June FableFriday: J Milligan and Cassandra Berger, Co-Founders of Lanky Co.

J Milligan and Cassandra “Cass” Berger are…well…lanky. The dynamic co-founders of Lanky Co. met at the award-winning digital toy company Toca Boca. That collaboration has flourished into the launch of Lanky Co., a development studio for high-quality, kid-focused projects to delight and entertain audiences wherever they may be. With a cadence of colorful projects up their sleeve and vast experience working with high profile clients, Lanky is ready to take on any project.

Recently, J, Cass, and FableVision’s Tone Thyne teamed up to produce the quirky earworm that is the new Don’t Mix Us Up music videos. The series addresses the common catastrophe of mixing up things that are easily mistaken for each other but should never be confused. The result is a viral sensation, out now on Aardman studios’ new YouTube channel for teens and adults, AardBoiled.   

“We’re always delighted to hear that our work stands out in the landscape of kids media, because it’s not intentional, it’s just our personalities. We never want to talk down to our audience, and humor is number one,” shares Cass. “Visually, we’re both drawn to similar things so that results in having a cohesive output. We’re not afraid to put something different out there, as long as it’s true to us.”

 We sat down with the duo to talk shop, their preference for Cabbage or Lettuce, and what makes Lanky Co. so…lanky in this month’s FableFriday.

Congrats on the recent launch of Lanky Co.! Tell us more about your mission and the motivation for launching your own studio.
J: We launched Lanky because we both always wanted to have our own studio, and when our last gig came to an end we thought it was time to go for it. I’m really glad we did. Our mission is to make great stuff, add to the culture in a positive way, and focus on projects we care about.  

Cass: We were both at a time in our careers where it felt right to go for it. We wanted to be creatives who have a sense of ownership for whatever work we do, big or small. Whoever gets to the office first texts the other a trophy emoji, that’s how excited we are to get to work.

Both Lanky’s live-action and animated projects have such a unique, creative style that stands out in the world of kids’ media! How do you describe Lanky’s personality? What unique perspective is your content adding to the landscape?
J: We like to challenge the audience a bit—we try to get them engaged and invested in a way that we can leave things out and have them fill in the blanks. We do this with visuals and writing and for any age audience. It’s fun to watch something where part of the story happens in your head.    

You previously worked together in animation and production at the game development studio Toca Boca. We’d love to learn more about the history of your collaborative, creative partnership!
J: Cassandra came on to the Toca TV team as the Director of Animation. We’d sit in this half-finished interior room called The Barn with the content team and laugh hysterically for an hour or two coming up with ideas for mini-shows for the Toca TV platform. This was my favorite part of my job, which also involved running a subscription business and building a technology platform. We basically do the same thing now all day long in a much smaller office but with cleaner bathrooms and free kombucha. 

Cass: Back at Toca TV the Product Manager once told me that she was jealous of my meetings because she could hear my laughter coming from all of them. That’s the beauty of working on comedies, laughing means it’s working! We’ve carried that through to Lanky, where we know we’re on the right track when we’re cracking each other up.

Cass, before Toca Boca you spent some time as Art Director and Designer on several broadcast properties and published books. How have those experiences in visual development and show production influenced your work as Creative Director at Lanky Co. today? 
Cass: I’ve been lucky enough to work on a bunch of broadcast shows as well as a lot of show development. At Lanky we’ve taken on a few projects that are pure development, which is my favorite part! Because I’ve worked on shows before, I’m able to avoid complications down the road while we develop a project, as well as poking an idea enough to see if it has legs.

J, you’ve had some amazing experiences working with new technology as Creative Director of the Content Innovation Lab at Sesame Workshop! What technologies or content areas are you most excited about right now?
J: We’re doing a lot of bite-sized content for social media right now, and I love the challenge of packing a lot of story and information into a tiny thing. It’s like writing a sonnet or haiku, only with sound effects and speech bubbles and getting the timing exactly right. There is also a lot of interest in audio and speech recognition right now through podcasting and smart speakers which I find kind of cool and funny because it harkens back to radio theater, which gets the tech out of the way and puts the movie in your head, so to speak. 

Lanky may be young, but you’ve had a lot of collaborative experiences under your belt already, including the partnership with FableVision Studios to create the Don’t Mix Us Up videos. What was it like working with Tone Thyne on this wacky series of shorts?
Cass: Tone is one of my favorite people. He got me my first job out of college and has been a sort of mentor ever since. I was so excited to be able to work with him on an original project because I knew with him involved, it would be great.

J: Genius just wafts from Tone’s mind like that yeasty smell at Subway. Seriously, Tone is the best. When we gave him the note, “can you make the lyrics stupider?” he sharpened his pencil and molded the clever bits for a general audience and voila! Music video history was made.

You’ve also teamed up with Aardman animation studio to distribute the Don’t Mix Us Up series on their new YouTube channel AardBoiled. How is AardBoiled the perfect home for Don’t Mix Us Up?
J: We have always admired, no, worshipped Aardman’s comedy, craft, action sequences, attention to detail, and high, high bar for quality. It’s like everybody else was doing things one way and Aardman came along and thought, we’re just going to painstakingly make brilliant comedy for people of all ages and see what happens. We hope that Don’t Mix Us Up appeals to Aardman fans. We’re really happy to be working with them and to have the series on their channel.

We had so much fun working with you on Don’t Mix Us Up! Now that the series has launched, what’s next on Lanky’s horizon?
J: We have irons in fires all over the place. We’re creating new ideas for original shows and books as well as working with partners on edutainment, digital design, content marketing, and other kinds of storytelling. We love working on different kinds of projects, collaborating with folks, and are always looking for new challenges.

Finally, the Lanky mascot has an interesting (and creative!) presence on Instagram. Who is the mastermind behind-the-scenes?
Cass: When we had downtime early on we talked about creating some kind of Instagram comic, something that we could do just ourselves to get a presence out the world. We both come up with ideas and I draw them. The idea is to make quick bites that we can post to get a laugh. You can tell that we’re busy when there hasn’t been a post in a while but there are definitely Lanky fans out there eagerly waiting for the next piece in the series.

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More about J and Cass:

Favorite Muppet:
J: Cookie Monster                     
Cass: Grover

Junk food of choice:
J: Shrimp Chips              
Cass: Fritos

Animated short that inspires you: 
J: Virgin Atlantic Safety Video
Cass: The Little Boy and the Beast

New technology you’re excited about: 
J: Cordless Vacuum Cleaners—total game-changer           
Cass: Virtual Reality drawing/digital painting

Kids’ show that makes you nostalgic: 
J: Magic Garden   
Cass: Pinky and the Brain

The best viral YouTube video:     
J: This should be viral.  Please everybody watch this!  
Cass: Don’t Mix Us Up: Cabbage & Lettuce (If I say it, will it make it viral?)   

Cabbage or Lettuce? 
J: Lettuce 100%   
Cass: Cabbage 100%

Favorite way to unwind?            
J: Chopping wood in my orange safety chaps
Cass: Watching The Real Housewives 

TechTalk with FableVision Studios

FableVision's Jordan Bach (Senior Developer) and Brian Grossman (Technical Director)

Among other things here at FableVision, we’re known for our gorgeous art and animation -- those visual pieces are a direct connection to our motto -- “Stories that Matter, Stories that Move.” But FableVision Studios also uses cutting-edge technology, tools and techniques to make our projects come to life. Using a wide array of software and hardware while working on many projects at a time for various platforms, the tech team at FableVision Studios are the behind-the-scenes maestros of those stories that move and matter.

Tools of the Trade

HTML: HTML is the bedrock foundation of everything on the internet -- it’s a computer language specifically for building websites, and every website uses it. Every time you go to a website, your browser translates those words into a webpage, complete with words, images, videos and more!

JavaScript: If HTML is the bedrock foundation of the internet, JavaScript is what makes a webpage do things. Any time you can type into a text box, watch a slideshow, or if something on a page is animated, that’s thanks to JavaScript.

Unity: Unity is a program for making games for computers, websites, or mobile devices, commonly referred to as a game “engine.” Making a game is complex, so Unity provides a foundation for a team to build upon, so they can focus on making it fun and beautiful.

“Because FableVision is a mission-based company, we focus on finding a project that fits our mission, then we find the technology that fits the project,” says Brian Grossman, Technical Director. He’s been working at FableVision for more than a decade, and has seen the tools and process change many times over the years. Developing the technology behind a project starts during the FabLab, the first step for any FableVision project, where everyone connected to a project meets to collaboratively plan and discuss every aspect. Being part of the process from the beginning is important and fun, says Jordan Bach, Senior Developer at FableVision Studios: “I can let people know what’s easy and what’s hard; if we do the hard thing we may not have time to do this awesome thing, etcetera. We want to be able to do as much awesome stuff as we can.”

Once the project gets going, Jordan describes the work of the tech team as “assemblers” -- they take the art, writing, sound, and more, and make it all seamlessly work together. Because FableVision works on many types of media -- websites, mobile games, museum interactives, and much more -- this means everyone on the team has to know an array of skills and toolsets. Websites and web-based interactive projects are frequently built in HTML and JavaScript and games are frequently made using the Unity 3D Game Engine, just to name a few. (See sidebar, “Tools of the Trade.”)

There is a truth about good technical work that not everyone knows. “This is almost a cliche, but I’ll say it anyways: our tech team is really talented, and if we’re doing what we’re doing well, you’ll never see it,” Jordan points out. If an app or game works as expected, it’s easy to never think of all the work that went into it, and everything that’s happening under the hood. A great example of this is what is called “Responsive Design,” whereby the tech team works hard to make a website, app, or game work well and look great on a multitude of devices, from laptops to cell phones. (See sidebar, “Responsive Design.”)

Responsive Design

Responsive design is the process of making a website, app or game perform the same and look good across many types of devices, whether it be a 30” TV or the iPhone in your pocket.

The website or application is constantly checking what the size of the screen is, and moves and re-sizes the content, whether it be photos, text, or buttons, to fit and follow certain guidelines. “We try to build things that can go everywhere,” says Brian Grossman, Technical Director at FableVision Studios.

It’s not always a rosy path to launching a project, however -- technology is sometimes fickle, and working with the cutting-edge tools and processes sometimes means working in uncharted territory. “Every project has its own quirky technology problem, or problems! There’s always something that makes it like no other project we’ve ever done,” says Brian. “Prototyping and core functionality isn’t hard, it’s the polish, it’s the potential problems and bug fixes. It’s lopsided -- 20% of the time is 80% of the functionality, 80% of the time is finessing and perfecting the last 20% of functionality.”

Ultimately the tech team is committed to getting the project done, and that means a lot of creativity and hard work. “You’ll look at a problem for a while and you won’t have a solution; suddenly you’ll have an epiphany and you’ll find the solution,” Brian says with a chuckle, pantomiming staring at his screen until suddenly the roadblock is lifted. Coding is modern problem-solving, working with computers by writing in languages they can understand, and problem-solving is an inherently creative skill, one that is incredibly important to our modern world and its future. That kind of problem solving and ingenuity are at work every day at FableVision Studios -- it’s integral to the level of quality media we’re known for, and what we pride ourselves on every day. No matter the media challenge, we’ll help you meet it.

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The Logical Journey of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis: Part One — Where It All Begins

A note from the FableVision editor: This blog series over the next few weeks is written by FableVision’s Tone Thyne, Vice President of Creative. This series will give you a front-row seat to what it’s like to create a show, an over-the-shoulder look at the creative work that Tone and Gary Goldberger, FableVision President and Co-Founder do here at the Studio. Curious about how we got here? Read more about Tone here, Zoombinis here, and download the game to play!

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In 1981, I had my 12th birthday at the totally tubular arcade at our local mall called Aladdin’s Castle: “The Ultimate Party Place” as their tokens boasted. That year, I also got PITFALL and KABOOM for my Atari 2600. I had achieved 8-bit adolescent nirvana.

Soon after though, my attention turned toward animation, MTV, and Lizzie Rossman. Video games sort of drifted out of my orbit, to use a Space Invaders reference, and never really drifted back. Until last month, when The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis popped up deliberately onto my radar screen. Or more specifically, when Gary Goldberger, FableVision’s Co-Founder and President, put it there.

This is Gary. Get to know that face (and those thumbs) well because Gary is going to be a main character in this blog series. He’s a dear friend, a wonderful colleague, and knows more about digital media than anyone I know. He is to digital what I am to children’s programming and so we make for fantastic partners at FableVision. Gary has spent the last 20+ years establishing FableVision’s respectable presence in the world of digital media and has been pivotal in connecting the dots between FableVision and The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis.

Zoombinis (for short) was a 1996 CD-ROM equivalent of what we today would refer to as a viral sensation. If you were a kid or a parent of a kid in the mid-‘90s, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

When I arrived at FableVision a couple of years ago, Gary and the team at FableVision had been working closely with our good friends at TERC to resurrect the phenom for a whole new generation of super fans on modern mobile devices.

Together, TERC and FableVision caused a certain portion of the internet (the one populated by nostalgic 20-something Zoombinis enthusiasts who credit the game with their reason for living) to completely blow up when they released an updated version of Zoombinis.

I get out of my jammies and come to FableVision every morning to create innovative, charming children’s properties, and given the tremendous reception of the Zoombinis release, it seemed only natural for Gary to suggest that together we create an original television series based on the beloved game.

(NOTE: Given the tremendous amount of digital platforms offering original programming these days, the term television series is about to go the way of answering machines, payphones, and VCRs. Broadcast series is a far more relevant term.)

Now, before we start creating anything, I need you to meet someone. This is my dear friend, Kate. She’s the one on the left.

Kate is one of those friends we all need in our life. If I didn’t want to keep her all to myself, I’d introduce you so she could be your friend too. She’s the world’s greatest cheerleader and thinks everything I do is brilliant. See why I like Kate so much? Kate loves when I share my show ideas with her and she is unapologetically gobsmacked by the process. Kate is an accomplished novelist, yet awe-struck by the world of show creation. Here’s one of her classics: “I don’t even understand how someone’s brain even comes up with something like this!”

So for all the other Kate’s in the world that wonder how brains come up with shows, Gary and I decided it might be fun to take you along with us on our journey to develop Zoombinis into a broadcast property. Hence, this blog. 

Until I read about FableVision and TERC’s recent Zoombinis release, I had no idea what Zoombinis even was. You see, when 1996 rolled around, my joystick and AV cables were packed deeply in Styrofoam peanuts and I was busy picking out china patterns, reception venues, and cake toppers.  But there was enough excited buzz in the ether to become instantly intrigued.

As of today, Gary and I have no idea what in the world we’re going to dream up, but you’ll be by our side as the bulbs over our collective heads begins to illuminate.  

Before we embark on our logical journey, my first order of business, as I see it, is to download the app and get intimately familiar with the game and the world and the characters. I have to catch up to Gary and the Zoombinis’ giant network of fans!

I mean, seriously, what in the world is this game?? Is that a talking tree stump? Why do the little blue guys have no arms? Is that a pizza sitting on a rock? I’ve got my work cut out for me as I catch up.

If you’re not already there either, click here to download the game (scroll down for links to download Zoombinis on tablets, desktops, and Steam) to get Zoombinis on tablets, desktops, and Steam) and come along with me as I familiarize myself with the cult classic.

Early next week, Gary and I are meeting with both the team at TERC and Zoombinis creator Scot Osterweil to begin to volley ideas. I’ll be sure to document everything we discuss and  write all about it here. That will really put my friend Kate (and hopefully you) on the edge of your seats.

For now, I’ve got to go play Zoombinis. See you next time.