For today's entry, let's not go back so far to talk about educational television, let's go back 11 years or so. In 2000, Cartoon Pizza in New York was newly independent from Disney and in a new partnership with Sesame Workshop, but their main client was Disney Channel. Jim JInkins ("Doug," "PB & J Otter") was cooking up a new idea, and our own Pat Giles was asked to do some development drawings that would lead to a couple of years worth of pre-production work on "Jojo's Circus" on the Disney Channel, debuting in 2003.

The show's scripts were developed against a goal of getting preschoolers up and moving in front of their TV sets. Story groups were held with kids, where early character designs were put on magnetic background designs, in order to find out what ideas and dialogue would get kids up and moving. Other issues were addressed, like responsibility, personal hygiene, and other simple everyday lessons.

The show was animated using stop-motion, by Cuppa Coffee in Canada. But the characters and backgrounds were designed in 2D first in New York, at least for the main cast and first few episodes. "It was such a thrill to see our drawings translated into 3D," says Giles. "It was also a lot of fun to be part of a small crew of designers that came up with the look and feel of the show." The crew was led by the show's creator JIm Jinkins, and the Director John Schnall. Designers Fariba Adams and Pat Giles hammered out the main cast building off of Jim Jinkins original designs. Giles also designed the final show logo (with Alisa Grodsky) and spent weeks on the establishing shot above (with Beatriz Ramos, Prentis Rollins and Sophie Kittredge) and on several main set pieces in 2-D, later built on stages in Canada. Produced by John Catapano, JoEllyn Marlow and Jack Spillum in New York, with Production Design by Ravinder Kundi, and animation Direction by Alexander Gorelick in Canada.

While we are giving shout outs, Stuart Kollmorgen was the music supervisor for season one, and our friends Robert David and Pammy Salmon wrote several scripts for the series.

Jojo is a little girl who is attending clown school, in a circus themed town. "Jojo's Circus" ran for several years on the Disney Channel, but if you can't find it on the air, here is a sampler.

STANLEY

Pat Giles (The "P" in Pannylunie) Art Directed the series "STANLEY" on the Disney Channel. There were 59 episodes with 2 direct-to DVD's that would be broken up episodically to bring the run to 65 episodes. Produced at Cartoon Pizza, the studio formerly known as Jumbo Pictures had been wholly owned by Disney, and this was their first independent production. Of course Disney was their first client, and the show was based on the "STANLEY" books by Griff, for Hyperion books, also owned by Disney. The look and feel of the show owed more to classic Hanna-Barbera than to Disney, and you can see the influence in some of Giles' publicity drawings (the first three from the top). The show was meant to be a direct competitor of Nickelodeon's "Dora The Explorer," which was a monster hit in its first year when STANLEY went into production. STANLEY never knocked DORA off of her perch, but the show was a solid ratings success nevertheless. Premiering on the unfortunate date of September 15, 2001, it went on to be a staple of Disney Channel's preschool block for several seasons.

The show was directed by Jeff Buckland, Produced by Melanie Grisanti and Executive Producers were of course Jim Jinkins, who owned the studio along with his partner David Campbell. The title sequence shown here was from the Direct-to-DVD feature "STANLEY'S DINOSAUR ROUND-UP" and this sequence was boarded by Brad Rodriguez, with music by "Riders In The Sky," who are also caricatured right into the song. Pre-Production was in New York, and during those days Cartoon Pizza was located within Sesame Workshop across from Lincoln Center. The team was an all-star group of NY animation folks, featuring Chris Palesty, Kim Miskoe, Lynda Nettleship and Willy Hartland on background design and Tony Distefano, Brad Rodriguez, Keith Gardner and Piero Piluso on character/prop designs, and Paul Zdanowicz led the color dept. Diane Kredensor led the storyboard team, with more board folks than we can list here.

Charles Shaughnessy, of "The Nanny" fame, won an Emmy for his voice acting work on the series. In "STANLEY'S DINOSAUR ROUND-UP," Randy Quaid played the bad guy, and on a sad note, the movie was John RItter's last role, playing Stanley's Western singin' Uncle Stew. The rest of the pics here are some stills from the feature length show, and the reimagined show opening, featuring some really fun backgrounds by Palesty/Nettleship/Zdanowicz and Giles.