Working on an educational project is not the same as working on a traditional animation project. The differences, say Animation Mentor alumni who have worked on such projects, are both obvious and subtle.

Several Animation Mentor alumni worked on a series of animated shorts for Sesame Street's Abby's Flying Fairy School. The shorts were produced by Westfield, N.J.-based SpeakeasyFX and featured a CG animated version of the Muppet character Abby Cadabby, as well as several new characters. This was the first time a Muppet character had been done in 3D CG animation.

"With educational animation, some of the restrictions are a little different," says Jacob Kalsbeek, who worked as an animator on the project. "Sesame Street would say, ‘with this episode we're teaching kids about patterns and they need to be very simple patterns because our target age group is ages 3 to 5.'"

The process of animating the project was familiar to the Animation Mentor graduates, because the school is taught in a production-style environment. Animators were assigned individual shots and had a handful of days in which to complete them. Those quick deadlines were a challenge for the Animation Mentor students, but they embraced the opportunity to improve their workflow.

"In the matter of a couple of days, we had to take a shot from nothing to the final version," says animator Laura Nattam, who blogged extensively about her experience on the show. "We had to create all the character blocking of any body mechanics, any acting choices, facial expressions, dialogue – all of that had to be blocked out, animated and polished all in a few days."

One advantage in working so quickly was that the characters were based on Muppets and had to move and speak like Muppets. "Getting the lip sync was a little easier as they only use open and closed mouths," says animator Kevin Worth. "That kind of took a little bit of the heat off, but at the same time we're still trying to make the motions look somewhat 'Muppety' and somewhat alive at the same time."

The animators worked from storyboards and had a certain amount of freedom to do their own thing.

"The director would show us the storyboards, which Sesame Street dictates are very tight. But within that there's a lot of give and take," says Kalsbeek. "There are certain things you need to get across and it's real important to pay attention to those. If every animator has a different idea on what the story is, when you put it all together it just isn't there."

Nattam says it was helpful to have plenty of reference material, especially on the lead character, Abby Cadabby, who has appeared as a live-action Muppet on Sesame Street. "We had a few years' worth of filmed material, like live action material, to observe to get to know her character," she says. "We also got to meet [puppeteer] Leslie [Carrara-Rudolph] and the puppet Abby in person to get a better feel for her, to convey her into the animated world."

Nattam says the characters have distinct personalities, and the series has its own style that each shot needed to match. "These characters are designed to be very animated and curious," she says. "They have very uninhibited and very innocent, childlike improvisational gestures. The way these characters think and emote are really social and they are meant to evoke responses from the child watching along and learning."

Kalsbeek agrees that Sesame Street took the characters seriously and expected the animators to do the same. "They're very concerned about how you treat the characters, and very concerned about the educational process," say Kalsbeek. "There are times where you want to do things with the characters and they say, ‘no, we're trying to teach kids a pattern.'"

That limited some of the fun bits that animators often enjoy sneaking into their shots. "Some of our animators were definitely more dare devilish than others and they peppered in these hilarious inside jokes and subtle pop culture references, and they added a lot of flavor to the show," says Nattam. "But of course we had to watch very carefully what we were saying with characters' actions because you know, after all, we're a part of this educational media powerhouse that has won over parents and their children for four decades. So we had to make sure we were doing it the right way."

Animator Brad Regier said there was a need to balance the educational aspect with the entertainment value. "There was always a teaching moment where the story would get to a point where, ‘now it's time to teach about numbers,'" he says. "It kind of comes in the writing of the scripts. Some of my favorite scripts were really good, and the teaching moment was kind of transparent."

"A counter example might be one episode where the teaching moment came and it was pretty boring," says Regier. "The challenge there is how to make it interesting. What we tried to do was add a character moment in there."

Animation Mentor alumnus Jonathan Wondrusch worked on a different project, a police education series called Rainbow Valley, and said his experience was similar. "There has to be some entertainment to keep kids interested, but it has to be educational as well," says Wondrusch.

"It was interesting to see what would work and what wouldn't," he said. "It's not as glamorous as films or games, but I enjoyed it."

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Thomas J. Mclean is a freelance writer in Los Angeles who covers the entertainment industry with a particular focus on animation, visual effects and comic books. His blog, Bags and Boards, can be found at http://bagsandboards.blogspot.com/.