I had the opportunity to work with Jonas & Co on this super fun Nickelodeon Junior series reimagining children’s nursery rhymes. I was approached by Jonas early 2022, and was enthusiastic upon hearing the project brief: concept, storyboard, design, and animate the entirety of a nursery rhyme reimagined in modern sound. The song I was assigned was “London Bridges”, re-imagined and re-recorded. Upon hearing the track, I immediately went to work concepting the zaniest version of this story I could come up with. I whittled it down to two concepts and presented back to the client:

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The client liked the visual style of option one, but the character and story of option two. I began roughing out the story beats and wireframes. It was fun to imagine the CatDog style bridge and create a character development arc for both sides of the bridge.

After some good time developing the concept, the next step was to rough out the storyboards in such a way that the client could grasp the story flow. The story was in constant flux from the beginning of production up until delivery. Several of the original frames had to be toned down in severity due to geopolitical realities that unfolded during production.

Click the video above to see a rough animatic playthrough

Ultimately I learned a few things while working on this project. I grew in sensitivity to how kids’ content needs to play out - some of my most zany and ecstatic ideas were too severe for a wacky kids’ short. It became clear about halfway through where the snag in the production would be, and if I were to repeat this process I would focus on getting through the style frames in more time. The place where I sacrificed the most was in late design / illustration and animation. The chunky illustration and animation style fit the mood, but ultimately I would love to have had a bit more finesse throughout.