As the launch date for Chimps Should Be Chimps approaches, we’re taking a look back at our development process. For our first installment, we talked to the story’s illustrator about research, favorite characters, and collaboration.

Can you tell us how you developed the artistic style for the character illustrations?

Natalie Sklobovskaya:   For Lulu and Poe, there were many ways I could have drawn them. They could have been a drawing for National Geographic or it could have been a drawing for some nature textbook, but we were dealing with a digital children’s book. So for that there needs to be a lot more research done both on how children’s book chimps are drawn, and how to draw a chimp, because I have never drawn chimpanzees before in such an intense fashion.

For the character design portion, I took trips to the zoo to learn how to draw chimps. I spent hours sketching and learning how they live, where they hang out and how they move.  I also tried to figure out how to depict them with regards to where on the gradient of animal to human they were going to lie. We wanted the reader to relate to the chimps. So within that it was a lot of push and pull, bringing in little characteristics of humans – you know, whites of the eyes, and maybe less furry or a little bit furrier… finding a good balance until it looks like something that’s friendly and real at the same time.
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Combining creative people with the right clients and challenges results in some pretty unique work – like our soon-to-launch iPad app Chimps Should Be Chimps. Working with Project ChimpCARE taught us about the problems surrounding chimpanzees in entertainment. We learned another big lesson from the app itself: that we can find effective ways to use the iPad and other digital technologies to convey important information in an engaging way.
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There’s a pervasive “Mommy and me” vision of children’s technology – the idea that every time a child uses a device, someone lovingly guides them through each tap or click.

Researchers know this ideal approach is pretty rare. Here’s a more realistic scenario: The parent downloads an app and swipes through. If it looks kosher, they’ll “pass back” the smartphone or tablet to their child and return to their grown-up tasks. If you can’t depend on Mom and Dad’s web-savvy guidance, how do you make an app kid-friendly?

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At Manning, we believe that good work comes from a very simple formula: hire talent, plan well, work hard.

Good work comes from good planning. Good planning comes from the right questions. Take our current bundle of fun for Project ChimpCARE.

First question: “What do they want?”

The Lincoln Park Zoo wanted to make a piece promoting Project ChimpCARE .

Next question: “No, what do they really want?”

ChimpCARE wanted a piece that illustrated how chimps were mistreated in entertainment, showed why people shouldn’t support chimps in entertainment, and showed how zoos are integral to rehabilitating those chimpanzees.

So we pitched an iPad children’s book.  It was a different way to get to the target audience and achieve all the goals of the project. Even though it wasn’t what they had originally envisioned for this project, the zoo embraced the idea and let us run with it.

That freedom allowed us to throw ourselves into crafting something that both reflected the objectives of ChimpCARE and let us demonstrate what we could really do as a company.

We started pitching story outlines back and forth. Versions and versions later, we had our outline.

We started writing. Seventeen drafts later, we had our story.

We started storyboarding. A hundred chalkboard drawings and digital sketches later, the book was starting to take shape.

We had a solid month of illustrations (24 illustrations in 25 days. Keep an eye out for Natalie’s post about exactly how much work that is.)

Then, after all of that, we can get to work on the iPad. All of the interactive design and development that goes into turning a story into an app is, according to our estimates, about a million hours more.

That’s a lot of work.

Every single step of the process was deliberately planned, everything was approved by the zoo as we went so there were no surprises, and every person on the project knew exactly what was happening and who to ask if they had any questions. Most importantly, we kept the project goals in mind while we worked through each part of the process.

Last question: “Was all that work worth it?”

Absolutely.

As it should be obvious by now, I am Manning’s productivity nerd. I am a lay member of the cult of Getting Things Done. I wanted to offer up a  brief observation from my day-to-day work. Like the GTD project planning model, the GTD system consists of five discrete steps:

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SnowflakeWorkshop.com

Whenever I come across creative work that I like, my first thought is often, “How did they do that?” As someone who works in the industry and knows all the moving parts that go into a great project, I find others’ processes fascinating. But the resources for discovering this information are frustratingly few and far between. So to do my part in providing more of this kind of background info, I am going to try to spotlight a few of our projects here on the blog. Hopefully someone will find it helpful (or at least interesting) to see us pull back the curtain a bit and reveal our creative process.

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Last week I posted my go-to planning methodology. If you are exploring a new project, you should start at the beginning of the process. However, here is a handy (though not extremely visually appealing) diagram to help you unstick projects that have been bogged down.

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As a project manager, planning is an important part of my job. Unfortunately, not everyone plans as well as they are capable of. Being a methodical person, I like methodology. Here is the simple planning method that works for projects of various sizes that I have employed for a few years, complements of David Allen.

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ABANow.org

Recently, our friends at the American Bar Association asked us to redesign their Media Relations and Communication Services website. There were many practical reasons for this: adding features, improving site navigation and usability, and making content easier to add and update.

But the primary reason for the redesign was in the social media realm. The Media Relations Division was evolving from communicating with the news media, to take on added responsibilities for communicating with members, the legal community and the public. In addition to timely web content, these readers like to get a well-rounded perspective on the news. They still look for traditional fact-based information, but also enjoy the perspectives offered by blogs and seek the reaction of others within their social networks. Continue Reading →

My job in the past year has changed pretty radically with the invention of P2 media. We rarely shoot anything to tape, and instead we shoot HD video files to a P2 card…basically a hard drive inserted into the camera. This allows a fully tapeless workflow.

Downloading these raw HD video files is a critical process and it must be done with extreme care to insure that no media is lost. But I must download footage wherever the shoot takes me, and that can pose some awkward moments to be on a laptop.

Below are my top 3 most complicated places I have downloaded footage in the last year:

#3: In the sleeper cab of a semi truck.

I was recently filming a driver training video for Navistar in the desert outside of LA. We were shooting so much footage that day and I was constantly downloading to keep up with the fast and furious pace of the production. I was miles away from water, electricity, or even cell phone access. My only option was to download while riding in the sleeper cab of the truck as we made our way through the California desert.

#2: At a West Point, United States Military Academy football game.

The assignment was to create an advertisement for use during the USMA football game. I was there on the night of the first home game of the season. It was one of those crisp fall days perfect for a game. The stands were packed and the fans were showing full support. Me…I was on the front row on my laptop. To the untrained eye it looked like I was squeezing in some extra office work. But I was really hard a work downloading our raw HD footage.

#1: On a golf cart in the middle of a school bus factory, in Tulsa, OK.

I was recently filming a video for IC Buses in their mile-long factory in Tulsa. Here the busses are built entirely from scratch and the production line wraps a total of 3 miles around the facility. Our schedule was packed with no time to loose, so we didn’t have the luxury of returning to an office to download footage. Therefore, I made use of an available golf cart to download in the midst of all the welding, painting, and construction of these lovely yellow school buses.