Executive producer and supervising director Tom Warburton talks about his new animated musical kids’ series that follows 5-year-old Berti and her friends as they navigate the challenges of starting school for the very first time, debuting today on Disney Jr. and Disney Channel, tomorrow on Disney+.
For many years, Codename: Kids Next Door creator Tom Warburton had lived in the same neighborhood and become friends with fellow industry creatives and married couple Michelle Lewis and Charlton Pettus. Their kids started kindergarten together, continuing in the same class together all through grade school. But Warburton, Lewis and Pettus had never gotten the chance to work together on any animated project until now.
Kindergarten: The Musical follows 5-year-old Berti and her new friends as they navigate the experiences that come with starting school for the first time. The musical series premieres September 3 on Disney Jr. (8:00 a.m. EDT/PDT) and later that day on Disney Channel, with the first 10 episodes available on Disney+ September 4.
“A lot of these emotions and these stories came from real stories with our own kids, with ourselves and our writers,” says Warburton. “We were all just sitting together saying, ‘Oh, my kid went through this,’ or ‘This happened to me.’ Honestly, whether it’s kindergarten, school or work, we all just want to cry and go home at one time.”
Lewis and Pettus serve as series creators, executive producers and songwriters along with Kay Hanley and Dan Petty. Emmy Award-nominated producer Warburton serves as executive producer and supervising director. Humanitas Prize winner Laurie Israel (Sofia the First) is co-executive producer and story editor. The main title theme song is performed by Grammy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actress and singer Eva Noblezada. Oddbot Animation produces the series in association with Disney Jr.
The show highlights themes of self-expression, developing friendships, having confidence in social situations, cultivating teamwork and the importance of imaginative play, all told through the powerful mediums of animation and music.
“The EPs and musicians on the show, Michelle and Charlton, came up with the idea of, since kindergarten is this place with these big emotions and big feelings, what if it had all the drama of a stage musical?” shares Warburton. “Life is a musical anyway and the littlest problems can be solved with a song. And these kids are going through so many firsts: the first time they're out of the house all day, the first time they’re spending so much time with an adult that's not their parent or family member, the first time eating snacks in a strange place with all new people they've never seen.”
Lewis, along with musicians Hanley and Petty, wrote songs for preschool series like Doc McStuffins and Vampirina. The trio teamed up with Pettus, the touring guitarist and writer-producer with English pop rock band Tears for Fears. Together they wrote over 150 songs for this first season alone.
“When you’re a kid, you’re taught to sing and you’re taught to draw and at a certain point, they stop you, but everyone should be singing and drawing,” says Warburton. “I have a friend who puts out paper and pencils on the table before dinner and, after dinner, he and his family doodle. Some people are intimidated by that because they think they can’t draw but that’s not the point. It’s not a contest. Sitting down to draw, standing up to sing, it’s good for you.”
Filled with big, theatrical songs and dance numbers, the show, animated by Bangkok’s M2 Animation, occasionally switches from 3DCG created in Maya to 2D animation done in Toon Boom and Harmony. The swap indicates a shift in the characters’ imaginations, which offers them a platform to showcase their emotions.
“That idea came when I was first helping develop the show,” explains Warburton. “I thought, these kids have such big imaginations. Let's go travel with them into their imaginations and go to these great places. If they're learning about space in school, let's take them to outer space. If they're reading a picture book about a wonderful fairy land, let's have them go there. 2D just gave us so many more options like that.”
The show also features a diverse range of characters, staying true to what a typical school setting is like and sharing the honest experience of a child going from being with their own family all day to being launched into a much more colorful environment for many hours of the day.
“We wanted a diverse group of kids from all walks of life, because that's what school is,” says Warburton. “You're thrown into this classroom with all these people who are different from you. That's exciting and fun. But sometimes, it's a little scary. There's an episode where all the kids are bringing in food to share with the class and Bertie wants everyone to try her favorite Puerto Rican dish Arroz Con Gandules. But then she starts worrying, ‘What if everyone hates it?’ So, when we started coming up with these kids as characters, we really thought about where they came from and what their families were like.”
The crew worked with Disney Jr.’s Education Department to make sure that the show’s lesson plans in the classroom were correct and that cultures were represented accurately.
“Bertie’s mom is Puerto Rican, and her father is from the Dominican Republic,” notes Warburton. “Tej is Indian. Abigail is African American. It’s a wide-reaching group. We also had a dance choreographer to help us get certain steps right for these kids.”
But when a 3DCG show already hosts a diverse environment, adding in 2D animation, which would change the look of the characters again, could be overwhelming for kids who are still working on transitions and learning milestones.
That’s when the team had the idea of leaning into shape recognition.
“Our characters have big silhouettes and really defined hair shapes because we wanted their silhouettes to be recognizable to kids watching the show,” notes Warburton. “If you black out some of the biggest animation characters in history, you can still tell who they are. Ariel, Mickey Mouse, Woody from Toy Story, Mike from Monsters Inc, all these well-known characters are made up of very specific shapes that have become iconic. That concept was really important to me when we were designing our show’s characters, and when we were designing their wardrobe Tej is a big fan of dinosaurs and he wears a sweatshirt with this dinosaur tail, and he's got this big mop of hair. We wanted our characters to be instantly recognizable no matter what environment we out them in.”
Another transition-related challenge was figuring out how to move smoothly from dialogue to song without it being a jarring experience.
“We have curtain wipes that take us to scenes, which was easy to add in since this is a musical,” notes Warburton. “But going from Bertie telling her classroom about a trip she’s excited to take with her family, to then singing about it was a bit tricky. We ended up doing little tricks for those kinds of scenes. In this one, she starts dancing around the classroom and then we transition from her 3D feet to her 2D feet, and we have little sparkles and stars made with After Effects that sort of signal to our viewers, ‘We're going somewhere special, now.’ So, in that sense, having the added element of 2D actually simplified some things and made some transitions easier.”
While Warburton has worked on multiple kids’ series, from Frish Hooks to Muppet Babies, Kindergarten: The Musical has been an incredibly personal project for him and the whole production crew as they lay bare their children’s positive and negative experiences in school.
“And doing it with these songs… I know I keep harping on it, but the songs are so good,” says Warburton. “And they are very emotional. There’s a song called, ‘Look at Us Now’ that I get choked up just talking about. One of the kids, Radish, was having a hard day and tells his friends, ‘When I first came here, I was scared. I was hungry. I didn't know anyone. But look at us now. We did it. We got through our first day of school, and it was amazing. And this is just the first day.’ To be fair, I’m an easy cry. But I remember my son coming home with those stories.”
Kindergarten: The Musical was Warburton’s first time working with music to such a large degree on a children’s show.
“Usually there's just a song or two in an episode, but this has music throughout most of the story,” says Warburton. “In most preschool shows, the songs are a comment on the story. In this show, the songs really are the story. That made storyboarding it and designing around it, much more important. We had one storyboard artist per episode, and we also had song specialists who helped out, because one person can't do it all, especially in a classroom with nine kids. That's a lot of drawing. Our storyboard supervisor, Stephanie Alexander is just a song wizard. So, she would beat out the initial big beats of the songs and how they would look and how they're getting the points across.”
He adds, “It’s an assembly line process. When we’re writing the story, we’re thinking about the songs, and writers will leave instructions for the musicians. At the same time, the visuals are being designed and the musicians have two or three weeks to do three songs for each episode. It was a lot, but the team was hitting home runs every time.”
Having been in the kids’ entertainment industry since the 90s, beginning with Nickelodeon’s Doug, Warburton says the industry has leveled up over the years, producing better and better children’s content that has as much emotional support built into the fabric of the show as it does lessons for growth and development.
“The TV animation budgets were a lot smaller back then,” shares Warburton. “But Disney has always been aiming for quality. They're always pushing things up. And that's me. I'm always pushing, and I don't want to work on a show that's just trying to get by. Kindergarten: The Musical could have been a very weak show. But our team was so excited about it and, as parents, it was important to us to make this great.
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
