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FableVision, Make-A-Wish, and Macy’s celebrate Neshama Ryman's wish on National Believe Day

Though FableVision has been creating meaningful content for nineteen years, the project we’re currently working on truly ranks as one of our most rewarding to date.  We are honored to be working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation on fulfilling Neshama Ryman’s wish of directing an animated short film.

Neshama is absolutely amazing and the vision for her short film stems from a very personal place. In the Ryman household, accidents, messes, and unforeseen instances of chaos are always attributed to fictional creatures created by Neshama called the Klumz. Considering all that Neshama and her family has endured in the wake of her cancer diagnosis, the analogy of the Klumz is not lost on us.  

Make-A-Wish has been part of the global dialog of “do-gooders” for decades and the New York chapter chose to highlight Neshama’s wish at Macy’s in the Bronx for National Believe Day. At the event, they debuted an exclusive “making of” video that captures the beautiful Neshama/FableVision collaboration so far. 

To echo Macy’s sentiments – we, too, believe in the magic of giving. You can donate to Make-A-Wish here. We can’t wait to show you the whole film, which will be completed in 2016 – stay tuned! Here are some photos we snapped at the event.

Update: Here’s the full film, which came out in 2016. Enjoy!

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December FableFriday: Matt Brelsford, Developer

Matt Brelsford is the proverbial man behind the curtain – but he’s certainly worth paying attention to. Interested from an early age with “the way things work” and the intricacies of production, Matt joined FableVision’s team as a developer in 2014.

“Being a computer programmer is the closest thing I've found to being a real-life wizard,” Matt says. And his work here at FableVision helps bring the digital worlds we create to life. His background in theatrical lighting, gaming, and a deep-seated interest in an audience’s experience play into his work here seamlessly. Programming and lighting have a lot in common. They direct the audience’s gaze, can help along plot lines, and can have control over how the story as a whole functions on the stage (whether that stage is a literal or metaphorical one).

This month we sat down with Matt to talk about the overlaps in art and technology, the path that led him to FableVision, and a small side project that’s kept him buzzing around our Studio.

Humor us on our first question. Let’s say you’re talking to a five year old. How do you explain what you do to them?
Computers, by themselves, don't do anything. Seriously, they just sit there. However, they are absolutely great at following instructions, and can do things in one second that would take a human a lifetime to do. It's my job to write those instructions. It might sound boring, but those instructions bring games to life, and lets you search for kitten pictures on Google.

Matt and his wife, Jamie. 

Matt and his wife, Jamie. 

You have a background in theatrical lighting, can you talk a bit about that time in your life? Why make the full-time switch to programming? 
Like many people, I went into college without a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I originally wanted to be an engineer. Then I wanted to do studio art. During freshman year course selection, a lot of the courses I wanted to take were already full, and I wound up taking a theater course. By far, it was the most engaging, interesting class I was taking. I had an absolutely amazing professor, Lynne Greeley, and I instantly fell in love. Lynne was incredibly encouraging and suggested that I continue. She even recommended the class where I ended up meeting my wife, Jamie. The next semester I was taking almost exclusively theater classes, including intro to lighting design with another amazing professor, John Forbes. I was totally captivated. There is something so overwhelmingly magical about controlling light. I still get chills when I think about sitting in the booth behind the audience in a pitch-black room and bringing up the lights on Act 1.

After I graduated, I struggled to find meaningful work in the theater (go figure). I always had an interest in programming and the infinite creative potential of computers, so I did some freelance web development work for friends and local businesses, and I eventually decided to pursue that as a career.

What is your journey to FableVision story?
After doing some freelance web development, I found a job in Boston at a small web development agency. I then worked at two other ad agencies in the city until the desire to something more creative and meaningful became overwhelming. I wanted to make games. At some point, my wife suggested educational games, and something clicked. I found a position at Tufts University where I worked on a grant-funded research project making an educational game about sustainable tree farming. After that, I discovered FableVision, which seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, and applied that night.

You were lead developer on the recently released Top Crop: Farming for the Future, which we created for National Geographic. From a developer’s perspective, what were some of the challenges and successes working on this project?
Developing educational games is always a balance. In the case of Top Crop, we needed to devise creative ways to meet the educational goals of the game, be scientifically accurate, and of course, meet the schedule and budget. You can have ideas that don’t quite fit. I think we have a solid model for what a game can look like without traditional sprite-based animation. And the game looks beautiful. Every time I look at it I am impressed with the game and UI art.

Committee for Children’s ParkPals: Kindness Rules is designed for young kids (7-9 year olds), how did that inform your decisions when working on the project? 
When presented with a game, kids tend to ignore text, which means that in order to teach them how to play all of the mini games, we had to show them with visual and audio cues. There were also a number of challenges creating a log-in system that wouldn't require them giving any personal information.

What draws you to FableVision’s mission?
I love the idea that my work is actually doing good out in the world. In my ad agency days, it wasn't uncommon to work for a huge billion-dollar company where you weren't totally on board with what they were doing. It's so motivating to know that I'm helping kids learn about sustainable farming, or how to be fair and responsible.

You have a creative side, how do you approach web development and programming as an art?
I don't know if I would say I “approach programming as an art,” but rather that I am trying to make art using a computer and a keyboard instead of paints and brushes. If there was a more powerful, easier to use medium for making art, I'd switch to that in a heartbeat.

What inspires your creativity?
I wish I knew! It can be anything. Art, movies, games, people, music, books. I guess if I had to pick only one thing, it would be games, since they usually include every kind of creative medium inside of them. However, most of my work starts out not due to some inspiration, but rather as a problem I want to solve, like how to procedurally generate an island, or how to manipulate a webcam feed.

Tell us about the toys, games, and interactive experiments that you make in your free time. 
There are a lot of them.

The weirdest one I've made is a small program that, given enough time and space, will generate every possible image ever. All of them. Pictures of you riding a dinosaur through ancient Rome, pictures of Abraham Lincoln break dancing, and lots and lots (and LOTS) of pictures of nothing at all. Unfortunately, generating all of those pictures would take an astronomical amount of time and hard drive space. The formula looks like this: number of different colors ^ number of pixels in the image = total number of images generated.

So for an image that's 256x256 (which is a small image) with only 16 colors (not that many, most computers are capable of displaying millions of colors), you'd get 16^65,536 = ~1.6 × 10^78913. If you could generate 100 of those small images each second, it would still take you ~5.1 × 10^78903 years to generate all of them. I don't have that much time.

Some other, less esoteric things I've made:

  • A music visualizer that takes your webcam feed, and distorts it based on the music that's playing.
  • A game where time only moves when you move.
  • A web application where users can upload children's drawings, and other more “well trained” artists can polish the image. Kids can see their vision realized, and artists have an infinite supply of super creative inspiration.

What is Just B?
Just B came about due to my desire for FableVision to work on our own internal game project. People had mentioned it had been done in the past, but always seemed to fizzle out. I was determined to not let that happen, so I tried to make the absolute smallest thing possible. At some point early in our process, we sat down with our marketing leader, Sarah, and she mentioned doing something to celebrate the springtime. We all liked that idea, so I put something that looked like a Bee on the screen and just started playing. Then I added some flowers. Then I made it so that when the bee ran into a flower, it played a note. We refined it just a little bit more, and that was that. Even though it's one of the smallest projects I've done, it's the one that I'm the most proud of. It's focused, pretty, and it exists for no reason other than to bring joy. Probably the closest I've come to making true "art" with a computer.

Favorites! 

Movie: I love most of Wes Anderson's movies, but if I'm being honest with myself, I'd have to say the new Mad Max or the original Star Wars Trilogy.
Snack food: Cheese and crackers
Game to play with a big group: Two Rooms and a Boom
Game to play with only a couple people: Betrayal at House on the Hill
Month: It's a tossup between October and April.
Vacation: I love taking a week off and working on one of my game projects. If I had to pick a real vacation, it would be going to LA to stay with my best friend Greg.
Dessert: German Chocolate Cake
Cartoon character: Tina Belcher, from Bob's Burgers
Play: I really can't think of a favorite. I just loving being in a theater!
Video game: Super Metroid. Dark Souls. Portal. (Not necessarily in that order.)

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Extra Fun at Extra Life 2015

Imagine being trapped in an office with your coworkers for 24 hours, with only video games, Italian food, and a good cause to sustain you. Sounds fun, right? We thought so too! Which is why, for the third year in a row, we participated in Extra Life, a 24-hour gaming marathon to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Team FableVision chose our local hospital, Boston Children’s.

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The marathon began at 10 a.m. on Saturday, with some fancy pancake making and Brian’s famous waffles. Finally fueled, the marathon was off, with everything from Super Mario Kart to Five Nights at Freddy’s played across our office. With the arrival of more staff and their families, things got a little crafty! The conference room became a full-blown arts and crafts hub, with coloring, felting, and calligraphy. Soon the office was awash with our creations.

Amidst the crafting and racing and scares, others opted to take a more traditional gaming approach: board games and card games. A highlight of the event came when many of the staff sat down to play Red Dragon Inn, a card game that everyone might have gotten a little too into.

Thoroughly exhausted by all our hardcore gaming, some FableVisionaries decided it was time to hit the hay… but others weren’t quite on the same page, continuing the gaming fun well into the wee hours of the morning.

Team FableVision proudly raised $7,387 for Boston Children’s Hospital! This beats last year’s fundraising, at $7,193. Everyone at FableVision worked tremendously hard to make this event happen. We’re so grateful for this amazing opportunity to use our forces for good. Does this mean we get to level up now?

See you at next year’s Extra Life!

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November FableFriday: Shelby Marshall, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Product Solutions

Shelby Marshall was destined to work at FableVision. “Looking back I can see how my entire work history led me here,” he shares.

Before he was our Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Product Solutions, Shelby worked in Instructional Technology at Houghton Mifflin and hired FableVision on for a project. “FableVision was the most wonderful development partner I had ever worked with, and before the project was done I knew I had to work here.”

Shelby did achieve his dream of working at FableVision, and he has since brought his passion for fostering learning and creating quality to everything he does.

Shelby is often the first person potential clients interact with. He asks lots of questions and makes suggestions in order to help clients realize their needs so that FableVision can better address them. He has a hand in everything from blueprinting to fundraising, and keeps clients abreast in every step of the process.

This month we chatted with Shelby about his love of reading and science, his major influences, and the things that excite and challenge him every day.

What makes a good partner? What do you look for when forming partnerships?
A good partner is on a mission to make a positive difference in the world, has a clear idea of what they want to accomplish, understands their audience, is realistic about the barriers and the opportunities for success, and is open to collaborating on creative ways to reach their objectives. A great partner is also in sync with FableVision in their world view, the ways they treat people, and their corporate culture. A perfect partner also has sufficient funds to develop whatever it is we collectively determine should be built.

What is the hardest part of your job? What is the most rewarding?
The hardest part is when a prospective client has an issue they really care about, and one that I also care about, but they don’t yet have a good enough idea or enough money to get it going. I struggle to find a way to help them overcome these serious barriers. It doesn’t always work, which is quite disappointing.

The most rewarding part is when a project I started gets completed, and I see how good it is and how happy the client and the FableVision team are. It’s a joy to see our team turn ideas into beautiful, fun, truly wonderful products. 

What is your journey to FableVision story?
The most relevant part of my journey is the time I spent at Houghton Mifflin. I joined their science department in 1985 as a textbook editor, and six years later shifted to their newly opened Instructional Technology department.

In 2002 I hired FableVision to develop a dozen simulated math manipulatives (base ten blocks, fraction strips, etc.) and a few games. After the project ended, I left Houghton Mifflin and began working on contract for FableVision. That was in 2005. After a year or so, I joined the staff.

What does a typical day look like for you?
My days vary a lot, but yesterday was a good example of what’s fairly typical.

My first task was to give a non-profit organization a high-level view of how I think FableVision can help them develop their educational offerings, which they are just beginning to plan. After that, I had a phone call with a client who is including FableVision in an NSF grant proposal, to get clear on what she needed from me.

Then I received an RFP from another client, so I read it and sent some initial questions back, and forwarded it to our proposal team. Last, I began the final edit of a Vision Document, which is the deliverable at the end of a FabLab. Sprinkled through the day, I exchanged emails with clients and with other FableVisionaries, scheduled calls, and IM’d with folks in the studio.

You studied biology at Cornell. Do you find science finds its way into your work at FableVision?
Definitely, and not always in ways you might expect. I majored in biology, with a concentration in ecology, evolution, and systematics. So I think in terms of systems—the relationships of the parts that make a sustainable system, and the ways in which systems change over time. I also use scientific inquiry as an implicit process, which means that I ask questions that clarify the parameters of the problem and of the possible solutions, work with the team to find answers based on experience, and examine the original propositions in light of the answers. And repeat as needed.

You’re stuck on a desert island. Which two FableVision projects would you want to be stuck with?
Wow, this is hard. I love so many of our projects. If stuck on a desert island, I’d want Zoombinis, because it’s so rich and has lots of replayability. And Fab@School Maker Studio, so I could design a boat out of 2D and 3D parts. Of course, I’d need the supplies for fabrication, too, but as long as I’m placing an order….

Initially, you worked as a museum educator. What kind of work was that and does it have any influence on your work at FableVision?
Museum education has many parallels to designing interactive media/tech experiences, and my museum experience has a strong influence on my work here.

In broad terms, museum educators design experiences through which learners interact with their environment to discover something. Museum educators understand that the learner controls the learning. So we use techniques that give learners something to get interested in, opportunities to make observations, and invitations to reflect on what they’ve encountered. This is essentially what we do when we design educational technology.

Look at your desk at work and list five items from it. Then, take a sentence or two to describe what those items say about you.

  1. Handcrafted metal butterfly: This is an expression of two things that I love: insects, which I studied in college, and handmade art, especially when it uses unusual or found materials like this, which was made by a local artist from a tin box.
  2. Chop: I study Tai Chi, and have been interested in Chinese art, history, and culture for a long time. In 1997 my wife and I went to Hong Kong, and we each got a chop (a name seal) made with our Chinese names, which a Chinese friend had come up with for us. I was born in the year of the horse, so my chop is a horse.
  3. Karen’s art: This is about my wife’s creativity and how much I enjoy it. She began to explore art recently, and she has a great eye. I keep a small piece she drew on my desk.
  4. Sammy: Well, this says that I am a very lucky person! A benefit of working at home is that one of our cats spends lots of time curled up on my desk behind my computer.
  5. Peter’s business card: This is part of the story that brought me to FableVision. Peter and Paul Reynolds made a presentation at Houghton Mifflin in 2002, during the proposal process for that math project I told you about. Peter doodled on his business cards and handed them out. I pinned the one he gave me to my office wall and looked at it every day, and I thought, “I’m going to work there some day.”

What is the Laurel Hill Association of Stockbridge and what is your role there?
Laurel Hill Association is the oldest existing village improvement society in the United States. It was founded in 1853, and it served as the model for the “village beautiful” movement. In its first century, Laurel Hill Association planted thousands of trees, fought invasion of the Elm leaf beetle, laid sidewalks, erected monuments, and undertook many other projects.

I am the president of the board of trustees, which is quite an honor. My priorities are to increase public access to several key properties, develop ecologically sound management plans, and ensure that we’re on a solid footing for special projects in the future. I also recently led the development of our website, which we launched over the summer: laurelhillassociation.org.

Favorites!

Place to vacation: Provincetown, MA. The National Seashore at the end of Cape Cod is breathtaking, and we can get completely away from people. Then we go into town in the evening and enjoy the art galleries and the energy.

Concert: In 1984 Karen and I went to Boston’s First Night celebration, and we wandered into a small church in Back Bay, where a concert of medieval music was being performed. It was magical, totally transporting.

Way to take your coffee: Very light (milk, not cream), no sugar.

State: Massachusetts. (What can I say—I chose to live here. It’s beautiful, and I enjoy having four distinct seasons.)

Snack food: My favorite indulgence is handmade chocolate truffles from Chocolate Springs, a fabulous cafe in Lenox, MA.

Movie: I love movies, and I’ve seen a lot of them. I don’t have a favorite, but I especially value independent movies that explore something interesting, and do it perfectly. One of my favorites is Run Lola Run.

Book series: I seldom read series, but I loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

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A-ha! Moments and The Birth of “Good Thinking!”

Every collaboration has an origin story. “Just as in science, ‘a-ha!’ moments don’t really come out of nowhere,” Jean Flanagan of the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) explains. But after hard work, a lot of research, and a dash of creativity, an “a-ha!” moment did happen – and that moment turned into Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science, SSEC’s new, animated professional development series for science educators.

Jean is a Science Education Research Specialist on SSEC's curriculum and communications team, and was a key player in developing the series.  “We had an incredibly diverse and talented team who put a lot of hard work into the central challenge: conveying research findings through breezy, humorous exchanges between animated characters,” Jean says. She credits much of the success of the project to the FableVision/SSEC team’s willingness to adapt to different communication strategies, as we worked to create a ground-breaking professional development resource.

FableVision chatted with her about Good Thinking!’s origin story, the ideas that started it all, and the animated character she most relates to.

Can you share a bit about how the FableVision Studios/SSEC partnership formed?
It all started with a bid from FableVision that had two awesome concepts: “It Came From the Fridge” and “Public Science Announcement.” In the first, we see a rotten fruit from the teacher’s lounge fridge saying, “so, I heard you had some questions about photosynthesis?” In the second, an omniscient narrator presides, 1950s PSA style, over a colorful classroom in retro-style animation. We immediately took to these ideas as awesome ways to get the teacher into dialogues that wouldn’t otherwise happen in a classroom populated only by teacher and students. Fans of the series can probably easily see how these concepts evolved into our (less rotten) talking classroom objects and our (dumber) narrator. A kickoff meeting and many hilarious conference calls later, we were a team!

Original Good Thinking! concept art by Renee Kurilla.

Original Good Thinking! concept art by Pete Paquette.

What were the steps in creating Good Thinking?
It might be easier to list some steps that weren’t part of the process! Here’s an egregiously abbreviated version:

  1. Search the science education literature for topics that are well-studied and have actionable advice for teachers.
  2. For each topic, develop a template that lists the overall goal of the video, key misconceptions, correct ideas, where the misconceptions come from, and how this knowledge should impact a teacher’s instruction.
  3. Work with multiple content and entertainment writers to write, edit, and revise three drafts of each script. Each script was reviewed by a subject matter expert, often someone who was involved in the research highlighted in the script.
  4. Work with voice actors to record the scripts.
  5. Create an animatic (moving storyboard) of each episode. Visuals were reviewed by subject matter experts again, as well as the whole SSEC team.
  6. Produce a rough cut (full animation, but no lip sync or sound design), which is then reviewed by the SSEC team.
  7. Produce a final cut (edits incorporated, lip sync, sound and music added). This is reviewed again by SSEC and then a Master is created.

What was one of the biggest challenges of creating Good Thinking?
The subject matter we wanted to convey has never really gotten a lot of play in popular media. While “science explainers” are popular on YouTube and general education tips aren’t that hard to find, very few non-academic resources exist that tackle the subtleties of the interface of science content, student thinking, and pedagogy. This meant that we didn’t have any examples to work from. Even many of our science writers and subject matter experts were initially confused by the specific goals of the project. This challenge forced us to test and refine our communication strategies multiple times before finalizing each script, ultimately strengthening the project.

What was it like to balance the research/science and the creative in developing the series? What was a stand out “a-ha!” moment during the series development?
Well, just as in science, “a-ha!” moments don’t really come out of nowhere in any project. While we originally considered having the teacher be off-screen, one of our best decisions was to put Ms. Isabella Reyes front and center — her intelligence, quirkiness, and drive to learn and improve perfectly embody the incredible respect we have for the teaching profession, and teachers have told us they find her very relatable.   

Can you share a bit about the students? They have such different personalities, why not make them all uniform?
It was important to us to convey the idea that science is for all students, regardless of personality or background. And from the teacher’s perspective, the more diversity of ideas, background knowledge, and approaches students come in with, the richer every activity and class discussion will be. Plus, we wanted an excuse to throw in some skateboarding and breakdancing.

What classroom character do you relate to and why?
In 5th grade, I guess I was a Dimitri-Shawna hybrid. I could definitely be a bit of a know-it-all in science class, but for the most part I was pretty spacey and prone to daydreaming and bad poetry. Now I’m more of a Gummerson — a bit disgruntled (working in education will do that) but ever optimistic! 

What is in Ms. Reyes’s future?
I hope a nice, long vacation somewhere beautiful and exotic that’s not Amar’s brain. Then we’d like to put her to work doing more videos.

Jean Flanagan is a Science Education Research Specialist on the SSEC's curriculum and communications team. At SSEC she works to translate research and policy into practice, informing the development of standards-aligned curriculum and professional development resources. Most recently she served as a project lead in the development of a new web series on “the science of teaching science”: Good Thinking! Prior to joining SSEC, Flanagan worked as a Research Associate at AAAS Project 2061. While there she worked closely with key national standards documents—including the Benchmarks, NSES, the NRC's Framework, and early drafts of the NGSS—and contributed to multiple federally-funded research and development projects focused on best practices in standards-aligned science curriculum and assessment. Through this work she spent a significant amount of time working closely with teachers and students in classrooms around the country to field test assessments and curriculum materials.  

Don’t miss a single episode! Watch the series on SSEC’s YouTube channel.

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