Animation writer and director Mike Blum (The Zit, Fifi Cat Therapist) is launching a fun new animated preschool show called Dogster Kid Songs on YouTube this week. We had a chance to chat with him about his new venture, how he got it off the ground and why he decided to launch the show online. Here is what he told us via email.
Animation Magazine: Can you tell us a bit about the origins of your new YouTube Channel?
Mike Blum: For over 10 years, we have been trying to figure out how to launch a channel while retaining ownership of the IP. But what could we make that would be creatively rewarding and we could afford to make? We knew we needed to feed the YouTube algorithm a lot of content to help us build a subscriber base. And even our reasonable rates were way too high for us to shoulder the costs without help.
But earlier this year we designed and animated a talking chef’s hat for the Hulu reality series Secret Chef, that would serve as the show’s de facto host. To cope with production demands, we provided them with a 2D puppet that they could drive on set using Adobe Character Animator’s real-time animation tools (i.e. mocap). The production went smoothly and it opened our mind to using similar techniques for a web series. We also recently sold and made a couple of fun, simple-to-execute preschool shorts to Sesame Street. We realized we could reduce production costs for our own series by using a related visually simple style. And real-time animation techniques would reduce them even further. From there, we researched what was popular for preschoolers on YouTube.
It was immediately obvious that we needed to make song-based content. But we didn’t want to compete in the crowded spaces of counting, phonics or nursery rhyme videos. Instead, we interviewed preschool and kindergarten educators who noted there wasn’t enough great content that specialized in social-emotional learning and age-appropriate science information. Bingo! From there, we developed a concept that was flexible enough to generate hundreds of episode ideas. We settled on the idea of best friends (Zipp and Zarra), who both boys and girls would see themselves through, and a third creature character (Dogster) that would act as comic relief. But we also wanted to inject an interactive element by having Dogster speak directly to camera (à la Dora the Explorer) and ask kids questions. Through this whole process, we used my son’s old preschool as our test audience — pitching story ideas, showing them designs, playing them songs and showing them animatics and episodes. The kids’ comments were so helpful and encouraging! In fact, the class looked at our then-nameless creature character and declared that it looked like a half dog, half monster — a dogster! We found the name so charming we named the whole channel after him! 
What prompted you to launch the show on YouTube?
We wanted to create and retain ownership of an original show that was fun to make and would be a positive influence on our world. Will it make money? Who knows? But for the first time in my career I feel like we have a reasonable chance of succeeding without waiting for permission.
What makes Dogster Kid Songs stand out from the other animated preschool shows?
There’s a lot of really nice work being done on YouTube, but if I’m being honest, we haven’t found a lot of channels that combine top-notch character designs, animation and original music. I think that’s largely because a lot of channels were started by people who aren’t necessarily animation and music professionals. I’m not knocking any of them. They are making compelling content that has attracted millions of subscribers. But our goal is to be best in class in all three areas. To succeed, we needed to marry our studio’s animation skills with amazing song writers. That’s why we were so ecstatic when Mike Barnett and Dena Diamond came on board. Mike is a world class composer known for his work on CoComelon, Action Pack, Mickey and the Roadster Racers and many more shows. Dena, our lyricist, has published over 500 songs featured on shows like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Sid the Science Kid and Word Party. I wake up every morning singing one of their Dogster songs, and we’re pretty sure kids will find them just as memorable. 
Where is the animation being done?
Boards, animatic and art assets are being done in Los Angeles, and because over the pandemic we have switched almost fully to virtual work, we’ve been doing the animation itself in New Jersey. Joey Perez is a really talented young animator who we hired to work on Secret Chef, and he is responsible for rigging all of the characters, animating and compositing.
What are the visual inspirations behind the show?
Working with Sesame Street helped us focus our energies on keeping the art style simple and uncluttered. But the show itself revolves around our three main characters and we knew kids would have to instantly find them charming and appealing. From the beginning, I wanted to use one of our favorite character designers, Shawn Boyles, to do our designs. All of his characters have charm, appeal and a little whimsy. At the same time, we didn’t want to short circuit our process, so first we assembled a detailed deck of appealing preschool reference art that included shows like Pocoyo, Bubble Guppies and Baby Shark and a ton of indie designers in order to be able to have creative discussions with Shawn.
What would you say is your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is going to be staying in a rhythm to continue producing episode after episode. The series is going to be a loss leader for many months, if not years, so we have to have patience that the YouTube algorithm will eventually reward us with enough placement to build our subscriber base. Folks like Cory Williams and Pat Smith, who both make their living off of YouTube, have been incredibly helpful setting our expectations and explaining some best practices.
How long does it take to produce each segment?
Part of my challenge to the whole team was to break our traditional pipeline and expectations wherever we could. Since we’re self-funding for the foreseeable future, we set the goal that no department would take more than one day to complete their entire job. So, no more than eight hours to write and record a song, write the stage directions, create the board/animatic or animate. The first couple took longer as we were figuring things out, but we’re pretty close to that aspirational goal already, and we’ll keep getting faster. All that said, we still need to work on other projects that actually keep the lights on, so over the first six months, we’re planning on one big song video per month plus two to three shorter segments in between. Within a few months, we should be able to produce one song every three weeks. 
What are some of the other projects you are working on?
We developed a show for six- to 11-year olds called Grounded with the Scottish production company Hey Daisy Moon that Bejuba! Entertainment is distributing. It’s about two free-spirited, amiable caterpillars who decided not to become butterflies, but still live every day to its fullest from the bottom rung of their sky-high society. We have an adult series called My Boss Is a Monster setup with Lion Forge Animation that we developed with Joelle Sellner (Ben 10: Omniverse, Teen Titans) and Bill Freiberger (Drawn Together, Sonic Boom), about an earnest college grad who has to survive in a hostile workplace at an amoral, multinational corporation where every boss is figuratively and literally a monster. And we’re just finishing up a really ambitious CG trailer for a brand new series idea called Animixies that we developed with Jeff Prezenkowski (Teen Titans Go!, New Looney Tunes). It’s for four- to seven-year olds and is kind of a cross between Pokémon and LEGO. I don’t want to say more yet, but I can’t wait to share this with you guys. It’s super cool. 
What is your take on the animation scene in 2023-2024?
Honestly, it’s rough out there. Between the strikes and the fact that all the streamers have woken up with a hangover after overspending, almost no one is buying right now. And no one is currently looking for anything not based on existing IP. But, I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, and everything goes in cycles. I’ve talked to a bunch of folks coming back from [MIPCOM/MIPjunior] and the sense I get is that by the end of first quarter or perhaps second quarter of 2024, purse strings should start opening up again. And when they do, we’ll be ready!
Best advice for animation producers?
I try to maintain an equal measure of unbridled enthusiasm and optimism for unique ideas while at the same time applying rigor and logic in understanding the current state of the marketplace. That means we poke the gatekeepers to see what they are looking for (and not looking for!) and make sure that what we are planning on developing and pitching has a reasonable chance of finding a buyer. Or in the case of starting our YouTube channel, we built a business case prior to starting development. Creating marketable and unmarketable ideas take the same amount of time — might as well spend your time on the marketable ones!
Tune in to Zipp, Zara and Dogster’s musical adventures at youtube.com/@DogsterKidSongs. Check out the first Dogster Kid Songs video below! For more information on the studio’s other projects, visit pipsqueakanimation.com.
