|
|
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.11 - FEBRUARY 2001
|
eKIDS: Everyone Wants a Piece of the PIE
In one click, you're stuffing your face with low-res graphics games and participating in fart jokes, and in the next click you are reading about the basal plane and crystallography of snowflakes. In its current incarnation, eKIDS tries to cater to the interests of youngsters ranging in ages from 4 to 19. So you can imagine what kind of juggling act this entails. But amidst its rough outlines, gems of ideas are slowly realized. Kids can learn how to cook, tune up a car, take care of a pony, make a simple camera, or stretch a canvas for oil painting… Julie Garrard, creative director of the original animation and games on eKIDS (ages 4-12), says, "What we're trying to do is have something that's educational and fun, but also have stuff that encourages kids to do things that aren't necessarily on the computer." Garrard, a self-described enfant terrible, adds, "You gotta make them think and then want to go out and do stuff for themselves."
Currently, with almost thirty sections or "e-centers" to explore, there's no lack of encouragement or inspiration for kids. Garrard's department, in the last six months, has already made over 100 games, cartoons and activities to complement the e-centers. Once a month, kids can talk with the eKIDS animators in the chat rooms to share ideas on what future games and toons they may like to see. There is, for example, a poetry mic -- a take on the paper-and-pencil Mad Libs game of yore, where kids can choose from dialogue that is then read, in a very bad French accent, by an animated character. Commenting on one of her favorite recent creations for the network, Requiem for a Turkey, Garrard notes, "One of the reasons this stuff works so well for kids is we're not coming from a normal adult perspective on it. We're trying to be silly, irreverent and not talk down to kids." The eKIDS animators, with a median age of 25, all come from backgrounds in traditional, cel animation. As Garrard explains, unlike other studios where production may center around a client's properties, the eKIDS animators are given a fairly "long leash" to create what they want. Occasionally they are reigned back in, but for the most part they have the freedom and creativity to produce the content as they like. The general feeling and consensus is that, if the animators are not having fun, the kids won't be having fun.
Delving through the network, you continue to come across, like an echo, all of the familiar sights and sounds of the larger World Wide Web; everything from music, magic and martial arts to learning origami and yoga to banking, traveling and even practicing your technique as a video editor. During the next turn, you find yourself back again among the playful pedantry of your youth: squishing cockroaches, pampering Santa with peckish kisses and back-scratching candy canes and setting characters on fire with lightning bolts. In total, El St. John intends for the eKIDS Internet to be a self-contained, friendly, kid-only zone. It sprawls all over the place, affording children not only the opportunity to peer their heads into the museums of the world (exposing them to the breadth of human history and geography), but also encourages them to participate; to submit, for profile and exhibition, their own creations and ingenuities be it drawings, music or otherwise. Having a Finger in the PIE While it is initially suggested that the eKIDS service will cost $12 per month, it is essentially a free Internet network, so long as kids keep recommending it to others. The first six months are offered for free, and subsequent six-month "subscriptions" are also free, for every child one may refer to the site. SilverTech generates its revenue through corporations and sponsorship sales, and the $12 price tag is meant for kids to understand the value of the network, not to preclude anyone from being able to participate in it. Ideally, St. John wants all kids to have access to the site; she doesn't want it to become an elitist kind of service for affluent kids.
|
||||||
1 | 2 | 3
 |
