Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Astro Andy's Miserable Life and Hopeful Death on Planet Doom


See? See what a great show it would be?

You see, according to experts, the way to write a good cartoon for young children is this: you give them an age-appropriate character they can relate to and then give the character a problem to overcome. It doesn't matter so much if the character succeeds or not. If the character does solve their problem, the viewer will feel a sense of empowerment through that and, if the character fails, the child will feel superior in the knowledge that they would have done a better job.

It's all about child empowerment. This is what sold Bob the Builder - child empowerment. If you earwig on broadcasters or distributors of shows for vey young children, you'll hear that phrase a lot. Effectively, they mean telling children what they want to hear. That they don't need parents, for one thing.

So Andy here has a problem: he's going to die in an hour. The children can relate to him because he's only five. Perfect story structure.

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