Update – WordGirl

September 29, 2011 5 comments

Hello everyone, we’ve got a pretty big update today – all of the clips Danny animated for the show “WordGirl!”

WordGirl is an animated show on PBS Kids GO! Here’s a nice summary of the story from wiki:

The series stars WordGirl, an alien with superpowers whose secret identity is Becky Botsford, a 10½ year old fifth grade student. WordGirl was born on the fictional planet Lexicon (also a term referring to the vocabulary of a language or to a dictionary) but was sent away after sneaking onto a spaceship and sleeping there. Captain Huggy Face, a monkey who was a pilot in the Lexicon Air Force, piloted the ship, but lost control when WordGirl awoke, and crash-landed on Earth (more specifically in Fair City), a planet that affords WordGirl her superpowers, including flight and super strength. WordGirl utilizes these powers to save her adoptive home, using her downed spacecraft as a secret base of operations. WordGirl and Captain Huggy Face fight crime together.

WordGirl was adopted and provided an alter ego by Tim and Sally Botsford, who gave her the name Becky. While in her alter ego, she has a younger brother, TJ, obsessed with WordGirl, but still unknowingly a typical sibling rival to Becky. The Botsford family keeps Captain Huggy Face as a pet, naming him Bob. Becky attends Woodview Elementary School, where she is close friends with Violet Heaslip and has a crush on school newspaper reporter Todd “Scoops” Ming.

WordGirl tries to balance her superhero activities with her “normal” life. Doing battle with a rather odd grouping of villains, such as the Butcher, who can call into existence most any type of meat; senior citizen Granny May, with her knitting needles and projectile yarn; her former friend Professor Steven Boxleitner, who became the evil Dr. Two Brains thanks to an albino mouse fusing his brain with the animal; ten-year-old genius and colossal robot builder Tobey McCalister; and The Whammer, who speaks by interjecting the word “wham” in the most inopportune sentences. At the same time, she must worry about maintaining her second life as Becky, keeping people from discovering the truth and living normal family situations.

It must’ve been really cool to have worked on a kids show huh? How’d you manage to land this job Danny?

The studio that produces it, Soup2Nuts, approached my school for any potential candidates. I was recommended the job and after taking an animation test, was offered the job as an ongoing freelance gig. I animated my first scene back in October of 2009, the summer after I graduated from college right up until a few weeks ago.

Anything to tell us about these clips in particular?

The top section features the “as seen on tv” versions (currently there’s only clips of the third season). All of the clips you see after that organized under the different seasons are what you see right after I finish animating a clip, before it goes into post-production. As you can see, I animate all of the characters in a given scene, including the facial animations. However, I don’t do the lip syncs. They also don’t have the sound effects, special effects (like the light behind WordGirl as she flies), or music that you would see in the final versions. Finally, the numbers you see under the thumbnails are the episode number (part a or b) and the scene number.

You can view all of the clips on the new WordGirl page under the Animation section on the left menu or simply click here. The “television versions” are all videos embedded from youtube, but the rest are swf objects playing through flash. Please let us know if you have any problems viewing them. And finally to end this post, we have the WordGirl opening sequence from the show, enjoy!

WORDUP~!