 So we've got a little crew with us. This is Ramona. She's my daughter. And this is Chris and Erika. They're the animators that worked on the trailer. So we're going to do a little co-presentation today. And they're kids Harper and Milo. And they're all about to go on vacation together. And they're here right before they go on the plane, which is crazy. They made it. I was tracking them the whole time. No jumping, Ramona. OK. So this whole thing got started in 2015 when this one came into the world. Yeah? I know, that's you. Do you want to sit with them so you can see the screen? Why don't you go sit with Erika? Here you go. All right. Good job. So anyway, I don't know how many parents are in the room. But what everyone says is true. You know what? Life has changed forever. But one of the bigger things that changes is suddenly you have this whole world of things that you want to make less ugly and better. The world of kids stuff is improving and so artful and crazy. And there's a million kids books. I never felt really confident making a children's book until I was a parent, mostly because I don't like to do things that I don't feel like I have some sort of understanding about. And then once I had children, I felt that I knew enough about that world to sort of edge my toes into it. One of the things I didn't realize at the time, though, was that there's just an endless need for children's books. There will never be a time in which there are too many children's books. So we have like 300 books at our house that all of us are bored with. And so it's just like, if you have an idea in your head to make a children's book, make it, because there's a desperate parent out there that wants your new content. And at the time, Ramona was super into reading. She's always been into reading. And when we were doing bedtime books, these categories sort of started emerging. There was the Good Night Objects category, which is all based on the popularity of Good Night Moon. But there's a lot of really terrible books within this genre, like basically all of the Good Night San Francisco things are just direct. They're terrible. And then the Bedtime Routine Reinforcement books, which are always, I know those are the books that we have. Bedtime Reinforcement books, which are always led by a beloved television character. And then the books that aren't actually meant for children, but are like the things that your parents buy you to tell you about how profound it is to have a child that makes you cry. And so those are the parent cry books. And I'm a very logical person when it comes to making things. So one of the things I want to do is create a book that was about inspiring kids to be better people. But the idea of having it be at bedtime gives a time for reflection. And one of the things that I felt is missing from a lot of aspirational kids' books is what happens when you don't meet your aspirations. So a big part of my book was dealing with forgiving yourself for not actually meeting your goals. So I started in this very nerdy way by looking up lists of positive attributes. And some MIT student did a really good job of putting together hundreds of them. These were the ones I culled together that I thought were applicable for kids. And then I narrowed it down to these guys for the book. But I narrowed it down to far more than that. And I was like, maybe I'll do multiple books, whatever. I'm definitely going to do a second book. Anyway, I started working on the art. And I just got really inspired to throw myself back into doing illustration, because I hadn't done illustration for a long while. As I ventured into lettering, it got less and less illustrative as time went on to the point where I felt really rusty as an illustrator. And this felt like I was accessing my younger self. I know it's tomorrow I'll be braver on the screen. And so I felt like I was both accessing my younger self, but somehow had this mysterious ability now to redo my young work, but as a more established practiced person, so that was really exciting. And so the book culminates with these two spreads that are the most important part about the book. Tomorrow I'll be all the things I tried to be today. And if I wasn't one of them, I know that it's OK. But tonight I'm very sleepy, so now it's time to rest. Tomorrow I'll be all these things, or at least I'll try my best. And the idea of actually reviewing your day and setting intentions for the next day is something that doesn't exist in a lot of kids books because people don't actually allow kids to experience those sort of complex emotions. But anyone that has had a small person knows that they are very complex little people and that we need to have higher expectations for sort of what they're capable of thinking and doing. So in 2016, this is where the project was at. I was just doing all these sort of color explorations and trying to figure out if I was going to let her press this in the future. How would I do it in four color? This is what this project was looking like at the time. She was just in between baby and toddler. Check it out, Ramona. You're on the screen again. Look. And then Oddfellas had approached me about doing a logo type for them. And this is the status that their logo was at at the time. And so we went through rounds of exploration. And the center one is the one that we ended up with as the final logo. And it was such a fun, collaborative project. And I feel like it's rare where you get to work with other creatives so intensely and sort of back and forth. And those are the projects that end up feeling the most fun, where you're just promising each other. You're forever's and you're marrying each other on future creative projects. And so part of it was we sort of worked out a deal where it was kind of half payment and half barter. And I was like, what am I ever going to have them work on? And then because in 2016, the book was at this stage and not in the final stage that it was. So when I actually came back to them in 2018 and I was just about to send off my final files to the publisher, yeah, good idea, Ramona. Why don't you go sit in one of those chairs right there? It was just, I was totally pumped that I finally had an excuse to use all of my animation credit with them. And so in 2018, this is what this lady looked like, you know, a much different person. And there was even a second human in the mix. So time changed quite a bit from the beginning of this project to the latter half of this project. And I'll let Chris and Erica take over now. So that's what this project of theirs looked like at the beginning of 2018. There's babies everywhere. I'm cool, yeah, so these are humans. 2018 about the one Jessica reached out to us and said, okay, I finally got the thing that we can make together. And we were stoked to get to kind of bring this book to life. And like she was saying, just like kind of working under the pretense of barter and kind of like friends at that point helping each other out and make a thing was really cool. And then also like we are usually so involved in the illustration process when we do the work that we do that it's nice to kind of just like be handed like a super beautiful thing and be asked to just make it move. And then this is an awesome design decision that like a non-animator would make because this dragon was not meant to like fly let alone or walk, let alone fly. And that little leg like, you know, just. Yeah, an animator would never place a foot there because they were thinking like how it's gonna move but it's a perfect that Jessica did. It works perfectly as it is. That was great to team up with. It's a nice challenge. And now it will walk. Good challenge. Yeah, and like so much of the work we do is, this is something we have done for Cartoon Network and like Jessica's work is so crisp and so clean and so beautiful that we thought like what we want to do to kind of evolve that just a little bit is to do a cell animation so that I think like the normal way to approach it like let's just do an after fix or like rig a character and it'll be kind of like slightly robotic and maybe a little stiff. But we thought let's try and do this way and just bring some of the gestural quality to it. Cell animation lets you kind of do all these like weird things that are just super funny kind of zany and even if we only get like 2% of this and in the book film like it's worth it. So this is like, I'm just gonna take you through like a little bit of the process really fast and the first thing that we do is just kind of like start to rough out the scene and the performance a little bit. And we started out thinking like, okay, we got this knight and this dragon and maybe they're just gonna kind of like go at each other a little bit. But we wanted to push the performance a little bit more. So we're like, okay, let's have them kind of like parkour across the type while the dragon kind of like weave through. You can see on the sword here that's just like a teeny bit of that smear stuff that you saw in like the Ren and Stimpy GIF that just makes it feel a little bit more gestural and not so kind of like stiff. Which we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd just done it in after effects like most people would have done when they saw Jessica's work. So doing it frame by frame was definitely worthwhile. That too. So yeah, just kind of blocking it out. And now we've got the guy kind of jumping along. The dragon's breathing fire, the hand's turning the page. You know, start to do the body of the dragon, get the wings going. Here's kind of him snaking through a little bit and we've got the legs yet to do. Here's how we kind of figure out what to do with that last leg. And just like little details of like, the fire is not really burning, the guy's just kind of like heartwarming his shield. And there's the final shot. So we were finishing up all the animation and in 2014, okay, now you wanted to do it too, got it. In 2014, I had done this album art for my friend Olga Bell, who is a really good friend. She was actually the only legal witness on my husband and my wedding. And at the time I had done it just totally for free as a friend favor, not knowing that there was ever a moment where I could come back and go, hey, actually, could you do this thing for me? All right, that's enough. But that's sort of how we ended up assembling the dream team was just sort of like friendships and favors across the board, which is I feel like how a lot of amazing creative projects happen. And then we even got some tiny collaborators to be a part of it. So Ramona and some of her best friends plus Harper participated as our narrators of it. So, and then Olga has welcomed another small person into the world, so she couldn't collaborate, but you know, she's only like three weeks old now, future. So anyway, without further ado, and we've got sound on this, so that should be good. All right, so here is the trailer that we put together for the very first time. A dress. Smart. All in place.