A DREAM A COLORING BOOK & A PLUSHIE

A DREAM A COLORING BOOK & A PLUSHIE

Contributed by Phillip C. Flippo

Earlier this year I remember sitting down with my business partner Derek and we were discussing how we could create new “meaningful and unique” products about Alaska. We had already been doing calendars, mugs, decals, and all the usual low hanging fruit for years.

We spent weeks pitching ideas back and forth. However one day we decided to just ask ourselves, where did we want all this hard work to go anyway? Was all of this to turn a profit? Was it to bring happiness to people? Was it to help educate the next generation about Alaska?

About this time I found myself staring at a physical copy of an article I wrote about a ridiculous character I invented a while back called Adventure Bonnie... “What if we made a show, like a real animated series about Alaska?” Immediately we knew this had to be it, it was so clear how meaningful and special we could make this if we created it for all ages, not just for kids.

The Dream

We however, had no idea how to create an animated series, we only had one character, their universe/art style was ill defined, and we hadn’t the faintest notion on how we could achieve this goal. There would need to be steps in between our future dream of an animated series and where we were at the time.

We reached out to the illustration team that originally drew Adventure Bonnie, explained to them our vision, and that we needed to create at least 4 more characters.

We spent the next 4 months creating new characters. We consulted with real Alaskans, Alaska Natives, photographers, naturalists, and historians to not only create new characters but also define what their world would feel like. We drew inspiration from Adventure Time and My Neigh-

bor Totoro, and knew we wanted to have something with real places in Alaska as well as weaving in local mythology.

The Coloring Adventure Book & Plushie

As if the dream of having an animated series wasn’t impossible enough, we also had no idea how to create a coloring book or make a plushie. Yet these seemed so much more achievable at the moment so we started making calls and writing emails. We sourced manufacturers, consulted with experts, reviewed design concepts, chose high quality materials, and worked round the clock trying to create something new and meaningful.

Every scene was to be either a real place in Alaska or detailed wildlife designs ranging from the simplistic to the very challenging.

We learned a couple days before we would go to print that we could basically double our content in the book. This was great news, but it also meant I now had about one day to rewrite my simple two sentence stories on each page into now an entire book’s worth of flawless content in 32 hours.

The plushie was its own challenge as it takes about 6 months to complete if nothing goes wrong. Not only that, but we decided to have our first plushie incorporate an animal character we created named Hatcher The Pika.

What is a Pika?

They of course had no idea what it was when we were asking to be created and we eventually had to (after 6 failed prototypes) hire our actual illustration team to redesign it from scratch. Spoiler: As of today, we currently have the only cute Pika plushie available on planet Earth.

Taking The Risk

We eventually had in hand both prototypes, we knew they were so special, but we actually needed to take the risk of now buying them in massive quantities for equally massive amounts of money. Our team had several meetings basically asking each other in as many different ways as you can imagine “Should we do this, are we insane?!” until my partner Derek and I finally settled on pulling the trigger based on one sentence... “We know that these products are incredible, the only reason there is risk here is because we

have to work very hard to get them in front of people now.”

With that realization we spent a solid three weeks working 10-16 hours a day across three states checking and rechecking every inch of the content/prototyping.

We Actually Did It!

7,500 coloring books were coming, 2,000 plushies, and all we had to do was wait. We created a coloring adventure book featuring real Alaskan places/wildlife, along with all new characters, that is educational, beautiful, fun (with lots of surprises), activities, and had an amazing storyline to follow. We created a plushie featuring one of the rarest and most unknown animals on the planet that is a one of a kind creation.

We had no idea how to do any of this in February, but by September everything had arrived and was starting to show up in peoples hands all over the country.

It will be a challenge of course to learn how to sell them and continue to introduce these new characters/products to a whole new market, but we actually did it!

Again we aspire to have an animated series one day, but these two projects have put us on a path to making that reality come true.