Director Wallace E. Keller has illustrated numerous children’s books and educational textbooks for Rizzoli, Scholastic, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin. His editorial illustrations have appeared in The New York Time Book Review, Business Week, Ms. and Psychology Today. Co-founder/Creative Director Valerie Mih has worked professionally in the animation industry since 1996. Her film credits include Pixar’s Toy Story II, A Bug’s Life and Geri’s Game. Copyright (C) 2011 See Here Studios LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Based on the much-loved “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” Youtube video by Super Simple Learning and Fuzz Animation, See Here Studios collaborated closely with both companies to develop the app, which includes an interactive children’s book, a counting game and two versions of the original animated video. We hope you enjoy the results!

First page of the Twinkle Twinkle storybook app

We had so much fun working on this project, thanks to our wonderful creative partners. We especially loved the quality of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star animation. So we asked Nathan Dillow, Creative Director of Fuzz Animation, if he could share his start in animation, the making of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video, and his artistic process:

Q: How did you first get started in animation?
A: Well I was always into drawing and involved in art, and the moment I saw Star Wars as a kid I became obsessed with movies and how they were made, particularly visual effects. When Pixar released Toy Story, it blew my mind and opened up a whole new world. There was something about it that agreed with my curiosity and love for technology and computers and animation. I was about 14 and my life changed forever when I found and downloaded the open source software, Blender 3D, and started creating and taking on jobs not long after. I’ve always been entrepreneurial minded. I love organizing and directing things – Fuzz Animation is really an extension of that and my love for animation.

Storyboards for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Q: How did the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star production with Super Simple Learning come about?
A: Super Simple Learning approached me about the production based on a rough concept they pitched. They had a basic idea that they wanted an owl and star character playing together in the night sky. The fun part about this project was that they gave me complete creative freedom to develop the story. They really liked some of our past work in regards to the art style, so we tried to infuse that feel into Twinkle. Five hundred billion hours later, we finished. It was quite a learning experience, and a lot of work, but to say it was a blast would be an understatement. I hope the heart we put into it shows in the final piece.

Q: Could you share some of your working process for the Twinkle Twinkle Little star video?

3D character models and rigs

A: The most important step of the process for me was to nail down the story and how we wanted everything to flow. Working with my story artist, we locked ourselves in my office and hashed out ideas and drawings until we could pin them up on the wall from beginning to end. Super Simple Learning gave us scratch track recordings of the music composition that I used to time our sequence ideas for the animatic. I’m also communicating with artists at this point to join the team while working on a rough 3D layout. I have a lot of faith in the people I choose for our projects. Although I’ll have some distinct direction, I really believe in utilizing every artists unique potential with their artistic freedoms. I’ll never forget the day a lightbulb went off in my head while I was in the shower. I realized that it’s impossible to do anything on my own at the standards I set for myself with Fuzz Animation. Always inspiring this idea is a quote from Walt Disney I look at everyday: “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

Screenshot of 3D working process

Q: What inspires you as an artist?

Final rendered image in storybook app

A: Nothing inspires me more than a good movie experience. Anything Disney or Pixar has ever produced inspires me to no end. I also love to look at animation history as well as study drawings from, say Glen Keane, Milt Kahl, or any of the nine old men, really.

Q: What do you do to recharge or overcome creative blocks?
A: I have to recharge quite often, I get burned out easily if projects drag on. Simply taking a break from it all, getting out into nature, anything away from the computer. Surrounding myself with people always opens my mind to new and refreshing ideas. I love to run, exercise and cook. I am also a heavily involved musician and enjoy playing guitar and traveling. I try to balance my time working with plenty of “play” time. It’s easy to get into a workaholic rut, especially when there is a fun project. When this happens my brain starts accepting everything it’s exposed to and I stop questioning or looking at things clearly.

Q: What are some of your current (or future) projects?
A: Right now we’re doing some television work, and I’ve just been admitted into a training program in advanced character animation. The future is always exciting, I’m always working towards new goals to improve myself. I’ll be spending 18 months training and pushing myself and Fuzz to the next level. One of the ultimate goals for Fuzz Animation besides continuing to produce quality commercial work, is to produce an independent animated movie. So I’m always working on that when no one is looking!

Thank you for the interview, Nathan!
To learn more about Fuzz Animation, please visit Fuzz Animation’s website and Facebook Page. And, here’s the complete video for your viewing pleasure.

From this initial idea, we gradually brought the concept to life in a process that was often quite unexpected and surprising. The book involved a collaborative process between our artistic and software teams. This article focuses on developing the illustrations and animation; for a discussion of the programming aspect, please see my Moms With Apps blog post on “App-related Resources for Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators.”

“The Three Pandas” involved four main stages of illustration and animation:

1. Defining the illustration style and approach
2. Animating the pandas
3. Figuring out how to animate the little girl in the story
4. Designing backgrounds and virtual sets

1. Defining the illustration style and approach
Originally, I planned to use a cartoonish illustration style for the book. Early style tests used a combination of graphic line illustrations with textures (to represent fluffy fur).

Initial design concept for The Three Pandas

During this process, I had collected lots of photo reference of pandas, and I kept going back to the photos for inspiration. At some point, I realized that the photos of real-life pandas were so charming, so irresistible, that it would probably be the most appealing to use actual photos of pandas in the illustrations.

So I set aside the cartoonish designs and instead, started exploring whether it would be possible to use a mixed-media photo collage approach. This was a major change in direction, but it felt like the right thing to do….

2. Animating the pandas
Not having worked with photo-collage illustration or animation before, there were a lot of unknowns. Where would we get all the photos needed for the book? Would it work to collage the photos with other elements to create a book illustration? Would it look appealing – or strange – to animate the photos? How exactly would we animate them?

Samples of panda photo research

I scoured all the possible sources of photos to see if we could find the ages, angles and emotions we needed for the different scenes in the book. Soon an entire wall was covered with possible photo candidates, pulled from a combination of public domain, Creative Commons and licensed images.

For the next step, we had to test whether we could successfully animate the photos. One of the wonderful things about working as an animation teacher is that I get to meet a lot of talented students – and sometimes, I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work with them. I asked Andrea Senise, a recent M.F.A. animation graduate, to tackle the task of developing a photo-animation approach. She utilized a variety of creative techniques in After Effects to setup and manipulate the panda photos so that they could actually MOVE. Once we had some appealing early animation tests, we finally knew that we could pull off the project. The app demo video below shows examples of this mixed media photo-animation approach:

3. Figuring out how to animate the little girl in the story
Once we decided to use photo-realistic pandas in the book illustrations, we had to decide how to approach the “Goldilocks” character. It seemed unlikely that a cartoon character would be able to mesh with photo-characters, so we made a radical decision – to work with a real little girl! Since we had real pandas, we had to have a real “Goldilocks” too (or in our bamboo forest version, an inquisitive girl named Mei Mei).

Greenscreen pixelation shoot with Jenna Fan

We happened to know the perfect little girl for the story. Our artist friends Elaine Chu and Elliot Fan have an incredibly adorable 7-year-old daughter named Jenna. When we discussed the project with them, we were surprised to find out Jenna’s favorite animal: PANDAS! They told her about the project, explaining that the book would also help raise funds to support pandas, and asked if she would be willing to act in it….and she said “yes”!

Example of greenscreen image with background & chair removed

This was our first green screen shoot, so there was quite a bit of trial-and-error involved in learning how to light things properly and how to stage the actions. We setup a portable green screen and arranged the photo shoot using props roughly sized like the props in the book. Acting against a green screen, without any real interaction, is a challenge for even seasoned actors – much less a 7-year-old. Elaine helped tremendously by serving as Jenna’s acting coach as we tried to explain each scene. Jenna was such a good sport and put up with the oddness of it all.

Jenna placed within the Papa Chair book page

The approach of shooting a live actor and then using the resulting images as animated frames is a technique known as “pixelation” in the animation field. Although I had admired the pixelation work of Norman McClaren and others, I had never tried the technique before (another first!) Here’s an example of a classic pixilation film by Norman McClaren, “A Chairy Tale”:

4. Designing backgrounds and virtual sets
The environments for the book were setup by Andrea as virtual sets in After Effects. Once the basic layouts were complete, we fleshed out the scenes through a process of virtual set dressing.

This gave us the opportunity to further the story through the environment. I didn’t want Mei Mei to wreck the house, but I did want her to leave traces of her presence as she made her way through the pandas’ home. These little details can make repeated readings of the book more intriguing.

A book scene before set dressing

After set dressing

Can you tell what Mei Mei changed in the scene?

In conclusion, the making of “The Three Pandas” was an incredible learning experience. It provided an opportunity to work with photo collage, photo animation, green screen, pixelation and other creative techniques. As you can see, any animation production is a collaborative effort, and this book would not have been possible without the generous help of friends and colleagues.

Special thanks go out to Elaine Chu, Elliot Fan and Jenna Fan for creating the Mei Mei character; animators Andrea Senise and Adrian Martinez; production artists Giap Waye Goh and Stephen Nosee; translator and Chinese voiceover artist Xinrong Searcy; writing editors Nancy Lamb and Parijat Desai; software engineer Zhi Yun Qi; Andrea Muller of Pandas International; and co-Creative Director Wallace E. Keller.

I hope you enjoy the results as much as we enjoyed creating this imaginary world.

- Valerie Mih, June 6, 2011

Find “The Three Pandas” for iPad & iPhone in the iTunes App Store

So much has already been covered in the previous Blog Hop posts, it’s hard to say something new….so we’ll just add another voice to the circle from a developer’s, artist’s & educator’s perspective.

Stepping back a bit…since the launch of the iPad on April 1, 2010 of last year, it has been remarkable to see the impact of the iPad on education for children, ESPECIALLY children with special needs. Nobody could have fully predicted this impact, and it is still not fully understood, but it is now a proven fact that the iPad has a tremendous potential to help many children with special needs.

An article from a special needs classroom in Arizona sums up the impact:
“Technology can be scary or dangerous to some people, but to the special needs students of Dan Hinton and the administrators at the Pima School District, it is a godsend. People are using Apple’s iPads for numerous reasons. At the Dan Hinton School and Brighter Day Preschool, the devices offer a world of opportunity and learning to its special needs students.” (Read the full article here.)

This world-opening effect has been described as near-miraculous by parents of autistic children, as described in this BlogHer article, “The iPad: A Near Miracle for My Son With Autism”:
“My son Leo’s life was transformed when a five-dollar raffle ticket turned into a brand-new iPad. I’m not exaggerating. Before the iPad, Leo’s autism made him dependent on others for entertainment, play, learning, and communication. With the iPad, Leo electrifies the air around him with independence and daily new skills.” (Read the full article here.)

And yet another example in this New York Times article, “iPad Opens World to Disabled Boy”:
“Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before. He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it — just barely — and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen. Over the years, Owen’s parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try.” (Read full article here.)

There are many such real-life stories. But there is a problem: iPads are expensive, and the need is great. While not as costly as other specialized adaptive devices, an iPad still wouldn’t be considered cheap by anyone. For many families, an iPad simply isn’t in the budget. Yet, it provides the opportunity to change lives for under $1000. Something or someone was needed to bridge this gap.

Into this gap jumped the organization Apps For Children With Special Needs. A completely grassroots, parent-run organization led by a parent, Gary James, it has a mission to provide iPads directly to families of children with special needs and to provide objective app evaluations.

By the end of July, A4CWSN will have given away 20 iPads to families of special needs children.

And the movement is growing stronger. A4CWSN is now starting up a new campaign to give 50 iPads in 50 States to 50 Children with Special Needs! To learn more and support this new campaign, click here.

A blue sky thought: wouldn’t it be perfect if Apple and other sponsors were to provide grants and donations to provide these life-changing devices to families who truly need them? Perhaps that will happen someday in the near future.

More than just a website, A4CWSN provides person-to-person support through it’s very active A4CWSN Facebook Page, which is more like a live chat room since it has so much constant activity. There are also numerous apps given away every day on this Facebook Page, donated by like-minded app developers. During last month’s special App Party (a huge app giveaway event), A4CWSN gave away over 5,000 apps with the collaboration of many developers who donated promo codes. As app developers, we were thrilled and honored to participate in this app giveaway.

—

On a separate app-design note, as animation artists we’re very intrigued by the role cartoons can play in educating special needs children. Can cartoons help to engage and activate latent communication skills?

A program which utilizes cartoons to help autistic children understand human emotions is currently being used throughout the U.K. According to the BBC, “There are preliminary but very exciting results – even with a very short intervention, children with autism can look at faces and start picking up the relevant information.” (Read full article here.)

And, we’ve gotten feedback about our “Cat Chorus” app that it engages autistic children. While it was not planned, this is one unexpected outcome that we are very happy about, and that we’d like to develop further. One parent from the U.K. App Store wrote:
My Autistc son loves cats, and this app is perfect!!!
He loves to make them sing, THANK YOU FOR THIS APP!

As artists, we can’t tell you how heart-warming and meaningful it is to read these words! It makes all the hard work of app development worthwhile, and it inspires us to reach higher.

We’re excited to explore these new uses of cartoons, and we look forward to continuing to support the on-going efforts of A4CWSN!

- Valerie Mih and the See Here Studios team, July 5, 2011

P.S. If you’d like a chance to win some free apps, we’re currently running a special iTunes Gift Certificate Raffle – share “What Tickles You” for a chance to win! Feel free to check out the details here

And please visit these other Blog Hop articles below!

This blog post is geared towards students of animation who are interested in developing their own independent projects. I’ll be giving a free talk on this topic at San Francisco State’s downtown campus on Saturday July 9, at 11am. This talk is part of an excellent free animation lecture series at SF State this summer – CLICK HERE to read more about the lecture series.

This is a very broad topic, and in this post I’d like to simply give a sense of the spectrum of approaches and look at case studies of actual independent animators’ work. Needless to say, each independent animator and indie project is completely unique! I’m looking forward to discussing these examples in more detail with an audience, so if you’re in the SF area, please feel free to join us on July 9 in downtown San Francisco for the talk.

There are two general definitions of an INDIE animator:
- An animator who works on self-directed and personally-motivated projects, either alone or with a small team.
- An animator who runs their own small production company, creating work for clients as well as their own original projects.
Both of these roles are in contrast to the commercial animation industry, which is made up of medium-to-large corporate companies where artists work as part of a large team in a production line.

Of course, independent animators can work BOTH in the commercial industry AND on their own projects – it’s not an either/or situation. Career paths naturally change and adapt over time – for example, at times I’ll be working for a larger company, other times I’ll be working on my own projects, and sometimes I’ll be doing both at once. Obviously, working for a larger company provides both valuable hands-on training as well as a source of much-needed income ☺. Looking at it as a BOTH/AND scenario instead of EITHER/OR gives one a lot of options. Most of the animators listed in this blog have worked in this flexible, multi-faceted way.

An independent animation project may be self-funded (out of one’s own volunteer time and financial resources), or it may be funded from other sources. Often, it’s a combination of the two. In many cases, a project will start off self-funded or as “hobby/play”, and then gradually morph into a bigger project.

First, I’d like to cover some traditional funding sources with which I have personal experience. Two of my short films, “Paper Peace” and “Harmonize” were produced with funds from these sources.

“Harmonize” is an animated short, based on a college screenwriting assignment, about two girls learning to play musical instruments. It was animated by myself and fellow indie animators Christina Richard, Ricardo Barahona and Victor Gascon.

“Paper Peace” started out as a simple personal project in the form of a visual poem/mini-comic that I xeroxed and gave to friends. It is based on the writings of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Once I started exploring turning it into an animation project for public viewing, I contacted Thich Nhat Hanh’s U.S. publishing company and worked out a license for use of his text.

I applied for funding from two traditional PBS-related independent funding sources:
The Independent Television Service (offers various funding categories)
The Center for Asian American Media

The application process involved submitting a detailed written proposal, storyboards and work samples fulfilling their specific requirements – at that time, they were commissioning short 30-60 second interstitials for PBS (actually not a common occurrence – typical programs for PBS are 30-60 minutes in length). I submitted five ideas, and two were approved.

In the past, I’ve also participated in the PBS/CPB Producer’s Academy, a week-long all-expense-paid training workshop at flagship PBS station WGBH/Boston (producers of “Frontline,” “Nova,” “American Experience” and “Arthur”). It’s a chance to learn the ins-and-outs of producing for PBS:
2011 PBS/CPB Producer’s Academy Info & Application

There are several other PBS-related organizations that fund projects, with an eye towards supporting diversity in public television program. They are:

Native American Public Telecommunications
National Black Programming Consortium
Latino Public Broadcasting
Pacific Islanders in Communications
The ITVS International Call (open only to non-U.S. citizens and non-U.S. residents; not currently accepting submissions until new funding cycle begins)

In addition, many cities have nonprofit film societies and arts councils with missions to support independent filmmaking and artists. For example:

San Francisco Film Society
Silicon Valley Arts Council

One issue with these traditional funding sources is that they are usually highly competitive and require detailed proposals which take quite a bit of time to put together. A lot of work can go into applying for funding, but only a small percentage (say, 1-15%, depending on the organization) of proposals will actually get funded.

Now, with the advent of the Internet, there are several new options for independent animators that allow them to seek direct support from their existing and potential audience. This is a more grassroots approach, and still requires a lot of work, but the artist can often more directly influence the outcome.

Here’s some examples:

Example: “Cicada Princess,” directed by Mauricio Baiocchi
Kickstarter provides a platform for any project to seek out funding from the public. Mauricio Baiocchi sought $40,000 in finishing funds for his stop-motion animated film. His project caught the attention of many animation/art lovers (including myself – I’m a funder!) and so far nearly $70,000 has been raised. The extra funds will allow him to add scenes that had been cut due to budgetary restrictions.

Example: “Sita Sings the Blues” by Nina Paley
Before Kickstarter existed, Nina Paley sought out direct funding from the community for her feature film “Sita Sings the Blues,” which she single-handedly animated over several years. She also gave away her film for free, and released it under a Creative Commons license that allows others to remix it and shape it in their own creative ways. This helped to dramatically increase the viewership of the film – and many viewers purchased the DVD or merchandise to support the artist’s work, which ended up paying for the cost of the film.

Example: “Simon’s Cat” by Simon Tofield
Now with the advent of Youtube and Vimeo, it’s also possible for animators to put their work on-line for free and, in some cases, develop a huge viewing audience. “Simon’s Cat” is a perfect example. As a cat-owner myself, I love this series of animated shorts. Apparently, the first “Simon’s Cat” short was simply a demo reel project for Simon Tofield, used to show skills with Flash animation. Then someone uploaded it to Youtube without his knowledge. It got a lot of views and finally Simon Tofiled heard about it and claimed ownership of his work. He turned it into a series of animations, and with each new short his audience grew. Now with an audience of millions, “Simon’s Cat” has spun off into books and merchandise.

Independent animators are also branching out and developing their own businesses in other creative fields, including hand-made crafts and illustrated prints. Often these endeavors started out as hobbies that took on a life of their own.

Example: Michelle Meeker’s What’s In the Box Design: Sculptural hand-crafted, whimsical keepsake invitations and announcements

Example: Jackie Huang’s Wool Buddy: Adorable soft creatures hand-made out of felted wool

Example: Pascal Campion’s Illustrations & Books: Beautiful art prints and books

On the topic of branching out in one’s career, I’ve found that childhood and early adult interests sometimes come back to the fore later in life. I grew up playing a lot of music (classical and jazz piano) as a kid and teenager, but then set it aside to go to college and animation school. After working as an animator for a few years, the desire to play music came back in a strong way; I rented a piano and began attending informal jazz jam sessions at night. After a few years of gradual musical growth, I started gigging with the Eddie Gale Band and released CDs and DVDs of original compositions, solo and with a trio. Now I’m integrating my musical creativity with animation by creating music for interactive children’s books.
This end result would not have occurred if I hadn’t started reviving a past creative pursuit on a “hobby” level. Often, following your natural interests and passions will organically develop and grow into something that can be shared with others, on either a personal or professional level. So I say GO FOR IT and do what you love, and see what happens! And most of all, enjoy the journey.

I’d like to close this blog post with some examples of independent animators who have formed their own small production companies. They are creating world-class animation with an artisanal, personalized and hands-on approach:

Example: Charlie Canfield’s Animation Oddment & Sundries
Charlie has won several animation and documentary Emmy’s for his independent work.

Example: Nathan Dillow’s Fuzz Animation
Recently, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Nathan for Super Simple Learning’s storybook app, “Twinkle Twinkle,” based on the animated video by Fuzz Animation and Super Simple Learning. The video Twinkle Twinkle Little Star now has over 22 million views on Youtube and is loved by children all over the world. Here’s a sneak peek from the app:

To learn more about the making of this animated video, see: The Making of Super Simple Learning’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”: An Interview with Nathan Dillow of Fuzz Animation.

Do you have other ideas? Projects of your own? Share them in the comments!

- Valerie Mih, Creative Director

Since starting See Here Studios two years ago, both myself and studio co-founder Wallace E. Keller have often been approached with questions about apps from fellow artists and writers. A few months ago, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) asked if we could put together a presentation on this same topic for their summer workshop. This article is a compilation of our learning over the last two years, and a “test run” for our SCBWI workshop on July 14 in San Rafael, California, at which we’ll discuss these topics in more detail.

If we’ve left out any burning questions that you have as an author/illustrator, please let us know in the comments. And if you have additional resources or perspectives to add, we’d love to hear about them. We certainly don’t have all the answers (nobody does in this new space!), so we view this as an on-going discussion and exploration.

This article is meant to be helpful to a newcomer to the app world, so we’ll start with definitions and then move on to specific resources:

What are the different formats for digital children’s books?
What are options and resources if I want to release my own book?
What are options and resources if I want to work with a publisher?
Where do I start?

To read the full blog post, click here to visit Moms With Apps

- Valerie Mih, Creative Director

To enter the raffle, tell us “What Tickles You?”
- This could be something – anything (kid-friendly please) – that makes you or your child (or loved one) laugh
- It can be something you do to make others laugh
- It could be a kid-friendly joke

Post What Tickles You in up to three different places to get up to three entries in the raffle!
Here’s the three places to enter:

- In the Comments section on this page, below (Note: Please be sure to fill in your email so that we can contact you if you win! The email will not show publicly.)
- On our Facebook Page – click here to visit
- On our Twitter Page – click here to visit (please tag tweet with @seeherestudios & #tickleraffle)

Good Luck!!!

To be the first to hear about special giveaways and book news, Join the Tickle Book Club.

And here’s the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video, for your viewing pleasure! The app includes two versions of the video, an interactive storybook based on the video, and a counting game

P.S. To learn more about the behind-the-scenes making of this video, see: The Making of Super Simple Learning’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”: An Interview with Nathan Dillow of Fuzz Animation.

This Father’s Day, we’re celebrating children’s literacy with a special SALE honoring “Storytime with Dad.”

For Father’s Day Weekend only, starting Friday June 17, we’ll be placing our award-winning iPad/iPhone interactive children’s books on sale – The Wrong Side of the Bed for just $1.99 (regular price $2.99) and The Three Pandas for only $.99 (down from $3.99)!

These special sale prices will only last through Sunday June 19, so be sure to grab a copy of these amazing books at these amazing prices!

To add to the Father’s Day fun, we’re also raffling off a $25 iTunes gift card (a perfect gift for Dad, and Mom too!) To enter the raffle, simply join and comment on our

Facebook Page.

For an additional raffle entry, follow us on Twitter and Retweet our raffle tweet at our

Twitter Page.

The winner of the raffle will be picked on Saturday June 18 at 6pm (PST) and will be announced on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck!

This special promotion is organized in conjunction with Moms With Apps #AppFriday – a weekly event highlighting high-quality children’s apps.

We hope you can join us for the fun this weekend!

For readers still unconvinced that the features of the iPad can translate printed children’s books into full-blown multimedia experiences, this one will change your point of view. Based on Keller’s 1992 book, the app tells the story of Mott, a young boy who wakes up on the wrong side of his bed. Not the left or right side, but the underside. The world has turned upside-down (or perhaps it’s just Mott), and he spends the rest of the day walking on ceilings and, eventually, slipping out of Earth’s gravitational field altogether. The story makes sophisticated concepts of physics and perspective accessible. It cleverly explains the conceit, “If there’s a left side, then there is a right side, and if there is a right side, then there must be a wrong side, right?” The app can display the tale in 2-D or 3-D, but even in 2-D, Keller’s skewed views of vertigo-inducing bus rides (not to mention breakfast served on the wrong side of the plate) are gorgeously rendered. Unobtrusive instrumental sound effects punctuate the read-along narration, animations are minimal but effective and Mott’s audio reactions can be heard by tapping him. In 3-D, the app soars even higher; the effect works well even with cheap red/cyan glasses (available for order through Amazon.com from within the app for as little as $4 for three pairs). The pages work just as effectively when viewed upside-down, a good reason for repeated readings. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)

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