From Spring 2024 through Spring 2025, We worked on a project for Twin Cities Public Television/PBS called “Skillsville”.
It is a new PBS Kid’s show that debuted in March 2025. SeeGru Ink & Animation was brought in to animate sixteen three-minute episodes that would serve as promotional materials for the upcoming show. These episodes would travel around the country to schools and fairs and similar events.
We were given an incredibly tight deadline to deliver, but with a lot of hard work, focus and proper planning, we actually delivered Final Animation a week early.
Some external reviewers from the Department of Education visited TPT, and they scored the “Skillsville” ‘content’ to evaluate its quality. The score is then sent to Congress and helps determine future RTL (Ready to Learn) appropriations. The reviewers score projects on a scale of 1-5, with a score of 3.7 representing their cut-off for meeting “quality” standards. So how did our “Skillsville” shorts fare?
Drum roll, please...
“Skillsville” content scored a whopping 4.7, which is considered “outstanding” on their rating scale! The Project Officer said that this represents the highest RTL Government Performance and Results Act rating they have ever seen.
This past winter into spring, we were tasked with taking the original sixteen shorts and modifying them for a Spanish speaking audience. This required changing the lip sync of the animated characters to match a Spanish voiceover read. Also, English and Spanish don’t match up time-wise for the same read. It meant we had to lengthen most scenes by about a third. I knew this was a possibility, so I built the original English scenes with swap-ability in mind. We were able to accomplish this Spanish conversion work in just under a couple of months, much to the joy of TPT/PBS.
