Sesame Street Goes CG for New TV and Web Series

As part of the launch of its 40th anniversary season today, Sesame Street debuted a new series called Abby’s Flying Fairy School featuring a computer-generated version of one of its Muppets. New Jersey animation studio SpeakeasyFX developed 136 minutes worth of animation centered around Muppet Abby Cadabby and a set of new Muppet friends, who fly and even go underwater — near-impossible feats for the long tradition of hand-driven live-action Muppet puppets.

Plus, the CG content — made entirely using Autodesk’s Softimage, according to Speakeasy — wasn’t just developed for TV. In tandem with the 13 segments to be aired and repeated on Sesame Street throughout the season, Speakeasy created content for a choose-your-own-adventure game for kids to play on Sesame Street’s web site. The first game, to be released Dec. 9, is called “Sleeping Bloggy,” about a character who’s part fairy, part troll.

Computer-generated content on Sesame Street comes in a day and age when nearly every kids’ movie seems to be in the Pixar mold. “There’s always a need and an urge to contemporize the show,” said Christine Evans of Sesame Workshop in a phone interview. She would not disclose the relative budget for a CG project versus typical projects for the show but said it was “a big investment on Sesame’s part.”

Scott Stewart, executive director at SpeakeasyFX, said the year-and-a-half project centered on creating a parallel universe to the live-action world. “We tried to distill down the essence of what makes a muppet,” he said. Part of what worked involved building each model as if it was actually being manipulated by a hand inside a Muppet.

A video preview is embedded above. Here’s the preschool-oriented concept: “Abby Cadabby, along with an eclectic gang of new friends, attends Fairy School with Mrs. Sparklenose. Abby and her friends solve problems using rhyme, reason and cooperation.” Sounds just like my life!