Starting a new kit

Tim and I have been trying to find ways to easily explain this project, but in the end I think the easiest way is simply by demonstrating it. Small Imaginings is about providing people with free, high quality, quirky 'story kits'. The kits will include casts of characters, with sets, props, and sounds. A kit could be printed out and used with a toy theater. It might be imported into Flash or After Effects and made into an animation. It might be used in a graphic novel or comic. It can be anything you want, and we truly hope you use them in ways we haven't even thought of.

Our purpose is the creation of 'malleable, dynamic worlds' (see my blog post 5\22\09) that encourage the creation and telling of stories.

I'm beginning work on a group of characters that will be my first kit. They are all head and shoulders, essentially, drawn from a set of medieval woodcuts which purported to show the relationships between physical characteristics and temperament. I'm planning a group of 6 or 7 images when the kit is completed. They will all have names and some indicators of character.

The 'story kit' will also include background images, a few props, and associated sound files. For all the images we'll include both high resolution and lower res versions scaled to match the backgrounds to simplify importing into Flash or another animation platform. After that, it's up to you.

Here's the first one. I haven't settled on a name yet, so if you have any suggestions ... I'm posting 3 versions to demonstrate how the mouth can be animated (this can be operated with 2 sticks or wires in a toy theater). The last version has a tongue - I'm hoping for some feedback on the tongue - good? Too much?







And another one ...