In 2023 our team came up with the idea of turning a story written by average fifth graders into an animated short. The purpose was to demonstrate to students how the power of even the simplest of stories can be turned into a beautiful, funny, impactful story. Our goal was to inspire students by bringing their imagination to life. Our first Kids Original R.A.K.O. the Robot premiered in May 2023 to the delight of the entire student body at Kelley Elementary in Carlsbad, CA.

For our current Kids Original, we sent word out to our teacher followers asking them to have their students write a story during November which is National Novel Writing Month. The prompt we provided was to write a short story about a talking creature trying to fit in with society. We received so many great entries, but part of the process of selection is to determine which story is best suited for adaptation to animation. Our final selection was from a group of sixth-graders in Wisconsin who wrote an original story entitled: Rufus the Rhino. We can’t wait to show them the finished product!

The process is very time-consuming and requires a lot of man-hours to complete. We have a dedicated animation team of over 15 individuals who work hard on developing a visual style consistent with the story. The process begins with adapting the story into a screen play, and then turning that into an animatic which is a rough visual representation of the story to let us know how long we expect it to be. Every second of animation is precious! While the animatic is being worked on, character designers are hard at work coming up with character concepts and refining the art style. Background artists will begin drawing scenery and selecting color schemes that fit the project. Voice actors are auditioned and selected for the roles. Animators begin turning characters into moveable figures. Music is scored. Light compositing and shadows are added. When the finished product is ready, it represents thousands of man hours of work.

We create these kids originals under the umbrella of the Rise Up Foundation mission of supporting literacy and inspiring kids to read and write their own stories. We do not profit from or sell their original work that we have adapted. We are however super proud of it and want to show it to everyone who will watch, especially students who might realize they too can be the next author of an award-winning animated short!

Our current plan is to complete a new Kids Original every year, schedule permitting. Our next call for stories will go out in Fall 2024 for Spring 2025 production. To stay up to date on news, we suggest signing up for Alane’s monthly newsletter, and following along on social media.