One of the goals we set for Katakune was to create a high quality show that would train a child’s focus.

This is the main reason why we chose to have a unique white background as opposed to a colorful and cluttered environment. By having a white background, kids will focus on the stories and the action in the foreground instead of being distracted by unnecessary elements and colors in the background.

It is proven that many TV programs nowadays over-stimulate the young preschooler’s mind and that may have a negative impact on his ability to concentrate and learn later on. As such, we are very careful to ensure that Katakune is not only fun and educational to watch, but also safe to watch.

Yet, there needs to be enough colors and elements to attract the child and pique his interest in the show.

Therefore, besides irresistibly cute and colorful characters, we took great pains to design hundreds of uniquely never-seen before props. Through the combination of good story-telling, high quality animation, colorful character designs and uniquely designed props, we are confident that preschoolers would love to watch Katakune.

Production Notes: Quite honestly, having a stark empty white background is much harder to work with and balance than having proper environments. We had to think about staging and setup more as we had to be even more concerned about how the composition of every scene would look so that they don’t look funny. This also meant having to introduce more soft shadows so that the characters don’t look like they are floating in white space. Eventually this resulted in more rendering time on the machines, but for a great looking show it’s well worth the trouble!

Production Notes: We didn’t want kids to feel bored with the characters looking the same throughout the 520 minutes, so we decided to give every character a wardrobe with several different outfits to ‘change’ throughout the show. This also keeps the show fresh and interesting for the kids.

Production Notes: As this is a cartoon show for preschoolers, we designed every single prop to be rounded and colorful. We want licensing partners to feel at one glance that these are immediately translatable to toys in real life!

Production Notes: It was necessary and important for us to place the characters into the sets we designed to see if they look coherent together. Sometimes our designers can really go into orbit and it takes something down-to-earth like this to see if they are going in the right direction.

Production Notes: We try to re-design normal looking everyday mundane objects to make them look interesting so that kids can look at these things in a different light. Through this they get to learn more about their environment and appreciate things around them.

Production Notes: We also re-design vehicles to make them look really cute and interesting.

Production Notes: Even food and furniture in the show is designed uniquely to fit the mood and look of the Katakune animated series!

Last Modified : August 1st, 2008 Filed under : Concept & Development Navigate : Previous post / Next post