New Sky Kids Cartoon Encourages Young Storytellers

Sky Kids has commissioned ten episodes of the animated series Night Zookeeper, which allows viewers to contribute to the creation of the show.

Based on a children’s brand, Night Zookeeper invites kids throughout the U.K. to help make each episode by creating characters or background designs and suggesting plot points and dialogue. The series is being produced by Karrot Animation (Sarah & Duck). It will premiere on Sky Kids early next year.

The first episode of Night Zookeeper will launch on demand on all Sky platforms, including the Sky Kids app, with the animated episodes accompanied by an HTML game and the Now TV Kids Pass in February 2019.

Joshua Davidson, creator of Night Zookeeper, commented: “We are all going to work together to make a show! It’s incredibly exciting and an amazing opportunity to inspire children to write, draw and express their creativity. By giving children a real audience for their work, Sky will be having a huge impact of the literacy skills of children across the U.K.”

Lucy Murphy, the head of kids’ content at Sky, noted: “This is such an exciting project for Sky Kids to be involved with. Sky is the home of great stories, and this is certainly an exciting story full of great characters, but this takes entertainment another step forward as it’s a chance for kids to use their brilliant imaginations and actually help create the show themselves. We can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with.”

“Children who see that first episode will be buzzing with questions and ideas,” stated Howard Litton, executive producer. “They will then be able to send us all of their ideas for upcoming episodes on the website. This is the future of children’s TV, where fan fiction and art frequently inspire episodes of kids’ favorite shows. What better way of getting children writing and drawing?”