Digital Highlights

As well as being the writer on these projects I often also served as a de facto associate producer. Along with the nuts and bolts of researching, writing, and voice directing, there was often the usual coordinating, corralling, and coaxing that goes along with a producer or ‘producer adjacent’ role. For a comprehensive list of all projects please see my CV page.

Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada • For the opening of RAOC in 2013 I was the writer and researcher for all of the digital screens supplied by One Stop Media / Pattison. While there has been a significant update to this content in the years since – due to new species being swapped out – on a recent visit I estimated that about 50% of the work on the digital screens is still work that I did (as far as I can tell). I helped set the narrative ‘voice’ of the digital space and created approximately 1000 facts either for individual species or for longer ‘feature’ segments in such areas as the Tropical Reef zone and Canadian Waters. This remains some of the most enjoyable work I have ever done.

Dino Quest • My role was pretty straight forward for this Augmented Reality app – writing, educational content, voice directing. But in late-stage meetings to streamline the experience I had significant input into areas where the flow could be tightened. This came, in part, from sitting across from the main programmer and being the nearest person who could wander around in the halls testing the app. This gave me a good sense of its overall flow and places it might be streamlined.

Oddmented Reality • This 360º game for phones and tablets held a number of challenges. It is based on the popular Odd Squad TV property (PBSKids). The genesis of the project lay in 360º video of key set-locations. I was not involved in the 360º shoot and the footage had been recorded with no particular purpose in mind. The next thing I knew I’d been named producer and had to make a game out of it, including a day of green-screen shooting with the actors. One gratifying solution was to the challenge of how to get actors shot in 2D video on and off of a screen that showed spherical images in a 3D UNITY environment. The answer was to introduce the idea that the character of Ms. O (an archetypal girl-boss) has had tiny elevators installed all over HQ – this was a piece of non-canon lore, but one that fit perfectly into the Odd Squad storyworld. I also incorporated it into the plot of the story, which was a gratifying pay-off.

Annedroids CompuBot • The overall project got nominated for a Daytime Emmy® Award in 2018. It’s based on the Annedroids TV show (Amazon Prime). I’d been lobbying for ages to do a simple programming game and after that the game designer and the development team took over to create a wonderful experience. CompuBot is a good example of the types of animated UI tutorials that I would script and then work with the programmers and artists to make as clear and as unobtrusive as possible. Somewhere I’ve got my Emmy® nomination certificate with my name on it as ‘Writer’ – I suspect it is in the drawer with the carbon paper and the floppy disks.

Giver150 History Mystery • This project is a companion piece for the 4th season of Sinking Ship Entertainment’s Giver TV show (which won a Daytime Emmy® Award). Regular seasons of the show featured a team of kids cooperating to build a new playground in their local community. In 2017 – for Canada’s sesquicentennial – the season focused on building Canada’s largest playground in Ottawa. For the digital component I was the producer in all but name; I wrote the successful funding application, scoped the game, did all the writing and research, and made sure that the required curriculum connections were present because the game had to tie into specific strands of the Ontario Curriculum.

DinoDana.com • Since I’m professionally obliged to say I’m an award-winning writer, now is clearly the time to do it. This educational companion suite to the Dino Dana TV show (TVOKids) won a Canadian Screen Award in 2019 for Children and Youth: Best Cross Platform Project. And since I was named in the award submission – and, along with the rest of the team, had done tons of work on it – I was able to purchase an actual trophy (which cost a small fortune), but still, I’m pleased …

Odd Squad Digital Suite • The digital side of Odd Squad spanned the run of the TV show, 2014 to 2021. Over that time Sinking Ship Interactive (SSI, where I was a regular contractor) made 15 games and two apps, all in consultation with PBS math advisors and producers. My main role was to work closely with the PBS producer on specific language in the VO, all around educational goals. Since I was also one of the few people in the department who actively watched all the rough cuts as they came out, I often had suggestions about how to make games ‘Odd Squad-ier’ and tried to make sure that the TV storyworld was well reflected in the games. The Odd Squad suite amassed page-views and game-plays into the hundreds of millions.

Odd Squad Cases • This game from the overall Odd Squad suite is included here because it is a good example of facilitating the inclusion of lore from an original IP into its digital companion pieces. The goal of the game is for kids to use a chart to find which villain has all three of the visual clues mentioned by other characters. The PBS producer had initially suggested taking screen grabs from the show and then having the art department add details like hats and other visual clues. I felt that the the characters in the show (especially the villains) were already so visually compelling that we could certainly find enough shared traits for the game. The art department was also already under considerable pressure on the project. So I spent a couple of days scrubbing through the show, taking screen grabs, and then writing the stories of the ten Cases that make up the game (we started with one example case from the show-runners).

Annedroids Experiments • I created 30 or 40 of these printables to parallel the various STEAM topics covered in the Annedroids TV show. I came up with the craft activity, wrote the instructions and associated educational content, then worked with a designer to slot it all into the 1-page format.