The Technology Behind the Art of Drawing Oscar the Grouch

By Graydon Gordian

Evan Cheng, associate art director of character design, draws on his digital tablet.

When Sesame Street debuted in 1969, the term “digital pen tablet” didn’t exist. It would be years before the use of personal computers and similar technology became widespread. But nowadays digital tablets are one of the primary tools used by our Creative Resources team, the talented people who take Grover, Elmo and Big Bird and create the vivid two-dimensional images that go in educational books, on clothes and on any other item where Sesame Street Muppets^TM can be found.

Often they’ll begin drawing an image with a pencil and paper, but the advancements made in tablet technology now allow them to complete a drawing in a small fraction of the time it formerly took. Unlike previous tablet technology, the Wacom tablets Sesame Workshop uses allow an artist to draw directly on the screen, as opposed to a separate touch sensitive pad. They also respond to the pressure of the pen, giving the artist crucial control of the thickness of lines. Whether furry or feathery, every Sesame Street Muppet^TM is incredibly textured. The artists on our Creative Services team need that level of control to render them accurately.

The tablet also allows the artist to view the drawing from a variety of angles and distances. If the artist zooms in on a particular section of the image in order to add small details, his pen strokes will affect a zoomed-out version of the image as well. That way he or she can see how the details are changing the entire drawing.

The digital pen tablets used by the Creative Resources team are just another example of the ways Sesame Workshop is using technology to encourage laughter and fun, while educating children all over the world.

To learn more about the digital pen tablet technology, watch this video in which Sesame Workshop artist Diana Leto explains how she uses it.

Tweeting the Clouds Away

By Dan Lewis

Tomorrow  – February 28^th – we’ll be trying something new here at Sesame Workshop. A few of us are going to be tweeting about what we’re up to, giving others a glimpse into the work we do here at Sesame Workshop.  We’re visiting potential funders, working on handwashing habits in Indonesia, preparing for an event Thursday (stay tuned!), and a few other things.  If you follow us on Twitter at @SesameWorkshop, we’ll be retweeting some of the updates from:

• Sherrie Westin, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, @srwestin
• Patrick Key, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Development, @PatrickKeySW
• Dan Donohue, Senior Director, Global Education, @DJD007NYC
• Giao Roever, Director, Marketing and Creative Services, @GiaoRoever
• And me, Dan Lewis, Director, New Media Communications, @DanDotLewis

See you tomorrow!

This Week in Sesame Street: Happy Anniversary Jalan Sesama

By Graydon Gordian

In this week’s edition of “This Week in Sesame Street,” we’re celebrating the 4 year anniversary of the debut episode of Jalan Sesama, Sesame Workshop’s co-production in Indonesia. On February 18, 2008 Tantan, Momon, Putrik and Jabrik – the Jalan Sesama Muppets^TM – began bringing the children of Indonesia laughter and encouraging them to love to learn.

Like every international co-production Sesame Workshop helps produce, Jalan Sesama takes into account the specific educational needs of children in Indonesia. That means not only teaching the building blocks of literacy and numeracy like we do in every international co-production. An appreciation of cultural diversity – Indonesia has over 300 native ethnicities spread across its more than 17,000 islands – and environmental awareness – Indonesia has the world’s second highest level of biodiversity – are also major parts of the Jalan Sesama curriculum.

Congratulations to all the hardworking people in Indonesia who help make Jalan Sesama a reality, especially our local partner Creative Indigo Production, and thanks to the American people and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), whose generous support makes the show possible.

For more information on Jalan Sesama and the work Sesame Workshop is going in Indonesia, click here.

Sesame Workshop, Toonmax Media Bring Sesame Street Back to China

By Graydon Gordian

Toonmax Media President Yang Wen Yan, Sesame Workshop CEO Mel Ming, and Oscar the Grouch chat at a cocktail party to celebrate our partnership.

For Yang Wen Yan and Ye Chao, the respective president and vice president of Shanghai-based Toonmax Media, the return of Sesame Street to China is about more than a strategic partnership that they believe will help their company grow. It’s about reuniting with a show that has been a part of their lives for decades.

“About 20 years ago I was involved in the Production of Zhima Jie,” as Sesame Street was known in China, said Ms. Yang through a translator. “I was a line producer” when Sesame Workshop started working on a Chinese co-production in 1993.

For Mr. Ye, the connection goes back even further. “The first time I experienced Sesame Street was 1984, when I was visiting a studio in Germany that was producing the German co-production of Sesame Street,” he said, also through a translator. He would begin working on Zhima Jie in 1994.

However, Zhima Jie went off the air in 2001 and Ms. Yang and Mr. Ye moved on, eventually working together again as the top executives at Toonmax Media. Mr. Ye said he was pleasantly surprised when the opportunity to bring Sesame Street back to Chinese television came along in 2010.

“It’s just like the Sesame Street TV content, which brings lots of surprises,” said Mr. Ye. “I got surprised too.”

According to Ms. Yang, partnering with Sesame Workshop makes perfect sense for a company like Toonmax Media. High quality educational content is one of their two major focuses (the other is animation), and from their experience working with Sesame Workshop they know firsthand how much time, energy and educational research goes into producing our programs.

Just like every international co-production, Sesame Street’s Big Bird Looks at the World, which began airing in China in 2010, a tremendous amount of effort and care has gone into ensuring that the program is best suited for the educational needs of local children. In China, this means creating a curriculum for a slightly older audience – 4 to 6-year-olds instead of 2 to 4-year olds, which the American show is meant for – and making sure the series fosters children’s natural curiosity about nature and science and encourages hands-on exploration as a great way to learn.

While the curriculum for Sesame Street’s Big Bird Looks at the World may differ from the American version, Ms. Yang believes it is the universal charm of the Sesame Street Muppets^TM that makes the program a success.

“It’s really about the personality of the characters,” she said. “What is unique is the Muppets.”

This Week in Sesame Street: Our Furry Friends Visit the White House

By Graydon Gordian

On Tuesday, February 7, beloved Sesame Street monster Grover stopped by the White House to help White House Chef Sam Kass and the children of chefs who currently work in the White House learn about the ways kids can help their parents prepare a tasty and healthy meal. The Sesame Street Muppets^TM have a long history of visiting the White House, so in today’s edition of, “This Week in Sesame Street,” we’re talking about some of the times our furry friends have had a chance to hang out with the President.

The Sesame Street Muppets^TM made their first appearance at the White House on December 20, 1970, when Big Bird, Mr. Hooper and the rest of the gang joined First Lady Pat Nixon, wife of Richard Nixon, to perform a Christmas show for an audience of excited children.

The cast of Sesame Street at Richard Nixon's White House.

That would hardly be the last time our friends from Sesame Street would stop by the president’s home. Big Bird made Christmas time appearances during both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter’s administrations, the latter of which included a performance with Kermit the Frog and Joe Raposo, composer of the Sesame Street theme song, in the East Room of the White House. In fact, Sesame Street Muppets^TM would go on to visit the White House of every subsequent president: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all invited Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster and other Sesame Street Muppets^TM back to the White House for various reasons.

Big Bird appears with Betty Ford, wife of President Gerald Ford, at the White House.

Whether it be for Christmas celebrations, Easter egg hunts, to encourage literacy at the National Book Festival, or in order to teach kids lessons about healthy eating like their most recent visit, the Sesame Street Muppets^TM have been welcomed guests at the home of the president for over 40 years.

Elmo’s Birthday Party: Tons of Fun!

By Graydon Gordian

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Elmo’s birthday party was last week and everyone  had lots of fun! Lots of kids and their parents got to hang out with Elmo and Nitya Vidyasagar, who plays Leela on Sesame Street. Everyone ate cake, took part in fun coloring activities and watched “Elmo’s World: Birthdays,” part of a new home DVD release from Sesame Street. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and celebrated with Elmo!

Photo Credit: Zach Hyman

The Making of a Sesame Street Comic

By Mark Magner

Ed. Note: Mark Magner is a Design Director at Sesame Workshop. His team released a new comic strip today in conjunction with the release of our newest home video, “Elmo’s World: Favorite Things!” Mark wanted to take a few moments to tell you just how he and his creative team go about conceiving of and creating a comic strip.

Our mission here at Sesame Workshop is always at the forefront of our mind. We want to educate children, to prepare them for school, to help them better understand the world and each other. We want them to think, dream and discover, to reach their highest potential. Sesame Street‘s home videos are already effective tools for helping and inspiring children. Alicia Durand, who handles public relations for Sesame Street, approached the creative team about creating some activity or artwork to accompany the release of the home videos, and we were excited by this new challenge.

For the first video, “Bye Bye Pacifier,” Diana Leto, an artist who creates visuals for everything from our apparel to style guides to web elements, and I created spoofs of old propaganda posters, which were a big hit. The second video released was “Iron Monster,” and because of its cartoonish nature Evan Cheng, associate art director of character design, created a comic strip that would parody the story in the video, another idea that proved popular.

We realized that comic strips were the perfect way to connect parents and children while encouraging literacy. That’s why we’ve created another comic strip for our newest home video release, “Elmo’s World: Favorite Things!”

We start our process by watching the Sesame Street home video that we plan to feature in the comic strip. We choose a section of the video that lends itself well to a comic strip, and then discuss how to tell the story in a few frames. We decided it would be fun to spoof a famous comic strip. In this instance, a spoof of Calvin and Hobbes worked perfectly. The layout and design pays homage to Bill Watterson, the author of the comic, and features dinosaurs, a perennial favorite of Calvin’s.

At this point, Evan Cheng starts to sketch out his ideas using pencil on paper. Evan does several small sketches until he knows what the final comic strip will look like. Evan then sketches the final illustration, refining each frame to tell the story. Evan scans his final artwork into Photoshop and passes the file onto Diana Leto.

Diana takes Evan’s illustrations and digitally applies color, texture and halftones to the artwork, bringing it to life. In this instance, the color palette and texture was chosen with the style and tone of Calvin and Hobbes in mind. Using Photoshop, Diana layers the color and textures, fine tuning the look until it’s perfect.

We always work to ensure children engage with a story or a lesson in as many mediums as possible. That’s why, in addition to the home video and comic strip, Diana also created a coloring activity based on the comic. Our hope is that, if the child watches the video, uses the coloring activity and is read the comic strip by their parents, they’ll not only have lots of fun but they’ll learn a little something too.

This Week in Sesame Street: Elmo’s Birthday

By Graydon Gordian

It’s birthday season here at Sesame Street. For the second week in a row we’re celebrating the birthday of one of our beloved Sesame Street Muppets^TM. Last week we celebrated Ernie’s birthday. Now it’s Elmo’s turn to have cake and open presents.

Performed by Kevin Clash, Elmo has gone from being an unheralded baby monster to one of the most popular furry friends Sesame Street has ever had. Elmo turns 3^½ this year – Elmo always turns 3^½ on February 3rd. In honor of his birthday, here are 3^½ fun facts about Elmo you might not know:

1. Elmo is the only non-human to ever testify before the U.S. Congress. In 2002 he was invited to testify before the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee to urge more funding for music research and music education in schools.
2. Elmo also appears on Sesame Workshop co-productions in China, Denmark, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan and South Africa.
3. Elmo’s favorite food is wasabi, which is why his eyes are so wide open when he’s awake.
3^½. Elmo loves you (but you already knew that).

OK Go and Sesame Street Team up to Teach Primary Colors

By Graydon Gordian

Between performing a dance routine on a group of treadmills and setting up an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine, the rock band OK Go has produced some of the most imaginative and refreshingly fun music videos of the last few years. So when Sesame Workshop decided to make a new video explaining the primary colors to young children, we knew exactly who to ask.

Today we released the music video for the “3 Primary Colors Song,” in which Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka and Andy Ross of the band OK Go help kids learn the colors red, blue and yellow and which colors they make when mixed together. We also released a game, created by Plug-In Media starring OK Go that allows kids to mix the colors however they want and make a painting of their own.

Sesame Workshop has a long history of working with musicians, actors and other celebrities, going all the way back to James Earl Jones’ appearance on Sesame Street in 1969. But with todays’ release of the OK Go song and game, we have broken the mold in a few different ways: The online game is the first game we have made that does not include an appearance by a Sesame Street Muppet^TM; and this is the first video we have produced in which learning the primary colors is the primary educational goal.

Although the video, directed by Al Jarnow , is simple – nothing more than the band, some colored jumps suits and colored sheets of paper – an elaborate team here at Sesame Workshop was needed to make the video and game a reality: research and education, digital media and show production all played a large role in making sure the video and accompanying game are inventive, vivid and enriching.

The video and game are an excellent example of our firmly held belief that children learn more effectively when taught lessons using multiple mediums. In this instance, children have the potential to retain the information about colors the music video teaches if they also play the game. It’s just one example of the many ways we here at Sesame Workshop are combining fun, education and innovation.

To watch OK Go’s “3 Primary Colors Song,” click here. To play the 3 primary colors game, click here.

This Week in Sesame Street: Ernie’s Birthday

By Graydon Gordian

One of our favorite things here at Sesame Workshop is celebrating the birthdays of our beloved Sesame Street Muppets^TM. That’s why we’re so excited for this Saturday, January 28: It’s Ernie’s birthday!

Ernie and his best pal Bert are some of our oldest friends on Sesame Street. They’ve been living in the basement apartment of 123 Sesame Street since the show’s premiere in 1969.

Aside from providing us with some of the show’s funniest moments – who could forget the classic “banana” sketches – Ernie teaches us all a very important lesson: it’s possible for two people who don’t have much in common to be great friends. Ernie and Bert don’t have many similar interests: the excitable and mischievous Ernie enjoys playing tricks on Bert and taking baths with Rubber Duckie, while Bert, always the lovable curmudgeon, loves his pigeon Bernice and collecting paper clips and bottle caps. But despite those differences, they’re still best friends.

Given that Ernie’s been a part of the show for over 30 years, he’s been played by more than one performer. Originally Jim Henson did both the voice and puppeteering for Ernie. He last played Ernie in the 1989 episode, “Don’t Throw That Trash on the Ground.” Nowadays Ernie is performed by Steve Whitmire.