Animation with a Purpose | A Sustainable Lifestyle

We share with Yasir Ipek of IMMI Animations the story of his new cartoon venture for kids… A Sustainable Lifestyle path!

Hello Yasir! Please tell me something about you, your team and what you are doing.

Hi! Our team consists of three people including me and we are all from Vienna.

My sister Sevde İpek Kadincik, her husband Can Kadincik and I had an idea to work together on a project. We each have different backgrounds: while my sister did the voice-over, her husband did the visual production and graphic design, and I did the music.

What was the idea you had for your project?

We wanted to create an animation series for children, and for that we asked around to see what kids nowadays are watching and what they like. What we discovered is that most of the shows are quite simple, with no real purpose behind them.

For our animation series, we wanted it to have a purpose, so that the children also learn something along the way. However, it was important to not overdo the learnings, and instead to introduce small ideas. Also, the aesthetic needed to be fun and draw the children in.

What was your goal with creating these cartoons?

We aimed to create a series to reach children globally, talking about important topics like sustainability.

For instance, this Saturday, the cartoon deals with taking care of our oceans.

Moreover, we also encourage the children to use their imagination and boost their creativity, as the characters in our show create their own imaginative world.

On a more personal level, we wanted to teach them about sustainability, because they are the future and need to hear this message from a young age on.

We also realized that many of the past shows we had watched as kids did include some more meaningful, adult topics that we only understood later, when we grew up. That is why we decided to implement some more adult topics into the series as well, without overdoing it.

Our main goal right now is creating episodes for one or two years and see where it takes us. Ideally, we create a community where children regularly watch the weekly episodes.

Would you like to share with us what was the creation process like? Which issues did you encounter?

It differed for the different episodes: So far, we made three and the first one took us a couple of days. In the beginning, we had to find a good rhythm of working together. Also, it was quite time-consuming to do extra work in our free time. Eventually it got a lot faster: the third episode took us about 10 hours. It is a lot of fun working together, especially recording the voices made us laugh a lot.

We put it together very well and found a better working flow, but for the next episodes we aim to improve some technical aspects, which will take more time in the future.

For me personally, it was a lot different creating music for children, than it is for the agencies I have mainly worked with.

Here we have the trailer of your new cartoon. Why have you decided to bring to life this idea? How do you understand sustainability?

We started the project to see if we could do it, and it began as a side project to reach children globally. Now it’s every day that we work on it, and it became a big part of our lives.

For the future, we have a lot of ideas. In addition to sustainability themes, we also want to include fun episodes.

Sustainability starts in your own home, with yourself. I’d say the biggest thing is living in a more minimalist way by not owning an excess of things.

Who is your target audience? How does your creation spread a global message?

Children aged 3 to 7 are our main target group, and the cartoons are designed for kids specifically, so are less suitable for adults.

We created everything in English, to reach a global audience. However, we also kept the talking to a minimum, so that language is not a barrier to understanding the cartoons.

What is next?

Right now, we are focused on the production, and our first plan is to create 50 to 100 episodes and see how it develops. After this week, we will also start marketing the cartoon, mostly via social media.

In the future, we could potentially move on to another project, one that is more intended for adults: it could still be on sustainability but taking a different approach.

Our first episode will be uploaded this Saturday, so stay tuned and feel free to share it, and show it to your kids to see if they like it.

Thank you for the interesting insights, and I wish you all the best for the future!

And here you have Tiny Onesies Chapter 1…

Enjoy it!