Take the hologram technology that was used at Cochella and/or used to make Hatsune Miku in concert.
Use it with Jem and the Holograms, creating an actual United States-focused tour with a good chunk of their the songs from the show. Maybe animated awesome intermission scenes, like them fighting against The Misfits and/or The Stingers
Make Massive Nostalgia Profit, by selling CDs, T-Shirts, and actually making dolls of the characters in the various merchandise booths and with good ticket sales.
(I posted this idea on Twitter before, but) I want to make an animated show in the same target audience as My Little Pony, Friendship is magic that is about a bunch of friend girls who live on a space station and do science. It would be in a really cute style and have an emphasis on inspiring young kids. (especially little girls) to get interested in computer and scientific fields (and SPAAAACE!) It would attempt to teach real facts, but still maintain an adventurous tone.
I imagined a little about the five character's personalities, their point of origin and their associated color. As you can see, it's very MLP, but if you develop them more they don't have to be slavish imitations. It's a starting point.
Pilot - Mars [Red] - Tough and Impulsive Biologist - Europa (Jupiter) [Green] - Kind and Softspoken Physicist/Astronomer - Moon Base [Blue] - Pensive and Moody Mechanical Engineer - Mercury [Yellow-Orange] - Practical and Snarky Programmer - Asteroid Belt [Pink] - Humorous and Energetic
Pilot - Mars [Red] - Tough and Impulsive Biologist - Europa (Jupiter) [Green] - Kind and Softspoken Physicist/Astronomer - Moon Base [Blue] - Pensive and Moody Mechanical Engineer - Mercury [Yellow-Orange] - Practical and Snarky Programmer - Asteroid Belt [Pink] - Humorous and Energetic
All these worlds are yours—Except Europa. Attempt no landings there.
I do not know why I instantly thought of that, but I did.
Self driving, affordable electric semi-mobile home. So not a full on housing solution with a toilet, the ability to cook and such. Just a nice couch/table, some headroom, and maybe a fridge or some storage cabinets.
Pilot - Mars [Red] - Tough and Impulsive Biologist - Europa (Jupiter) [Green] - Kind and Softspoken Physicist/Astronomer - Moon Base [Blue] - Pensive and Moody Mechanical Engineer - Mercury [Yellow-Orange] - Practical and Snarky Programmer - Asteroid Belt [Pink] - Humorous and Energetic
Here's a doodle to test different silhouette shapes. They're all drawn about the height of an AAA battery, excuse the lack of detail.
Ahhhhhhhhhh shit opening photoshop, gonna turn these little concepts into some slick-lookin' designs. I'm thinking lineless with sort of a pastel palette...
Quick study of shapes and shit before I do a pass with actual details. Kind of thinking of having each girl have a look reministint of various sci-fi subgernes or famous franchises with an overall Jetson's flare; Mars looks like she belongs in Star Trek, Europa has a pulp 1950s space suit, Mercury has a Firefly thing going, Asteroid Belt has a nice cyberpunk thing going, and Moon Base... well, she's just weird! I'm going to make sure, though, that they all have unusual and outlandish hairstyles and clothing; cool looking, but definitely bizarre and futuristic.
It's interesting how, given a vague prompt, everyone imagines the characters very differently. I should draw the way I imagine them too.
Also, Omnu insists that "mechanical engineer" and "programmer" are too similar as occupations and that one should be cut. I don't know... I his drawing of the girl with the buns on her head.
Nah, 5 is a good number of characters, and episodes with mechanical engineering and programming can have massively different educational focuses.
Also, I kind of have this great image that Pink is gravity-adverse and you tend to find her in the centre of the hab-ring where there is no gravity, floating in the middle of a nest of wires, screens, and keyboards. :P
Actually, I would have posted the lunarian to have problems with gravity. In an asteroid belt, you would live under artificial gravity all the time, but you can't do that on the surface of the moon. Having been born and raised there, she suffers serious problems when coming into contact with strong forces and has grown exceptionally tall as a result.
Also, Omnu insists that "mechanical engineer" and "programmer" are too similar as occupations and that one should be cut. I don't know... I his drawing of the girl with the buns on her head.
What? No! This is not the case - A mechanical engineer and a programmer are not at all similar, and do not cover the functions of one another, apart from in one very small area - and that's to do with some Modeling(Not the sort the Open_sketchbook does, different stuff) and CAD/CAM tools. Which would make for a cool cross-disipline episode.
Family Feud where instead of surveying actual people, you survey 4chan.
That would make it too easy. I'd participate.
Did some more before woe got the best of me.
No. Go make more. Need more. MOOOOOOORE.
Pilot - Mars [Red] - Tough and Impulsive Biologist - Europa (Jupiter) [Green] - Kind and Softspoken Physicist/Astronomer - Moon Base [Blue] - Pensive and Moody Mechanical Engineer - Mercury [Yellow-Orange] - Practical and Snarky Programmer - Asteroid Belt [Pink] - Humorous and Energetic
How did you pick personality tropes for those planets and satellites?
[words]
MOOOOOOOOOOORE.
I should draw the way I imagine them too.
YEEEEEEEEEEEES, MOOOOOOOOOOOORE!
Actually, I would have posted the lunarian to have problems with gravity. In an asteroid belt, you would live under artificial gravity all the time, but you can't do that on the surface of the moon. Having been born and raised there, she suffers serious problems when coming into contact with strong forces and has grown exceptionally tall as a result. [Nono image] [more Nono]
Poor Nono. I should rewatch that show (PLANETES for those who don't know).
As for the personalities, I matched discipline with personality before I picked out the location of the solar system they came from. Mars always is traditionally tough and red, so that was easy. I wanted the biologist to be from Europa because that seemed to be a good place in a SciFi setting if there was possible life form research or terraforming because of the sea. Mercury seemed like a good place for engineering/mining metals, and an asteroid seemed like a good place for a hacker who liked to send out communications.
Actually, the asteroid belt is probably the best place to do any mining in space; the primary cost of space travel is breaking the gravity of a planetary body, so with asteroid mining you only have to pay the mass penalty of moving there and back with stuff.
Also, you probably could not get spin going on a actual asteroid base, making it pretty close to 0 g. If she lived in a pinwheel station (which I imagine the space station they live on is) then sure, but an actual structure for disassembling an asteroid, probably not.
Re: Cutting the Engineer: From a real world standpoint, they aren't the same thing, but in a story context, you have a team which is Living things, Space, Computers, Machines and Vehicles. Aka: Living things, Space, Machines, Machines, Machines.
The engineer is the easiest cut as pilot and programmer can cover large machinery and small inventions respectively.
Really, pilot is the weakest area, so it's more as though you're rolling pilot into engineer and offloading some of the smaller stuff to make up for the lack of things programmer has to do.
Re: Living on asteroids: What's the point of living on the asteroids themselves? You probably don't want to occupy a place which runs the risk of being hit by other asteroids.
If the point of the show is to be like, hey girls, science doesn`t have to be a "boy" thing, it`d be cool to have a character who is a doer rather than a thinker in addition. Temper the scientist message with "And of course, we need people who can use these inventions too".
The pilot can also be a perpetual viewpoint character; have the others explain what they are doing to her, and have her talent being using the science of the episode to actually solve the problem.
In other word, she`s "trades", which is something that is also important.
Also, asteroids almost never collide with each other. Like, pretty much never ever ever. Space is really big and asteroids are very small; they have a much better chance of hitting a planet.
Asteroid mining probably involves a ship (ideally a robot, but robotic ships aren`t interesting) attaching itself to the asteroid and breaking it down, firing the useful matter out with a mass driver to be collected by another ship while using the force of doing so to alter the asteroid`s trajectory so that it`s easy to pick up the crew later with a different ship. It`d be a life lived in temporary vessels, with brief periods of acceleration as you moved to the asteroid followed by periods of sitting around maintaining the robominer, which is a programmer job for sure!
The whole reason I came up with this idea in the first place was I thought it would be a cool thing to introduce little girls to real world science and tech professions through an adventurous show. I want girls to go into both engineering and programming, and tell them "oh look, here is a job where you design cool machines!" and "Here is a job where you talk to computers and make them do cool stuff." Pilot is the one that doesn't really fit that specifically, but I thought it would be nice in a space setting to have one straight up astronaut. (I LOVED reading about astronauts as a little kid.) In addition, I think 5 is the optimal number for a team in a kid's show (look at any sentai) because it provides variety without being over-large.
While I am always pro media with strong messages for girls, I am also fascinated by the idea of a children`s show which has an excuse to be hard-science.
Also, Omnu insists that "mechanical engineer" and "programmer" are too similar as occupations and that one should be cut. I don't know... I his drawing of the girl with the buns on her head.
What? No! This is not the case - A mechanical engineer and a programmer are not at all similar, and do not cover the functions of one another, apart from in one very small area - and that's to do with some Modeling(Not the sort the Open_sketchbook does, different stuff) and CAD/CAM tools. Which would make for a cool cross-disipline episode.
I must agree here. Although a good mechanical engineer should be capable of programming, that's typically more along the lines of scripting rather than working with large-scale systems.
However, it seems to me that there is more call for a position more like sysadmin than programmer in this situation. The main job would be to manage the existing hardware/software and help the others to interface with it; writing anything completely new would most likely done by people on the Earth.
Re: Cutting the Engineer: From a real world standpoint, they aren't the same thing, but in a story context, you have a team which is Living things, Space, Computers, Machines and Vehicles. Aka: Living things, Space, Machines, Machines, Machines.
Aka Machines, Space, Machines, Machines, Machines. Aka Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics. Aka Maths, Maths, Maths, Maths, Maths. Ergo there should be only one teammate, a mathematician.
The engineer is the easiest cut as pilot and programmer can cover large machinery and small inventions respectively.
Really, pilot is the weakest area, so it's more as though you're rolling pilot into engineer and offloading some of the smaller stuff to make up for the lack of things programmer has to do.
If pilot seems weak, perhaps the better solution would be to add a leadership component to the pilot's role?
Re: Cutting the Engineer: From a real world standpoint, they aren't the same thing, but in a story context, you have a team which is Living things, Space, Computers, Machines and Vehicles. Aka: Living things, Space, Machines, Machines, Machines.
The engineer is the easiest cut as pilot and programmer can cover large machinery and small inventions respectively.
Really, pilot is the weakest area, so it's more as though you're rolling pilot into engineer and offloading some of the smaller stuff to make up for the lack of things programmer has to do.
What you're saying makes sense, but only at that broad level. Once you break it down to the level they actually work at, it comes out more like Piloting/application of other disciplines/leadership, Living creatures, Space and physics, Making/fixing/designing things/materials, and computer systems.
It's not a double-up, simply because while the disciplines included are certainly performed on/with mechanical objects, that doesn't make them similar enough to cut or merge them - it's like saying that when Sketch is 3D Modeling, I'm writing, Cheese is coding, and Emily is Animating/drawing, and Grey is playing Tribs: Abscond, that we're all doing the same thing, because we're all doing it on computers - in the broadest sense, you're absolutely correct, we are doing the same thing(using a computer), but the deeper level matters just as much, if not more.
It's like in Silver Spoons - Hachiken is the somewhat outsider, our viewpoint, but someone who tries things, drives the story forward, is our viewpoint character as the non-expert of the group, the city boy. Everybody else is a farmer - but they all have their specialty, and time is spent with all of them to show it off. Mikage knows horses and cattle, Komaba knows all about the hard work of farming, Inada is all about business, Tokiwa knows all about machinery and chickens. Everybody knows a little bit about the general experience, and everybody knows a little about the other specialties, but you still need all of them for the complete picture.
I just wish more girls had someone to get them really excited about science. My dad is a physics major/electrical engineer who really likes the space program and science fiction, and he was a big influence on my interests growing up.
From a high brow argument perspective, that makes sense. For a kids show, you can easily pass off the girl who knows how to fix things being able to pilot them as well.
I have realised there may be one fundamental difference in our viewpoints. I grew up watching CBBC without any kind of cable TV cartoon channels, so what I view as kid's entertainment is much more based around TV dramas made by a corporation that didn't need to sell merchandise. The idea of a show aimed at girls is somewhat foreign to me; The closest thing I got to a "Girls show" was Home and Away, mostly due to watching TV with my Sister. I can't think of a team show I remember either. Even something like Animorphs didn't have the team acting as one too often.
I have actually been thinking about this a lot, and I think the breakdown works pretty well from an educational standpoint.
If we posit that we give equal time to each character and their speciality over the course of a season, one of the best ways to do it would be to have a cycle of episodes focusing on each of the four realms covered by each character science character (biology, engineering, computer science, and physics+astronomy) with the pilot character taking a proactive role in driving events to solve the problems of the episode, and still have one or two episodes where we use her character to focus on the interactions between scientists and non-scientists.
The format I am seeing in my head is that the girls living on this space-station are some kind of consultant firm, and there are two kinds of episodes; episodes where they are called out to solve a problem, and episodes where trouble comes to them. They have a rocket ship to fly around the solar system and help out people in need of their expertise, but just as often they need to solve problems with their pinwheel station. We can easily alternate between them per person, too, giving each character two or three local stories and two or three active stories per season.
For example: Biology : Episode on Earth dealing with food chain (Earth has become a wildlife preserve and they need help balancing part of the ecosystem). Episode on Europa dealing with evolution(Scientists back home are trying to track the evolution of the local species on Europa). Episode locally teaching about extinct creatures (she is using her lab to try and clone an extinct species). Episode locally about an infestation on the ship (talk about invasive species, pests, and human relations with animals)
Repeat pattern for all the science character, and round out your season using the pilot to deal with cultural and social aspects of science and scientists (Pilot feels left out because of her lack of science skills, saves the day on her own talents. Science characters having great ideas, but getting nothing done without help. Etc.)
Another thing that could be handled by this show is that, as they are running a business, we could talk economics, too. Which is a sort of science, and another field that is male-dominated.
Also I think it is super important that they do NOT have any kind of Princess Celestia mission control. This is a show about going out and exploring on your own; about independence and adventure and learning and shit. Absolutely no master computer or whatever parental stand-in character.
If anyone wants, I can write/draw my interpretation but be warned it's a bit Watership Down in places, you guys are making things way too happy for a kids show, especially a sci-fi one.
Comments
Use it with Jem and the Holograms, creating an actual United States-focused tour with a good chunk of their the songs from the show. Maybe animated awesome intermission scenes, like them fighting against The Misfits and/or The Stingers
Make Massive Nostalgia Profit, by selling CDs, T-Shirts, and actually making dolls of the characters in the various merchandise booths and with good ticket sales.
I want to make an animated show in the same target audience as My Little Pony, Friendship is magic that is about a bunch of friend girls who live on a space station and do science. It would be in a really cute style and have an emphasis on inspiring young kids. (especially little girls) to get interested in computer and scientific fields (and SPAAAACE!)
It would attempt to teach real facts, but still maintain an adventurous tone.
I imagined a little about the five character's personalities, their point of origin and their associated color. As you can see, it's very MLP, but if you develop them more they don't have to be slavish imitations. It's a starting point.
Pilot - Mars [Red] - Tough and Impulsive
Biologist - Europa (Jupiter) [Green] - Kind and Softspoken
Physicist/Astronomer - Moon Base [Blue] - Pensive and Moody
Mechanical Engineer - Mercury [Yellow-Orange] - Practical and Snarky
Programmer - Asteroid Belt [Pink] - Humorous and Energetic
That is so adorable! It made me imagine so much! Oh please do more!
Quick study of shapes and shit before I do a pass with actual details. Kind of thinking of having each girl have a look reministint of various sci-fi subgernes or famous franchises with an overall Jetson's flare; Mars looks like she belongs in Star Trek, Europa has a pulp 1950s space suit, Mercury has a Firefly thing going, Asteroid Belt has a nice cyberpunk thing going, and Moon Base... well, she's just weird! I'm going to make sure, though, that they all have unusual and outlandish hairstyles and clothing; cool looking, but definitely bizarre and futuristic.
Also, Omnu insists that "mechanical engineer" and "programmer" are too similar as occupations and that one should be cut. I don't know...
I his drawing of the girl with the buns on her head.
Also, I kind of have this great image that Pink is gravity-adverse and you tend to find her in the centre of the hab-ring where there is no gravity, floating in the middle of a nest of wires, screens, and keyboards. :P
As for the personalities, I matched discipline with personality before I picked out the location of the solar system they came from. Mars always is traditionally tough and red, so that was easy. I wanted the biologist to be from Europa because that seemed to be a good place in a SciFi setting if there was possible life form research or terraforming because of the sea. Mercury seemed like a good place for engineering/mining metals, and an asteroid seemed like a good place for a hacker who liked to send out communications.
Also, you probably could not get spin going on a actual asteroid base, making it pretty close to 0 g. If she lived in a pinwheel station (which I imagine the space station they live on is) then sure, but an actual structure for disassembling an asteroid, probably not.
The engineer is the easiest cut as pilot and programmer can cover large machinery and small inventions respectively.
Really, pilot is the weakest area, so it's more as though you're rolling pilot into engineer and offloading some of the smaller stuff to make up for the lack of things programmer has to do.
Re: Living on asteroids: What's the point of living on the asteroids themselves? You probably don't want to occupy a place which runs the risk of being hit by other asteroids.
The pilot can also be a perpetual viewpoint character; have the others explain what they are doing to her, and have her talent being using the science of the episode to actually solve the problem.
In other word, she`s "trades", which is something that is also important.
Also, asteroids almost never collide with each other. Like, pretty much never ever ever. Space is really big and asteroids are very small; they have a much better chance of hitting a planet.
Asteroid mining probably involves a ship (ideally a robot, but robotic ships aren`t interesting) attaching itself to the asteroid and breaking it down, firing the useful matter out with a mass driver to be collected by another ship while using the force of doing so to alter the asteroid`s trajectory so that it`s easy to pick up the crew later with a different ship. It`d be a life lived in temporary vessels, with brief periods of acceleration as you moved to the asteroid followed by periods of sitting around maintaining the robominer, which is a programmer job for sure!
Edit: Sketchbook, right on target.
However, it seems to me that there is more call for a position more like sysadmin than programmer in this situation. The main job would be to manage the existing hardware/software and help the others to interface with it; writing anything completely new would most likely done by people on the Earth. Aka Machines, Space, Machines, Machines, Machines.
Aka Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics.
Aka Maths, Maths, Maths, Maths, Maths.
Ergo there should be only one teammate, a mathematician. If pilot seems weak, perhaps the better solution would be to add a leadership component to the pilot's role?
It's not a double-up, simply because while the disciplines included are certainly performed on/with mechanical objects, that doesn't make them similar enough to cut or merge them - it's like saying that when Sketch is 3D Modeling, I'm writing, Cheese is coding, and Emily is Animating/drawing, and Grey is playing Tribs: Abscond, that we're all doing the same thing, because we're all doing it on computers - in the broadest sense, you're absolutely correct, we are doing the same thing(using a computer), but the deeper level matters just as much, if not more.
It's like in Silver Spoons - Hachiken is the somewhat outsider, our viewpoint, but someone who tries things, drives the story forward, is our viewpoint character as the non-expert of the group, the city boy. Everybody else is a farmer - but they all have their specialty, and time is spent with all of them to show it off. Mikage knows horses and cattle, Komaba knows all about the hard work of farming, Inada is all about business, Tokiwa knows all about machinery and chickens. Everybody knows a little bit about the general experience, and everybody knows a little about the other specialties, but you still need all of them for the complete picture.
Also, ninja'd by cheese.
I have realised there may be one fundamental difference in our viewpoints. I grew up watching CBBC without any kind of cable TV cartoon channels, so what I view as kid's entertainment is much more based around TV dramas made by a corporation that didn't need to sell merchandise. The idea of a show aimed at girls is somewhat foreign to me; The closest thing I got to a "Girls show" was Home and Away, mostly due to watching TV with my Sister. I can't think of a team show I remember either. Even something like Animorphs didn't have the team acting as one too often.
If we posit that we give equal time to each character and their speciality over the course of a season, one of the best ways to do it would be to have a cycle of episodes focusing on each of the four realms covered by each character science character (biology, engineering, computer science, and physics+astronomy) with the pilot character taking a proactive role in driving events to solve the problems of the episode, and still have one or two episodes where we use her character to focus on the interactions between scientists and non-scientists.
The format I am seeing in my head is that the girls living on this space-station are some kind of consultant firm, and there are two kinds of episodes; episodes where they are called out to solve a problem, and episodes where trouble comes to them. They have a rocket ship to fly around the solar system and help out people in need of their expertise, but just as often they need to solve problems with their pinwheel station. We can easily alternate between them per person, too, giving each character two or three local stories and two or three active stories per season.
For example:
Biology : Episode on Earth dealing with food chain (Earth has become a wildlife preserve and they need help balancing part of the ecosystem). Episode on Europa dealing with evolution(Scientists back home are trying to track the evolution of the local species on Europa). Episode locally teaching about extinct creatures (she is using her lab to try and clone an extinct species). Episode locally about an infestation on the ship (talk about invasive species, pests, and human relations with animals)
Repeat pattern for all the science character, and round out your season using the pilot to deal with cultural and social aspects of science and scientists (Pilot feels left out because of her lack of science skills, saves the day on her own talents. Science characters having great ideas, but getting nothing done without help. Etc.)
Another thing that could be handled by this show is that, as they are running a business, we could talk economics, too. Which is a sort of science, and another field that is male-dominated.
Also I think it is super important that they do NOT have any kind of Princess Celestia mission control. This is a show about going out and exploring on your own; about independence and adventure and learning and shit. Absolutely no master computer or whatever parental stand-in character.