Spring Update

It’s been a while since we last updated the bloggy. We’ve been a little busy with a handful of pretty cool projects.  Here’s a little CloudKid update:

1. Fizzy’s Lunch Lab – We totally slayed the second season. All the content is done. Finished. Complete. In the bag…you get it. The videos, games, and recipes will be rolling out until September, so be sure to check back for weekly updates. We recently launched two pretty awesome games. The first one is Hard Boiled – a nutritional-themed game show where kids can play alone or face-off against a friend, peer, or sibling.  The second game is Hectic Harvest – a farming game that encourages you to plant crops, earn cash, and buy upgrades to become a farming machine.  Game development process posts will soon follow.

2. Ready to Learn – This fall PBS notified us that we were part of their US Department of Education Ready to Learn grant. As part of the grant, we had to propose a series of math-based games spanning a variety of media. Rather than proposing a bunch of mini-games, we took a risk and proposed creating one large game (ala Mario Bros). Our proposal was well-recieved and green-lit this February. We’re now in the thick of producing the epic online narrative-experience, Escape from Greasy World – kids must solve mini-math challenges to push along the larger narrative and solve the mystery of Fizzy’s whereabouts. We’re also producing a smaller IWB game based on the larger experience.

3. Radical Reading – We’ve been working with a major children’s media company to develop an amazing reading program for kids. While we’re currently face-down in development, production will officially start in the next month. It’s an awesome project with lots and lots of potential.

4. Hiring – It’s going to be a very busy summer at CloudKid, and we’re looking for a few good CloudKids. Stay tuned for job postings, hiring tips, and other hopefully useful information.

Up, up, and away…

CloudKidHQ News

PBS Kids Represent: TCA Press Tour

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Pasadena, CA to be a part of PBS’s TCA Winter Press Tour.  It was a two day adventure that included interviews with press and bloggers, a Fizzy’s Lunch Lab behind-the-scenes interview with Angela Santomero for an upcoming PBS web-series , as well as a PBS Kids panel about new media, technology, and education.

While the event was a blast, the highlight was a casual dinner with Lisa Henson, her husband Dave Pressler, Angela Santomero, Shelley Pasnik, and PBS’s Lesli Rotenberg.  We talked about everything from children’s media to documentary films to the rapid evolution of technology.  It was so inspiring and fun to connect with everyone in such an informal setting.  It was especially cool to meet Dave Pressler who is currently producing his first show for Nickelodeon, Robot and Monster. He and I geeked out about William Joyce, Annoying Orange, and Saturday morning cartoons–A treat to say the least.

After the hoopla ended, I reflected on the experience and I was able to take away one main theme: it’s the people that matter.  Getting the chance to connect with everyone from PBS (and beyond) was such a treat.  We’re all in different stages in our career, but we were able to connect around creating meaningful and responsible stories for kids and families.  It was encouraging and inspiring.

-Dave

News

CloudKid: A Year in Review

With 2011 freshly upon us, we took some time to look back and recognize the accomplishments over the past year.  There were many long nights, lessons learned, and of course, highlights.  Through all the twists and turns, we couldn’t be more pleased with 2010.

While it’s always great to look back, we’re even more excited about 2011 and what the future holds for CloudKid.  Sky’s the limit.

CloudKid Shenanigans CloudKidHQ News

Kidscreen Award Nomination

Fizzy’s Lunch Lab has been nominated for a Kidscreen Award for Best Companion Website! We’re up against some fierce competition – Disney Online Studios and the BBC.  Check out the full list of nominees from the Kidscreen Announcement. The Kidscreen Awards will be held Thursday, February 17th in NYC.  CloudKid will be there.

News

CloudKid & H4H Set Table for Fizzy’s Lunch Lab

We’re proud to announce the 2nd season launch of the Emmy-Nominated web-only nutrition series, Fizzy’s Lunch Lab. The season kicks-off today with an all new webisode featuring a nail-biting cook-off that will challenge Fizzy’s culinary clout.  Be sure to tune in every Friday for new content as Fizzy and his gang thwart the greasy agenda of Fast Food Freddy.

It’s been an amazingly fun four months of production and we’ve been lucky to work with an amazing cast, crew, and new production partner, Hero4Hire.  As always, we’re happy to have the PBS Kids team in our corner – they’ve given us a lot of creative freedom and support to make The Lunch Lab what it is today.

PBS’s children’s websites, including PBSKidsGo.org, receive an average of 9 million unique visitors per month and the video players deliver an average of 50 million streams per month.

Fizzy’s Lunch Lab was created by Dave Schlafman and Evan Sussman.  You can join Fizzy and the Lunch Lab gang online at pbskidsgo.org/lunchlab.

News Production

Pictureka Reels in CloudKid

This summer, CloudKid produced the opening sequence for The Hub‘s new game show, Pictureka.  The show is loosely based off Hasbro’s popular board game with the same name.  The first episode recently aired and to our delight, the fish character that we designed/created is featured throughout the show.  Now, we’re determined to get our hands on one of the giant cardboard cut-outs for the CloudKid HQ.  Mission: Feisty Fish has officially commenced.

News Production

CloudKid in the Sunday Boston Globe

Scott Kirsner swung by the CloudKid HQ in late-August, and we talked to him about what we’re working on and how, as a startup, we fit into the Boston media landscape (and beyond). The content of our conversation is featured in Scott’s latest article on the front page of the Business section of the this week’s Sunday Globe. CloudKid was mentioned along with the small crop of animation studios in and around Watertown.

CloudKid LLC is one of the newest companies on the scene, formed in May 2009 by Dave Schlafman, formerly an artist at Soup2Nuts. The fledgling studio won a $400,000 PBS grant to develop a site called Fizzy’s Lunch Lab, which presents videos, games, and easy recipes, all intended to improve kids’ eating habits. The site went up last November, and earned an Emmy nomination not long after. (The firm didn’t win, but was nominated for the “new approaches in children’s media’’ category of the daytime Emmys.)

Read the whole article here.

Articles News

Tips on Submitting a Portfolio

We have recently added a jobs section to our website. There are several open positions to primarily help augment some of the work on Fizzy’s Lunch Lab as well as other projects. In addition to our website, we have posted listings on sites like Craigslist and received a number of responses. After having reviewed well over four hundred applications, we would like to identify some tips if you’re choosing to apply to us.

1. Online portfolios only
We only consider online portfolios and we do not review PDFs or media files sent to us. This isn’t a slight to the PDF format or an arbitrary decision. If we like your work, we want to be able to easily send it around the office without having to deal with an unwieldy PDF. If you don’t have a website, sign up for an account with free portfolio site like Carbonmade or Coroflot. Also acceptable: we have people who’ve even sent us Blogger, DeviantArt and YouTube pages.

2. Homemade portfolio sites
If you want to make a homemade website, that’s awesome.  Just PLEASE don’t make it suck. Common annoyances are not limited to: long load times, unnecessary use of Flash, splash page intros, confusing or cryptic navigation, broken links, poor image quality, or “under construction” signs. The work should speak for itself, so unless you’re an amazing Flash web developer, please just show us the work.

3. Design red flags
We are a company that develops visual products and we expect all of our hires to have an eye for tackiness, even if you aren’t applying to be a designer. There are a handful of design red flags that will get your website dismissed without exception. These include the following: using Comic Sans (this type face is not “cutesy”, “kid-friendly”, it’s bad), gaudy gradients, extremely saturated colors, awful and cheesy background music.

4. Cover letters and Resumes optional
If you’re emailing us, your portfolio link should be the very first thing we see. We only will read a cover letter or resume if your work is solid and fits what we’re doing. If you choose to include a cover letter (which is optional), keep it a brief paragraph. Please don’t attached a resume document to your email, make that information available on your website or create a LinkedIn account. Ultimately, if you’re work is any good, we won’t care what college you graduated from.

5. Read the job description
Don’t submit to us if you don’t fit the requirements of the job description.  For instance, we don’t want to see 3D portfolios for a Flash animator position. Seriously, stop sending us your 3D work.

News

CloudKid at the Daytime Creative Arts Emmys

Last Friday, CloudKid founder, Dave Schlafman, and Co-Exec. Producer Evan Sussman attended the Daytime Emmys in Los Angeles.  CloudKid was nominated in the “New Approaches in Children’s Media” for the production of Fizzy’s Lunch Lab – PBS Kids’ first web series.  While CloudKid didn’t take home the bling, the night featured the brightest and best in Children’s and Daytime Television (mostly Soap Stars) – a bizarre, yet interesting affair.  A big congrats to the winner in our category – PBS’s The Electric Company, who cleaned house with 5 Emmys. It was especially nice to connect with the amazing PBS  Team and Producers who were collectively nominated for a whopping 41 Emmys. Good times all around.

News

CloudKid in Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy

Screen capture of Fizzy and MixieWe got a mention today on Scott Kirsner’s blog, Innovation Economy, about the Lunch Lab Emmy nomination. Scott’s blog tells “the most interesting stories about what’s new in New England — and those stories can originate from a tiny start-up firm in someone’s basement, an academic lab, or a giant publicly-traded company.”

Dave Schlafman and Evan Sussman of the Watertown-based digital animation studio CloudKid are in Los Angeles today to attend an Emmy Awards ceremony. It isn’t the big prime-time Emmy Awards, but rather the “37th Annual Daytime Creative Arts and Entertainment Emmy Awards,” which honor “the craft behind the many shows that grace the Daytime genre,” according to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which puts on the ceremony.

Read full post: 1. Form company, 2. Land project, 3. Get Emmy nomination

News