Dan Good

Dan Good didn’t have to look far from home for inspiration for his new series, Wissper. Commissioned by Channel 5’s Milkshake!, Wissper focuses on a quirky little girl who can talk to animals. For Good, his own young daughter was the starting place for the new animated series, which is being made by Good’s company, Absolutely Cuckoo, in conjunction with m4e, Telegael, Discreet Art Productions and BASTEI Media. Good is not new to the British animation sector, having created the massive hit Waybuloo. He tells TV Kids about Wissper’s journey from sketch to screen and weighs in on the state of British animation today.

TV KIDS: Where did the idea for Wissper come from?
GOOD: Wissper was inspired by my daughter, Indie. She is 8 years old now. The idea had been floating around for quite a while. It first came to me when she was about 4 or 5. We live in the city and we’ve got a little house in South London near Wimbledon and we have 12 pets. They are all Indie’s. And she believes—or certainly used to believe—that she could talk to them and they could talk to her. So I didn’t have the idea, it was just there in my world. It’s all about Indie.
TV KIDS: How did the partnerships with Milkshake! and m4e come about?
GOOD: I’ve been in the business for about seven years. My first production was Waybuloo, which is a CBeebies show, and that kind of established me, it gave me a little bit of a name for myself within the industry. Since then I’ve been developing my own shows and pitching them. Once in a while you have one of those ideas that you just think, I’ve just got to get this out there as quickly as possible because someone else is going to do it; a really special idea, one that you know is going to work. Wissper was one of those. We did a lot of development and pushed it forward and got it down to Cartoon Forum in 2013. Jessica Symons [the head of children’s at Channel 5] was so super happy with what was happening with the development that she commissioned it just before we went to Cartoon Forum. So, she allowed us to go there and say that Milkshake! was on board, which was absolutely awesome for the project. Jo [Daris, the head of operations at m4e] was in the audience. Not that many people came to talk to me afterwards, but he did. We did a deal that allowed us to put the financing together. We went into production in February of this year.

TV KIDS: Why do you think Wissper will resonate with kids around the world?
GOOD: Wissper is a global idea. It’s not connected to any country or territory. The whole world is in the show. She goes everywhere to help animals. It’s mainly a girls’ show—I hope boys are going to watch it and I’m sure they will—and I can’t think of any little girl anywhere in the world that wouldn’t want to be an animal whisperer. A lot of preschool children actually do believe that they can talk to animals and that animals can talk to them. You see those games being played with their stuffed animals and their farmyard toys and everything else. Taking that message to children all over the world and sharing the magic with them—I have the best job in the world! I’m like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or something. It’s my job to bring magic into the lives and the worlds of children. I’m so lucky and I just want as many children in the world to believe for as long as possible and to love Wissper as much as I do. She’s my daughter. I’m giving a love story about my daughter to the world, and I want as many people to have it as possible.

TV KIDS: How did your daughter react when she saw the first artwork coming through for the show?
GOOD: I don’t think she entirely wrapped her head around it at first. We do a lot of bonkers things in my house; we’re always making Plasticine models and puppet films. But when she got hired by Milkshake! to become the voice of Wissper, it became very, very real to her. And she’s now super excited and a bit of a diva, actually! [Laughs] She’s super cute. She’s actually really gotten into the voice recording and she takes it quite seriously. She marks up all her scripts, she learns her scripts. She’s only 8—she hasn’t been reading for that long! And she’s taking singing lessons. I think maybe she’s got the itch, like I have, to entertain people and enrich people’s lives with lovely things.

TV KIDS: The media world kids live in today is very different from the one we grew up in. For you as a creator, how do you track how much kids are changing? How you stay up to date with them?
GOOD: That’s a difficult question for me because I’m not digitally savvy at all. I’m all about pencils and crayons and Plasticine and bits of paper. My whole studio is like that; we’re very old school. So, although I understand that kids’ eyeballs are moving [to other platforms], I don’t think it matters where they go. The most important thing is making beautiful ideas, creating things that resonate with kids, that they want to be a part of and they want to watch, and writing awesome stories. And it doesn’t matter what platform they’re delivered on—on YouTube or whichever TV channel or via an app or through toys or picture books or whatever. We’ll find them if we’ve created something lovely.

TV KIDS: How important are the high-end tax breaks for British animation producers? How do you face the economic challenges of being able to get these shows off the ground?
GOOD: It is really tough. The tax credits have helped. They allowed me to bring £350,000 [$549,000] to the Wissper budget. Certainly there’s a much more vibrant production industry now in the U.K.; it’s kind of exploded quite quickly. But it continues to be tough. How does some bloke who went to art school and got a sculpture degree go find £3.6 million [$5.6 million]? It’s very tricky. But I’m a believer and I’m a born optimist. I’m like the Rocky Balboa of the kids’ TV industry, you know? [Laughs] So I just keep believing and keep fighting and if there’s a good idea, it’ll get the money and it’ll get made. If you’re compelled or committed to enriching the lives of children and creating things with integrity, making things with love that deserve to be in the world, then you find a way. There’s a really lovely Jim Henson quote that I always write in the front of my new sketchbooks: “Do what you love and the money will come.” I’m not interested in getting rich. I’m not a businessman, I’m a creative man. But I do need to make a little bit more money so that I can just relax into doing what I do. I think Wissper’s going to facilitate that. I want to spend what I make on making more shows, making more lovely things for children.