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.

Each Fall we send word out to our teacher followers asking them to have their students write a story based on a prompt we provide. We have received so many imaginative tales about talking animals (2024) and magical artifacts (2025). This year is an all new prompt and all new opportunity to bring stories to life!

The process is very time-consuming and requires a lot of man-hours to complete. That’s why this year we are focusing on bringing shorter stories to life to be able to recognize more student voices. 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 are excited to announce that this years Kids Original prompt is based on our favorite animated character, Smudge! Students are asked to write a short story of up to 5 pages depicting Smudge and any of his new Inkomplete friends in the Unfiniverse having adventures! There are so many interesting places to explore like Grimshadow Hollow and Halfway Haven! Make up your own place or pick up a thread of what we’ve shown in Episode Three. We can’t wait to see what stories they tell about life in the Unifiniverse!

Stay tuned for more updates and links to submit your stories. Stories must be submitted by November 15th for consideration. This year we’re excited to hope we can adapt more than one story into an animated short. We’ll be doing vertical content and horizontal depending on the length of the stories, complexity, and overall fit, so let’s have some fun and get our students writing stories!