Pukeko Pictures

07/04/2023

Join me live online for a casual chat! I'm Martin Baynton, author of the Jane and the Dragon books, and I'd love to connect with readers like you.

Ask me anything in the live chat - nothing is off limits! We'll discuss my stories, art, inspiration and what a typical day is like writing children's books.

This will feel like we're sharing tea together as I answer your burning questions and share behind-the-scenes tales.

Hope to see you there, Martin

30/01/2023

💡 It's time to upgrade your office! As part of our office downsizing, a variety of office furniture and equipment is now available for sale on TradeMe. All items are pickup only.

Check it out:

Listings from ppgp, on Trade Me, New Zealand's leading shopping website.

19/01/2023

We're incredibly excited to announce the exclusive launch of the Book Hungry Bears Roblox experience. The team has done a stunning job of recreating the gorgeous look of the TV show in Roblox and to create delightful mini-games that you can share with your little ones.

We'd love to hear about your Roblox experience: what conversations did it spark, what's missing, what's the most fun, what works, what doesn't. Leave a comment or drop us a message!

But most of all, have fun!

Explore the Book Hungry Bears experience on Roblox now: https://www.roblox.com/games/12126119524/Book-Hungry-Bears

17/01/2023

Get ready to join Crystal, Boomer, Melody, and Scout on their book-hunting adventures in the magical paper-crafted world of the Book Hungry Bears on Roblox! 📚🐻🌳

11/12/2022

Quickly Slowly Day, a new story written by Martin Baynton and illustrated by Rob Foote.

https://store.pukekopictures.com/products/quickly-slowly-day

07/12/2022

Fifi Colston with her two new books, Where's My Stick? and The Last Crayon. Both available on our online store.

You can find more of Fifi's work on her website: https://fificreative.com

Fifi Colston Creative

07/12/2022

Did you know you can now walk around the castle in Roblox?

Check it out: https://janeandherdragon.com/q-and-a-event

06/12/2022

Long hair has always been one of the hardest things to , especially in 2005 👩

04/12/2022

The dynamic and realistic clothing from made back in 2005!

30/11/2022

"Every frame should look like a pencil drawing"

29/11/2022

🎥 Motion capture from Jane and the Dragon

Would you do this job?

27/11/2022

I took some practice but I think we can all agree dragon mastered this landing!

23/11/2022

Just your average afternoon nap, right?

22/11/2022

"I'm a dragon not a sparrow"

17/11/2022

The books you loved in are printed! Together with our publisher, Little Steps we are bringing them to the world.

We have set up an online store to help you browse the whole collection & find a retailer near you.

https://store.pukekopictures.com/collections/book-hungry-bears

Have any questions? Drop a comment or send us a DM.

15/11/2022

Our team are pushing the limits on what is possible inside of ! This shared story experience from Book Hungry Bears is playing in the Pūkeko Valley Roblox server.

We invite you to check it out: https://www.roblox.com/games/10300478736/P-keko-Valley

What one of our shows would you like to see in Roblox next?

02/09/2022

Martin starting the Q&A event.

21/08/2022

Join Martin Baynton, the creator of Jane and the Dragon, live for this Q&A (ask me anything) event. We will be meeting at the castle inside of Pūkeko Pictures Metaverse and doing a tour while answering questions submitted by you all! To submit a question use the form on our website here: https://janeandherdragon.com/ama-questions. More updates will be posted here on our Facebook event & page as well as sent out to our email list: https://janeandherdragon.com/subscribe

21/08/2022

9 hours to go!

We're having a quick sleep here in New Zealand before coming to you live for our Q&A event @ 8.30 am.

All the details for joining are on our website:
https://janeandherdragon.com/q-and-a-event

Also – for those who wish to join us in game, our Roblox server is now open https://www.roblox.com/games/10300478736/P-keko-Valley

Can’t wait to see you all on our live.

Q&A EventMONDAY, AUGUST 22, AT 8:30 AM (NZT) — SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, AT 8:30 PM (UTC)Join Martin Baynton, the creator of Jane and the Dragon, live for this Q&A (ask me anything) event. We will be meeting at the castle inside of Pūkeko Pictures Metaverse and doing a tour while answering questions sub...

19/08/2022

A sneak peak at Jane's world built in !

31/07/2022

Hey Friends!

We are getting close to the end of our story. Have you been reading along with DragonBlade?

You can read the first eight chapters online now:
https://janeandherdragon.com/chapters/chapter-one-breakfast-with-friends

The sun waited below the horizon, the eastern sky a delicate pink. Another hot day was coming. The royal family were still asleep, their windows closed to the cacophony of castle life. In the distance, gulls cried as they greeted the fishing boats arriving at the wharf with their overnight catch. Cl...

15/06/2022

Dragonblade is a new Jane and the Dragon novel. We are publishing each chapter online every week or so.

http://janeandherdragon.com

What do you think of the story so far?

His series, Jane And The Dragon, first published by Walker Books in 1988 has become a modern classic and was developed for TV.

20/03/2022

Getting it Wrong is … Right!

An important ingredient of learning is to be able to celebrate the discoveries that come from participating, and having the courage to participate means having the courage to make mistakes.
We wanted SpottyWot to be our champion for this. SpottyWot makes up wonderful imaginative pictures based on incomplete information. He doesn’t wait for certainty and he isn’t afraid that he will be judged for getting something wrong, quite the reverse, he bursts into laughter when he discovers what an animal actually looks like, how it differs from his imaginative drawing.
So in the show we have the discovery of facts, the delight at uncovering new information. We learn, for instance, what an elephant’s trunk is really used for. But we also learn that it is fun to imagine what else that trunk might be for, and that exploring alternatives doesn’t have to be about getting something right or wrong, that there is creative fun to be had along the way.

It is the same for DottyWot. She will sometimes offer a hypothesis before she sets out to investigate something, she knows that by investigating she will prove or disprove an idea, but she is not afraid of making a suggestion early on before she has complete information. In the show our WotWots are relaxed and comfortable about presenting an idea even if it might prove wrong, because in the show we model the response to that, the narrator is never critical or judgemental, on the contrary, he applauds their participation at every turn. There is no creativity without the courage to make mistakes.

- Martin Baynton, Co-Creator.
Originally written for the websites blog.

14/03/2022

Celebrating Wildlife

In the last few decades, wildlife documentaries have highlighted the terrible plight of animals and the wholesale destruction of many unique habitats. I applaud the message of these programs with all my heart, as a species we continue to behave with a ruthless disregard for the long term viability of the ecosystem and the impact we are having on the creatures who share the world with us.
As adults this is our burden, a burden we must address, but we must be careful not to make shows for very young preschool children that are top heavy with this message. We must make shows that celebrate the joy and diversity of wildlife so children can be in awe of it without confusion or pain. We need a generation of children to grow up with the freedom to love animals unconditionally, not children who shrink away from animal programs because they are too painful to watch. Once they get to an age where they feel empowered to do something, then we can and must present the conservation issues.

With the WotWots I made an editorial decision to have stories that celebrate the joy and diversity of wildlife without any reference to the plight of animals. We need our very young preschool children to grow up with an innocent, carefree passion for wildlife and that starts with celebration and wonderment, not hand wringing. So now that the show is on air around the world, we wanted to find an international wildlife organisation we could support who shared this approach. We chose the Earth Rangers because even though their focus is on a slightly older age group, they take a similar guilt free stance. Their message is that all children can be Earth Rangers and can help look after the planet on behalf of all wildlife. We have begun working with them to see how the WotWots can support their work and how we can create age appropriate wildlife messaging for pre-schoolers.

- Martin Baynton, Co-Creator.
Originally written for the websites blog.

06/03/2022

Why the Hover Chairs?

When the show first aired we had several comments about the chairs and exercise. The comments were well intentioned and questioned the appropriateness of our little heroes sitting in chairs instead of walking around. If the show was aimed at four year olds and above we would have taken a different approach, but it’s aimed at children aged 1.5 to 3yrs and encouraging this age group to get out of chairs and walk around is not an issue, in fact it can be the reverse; asking them to sit still in a chair for more than two minutes can be a real challenge.

The key factor that went into the decision to have hover chairs was developmental. At this age children are still learning the language of visual storytelling, the editing and cutting that we all take for granted. If our show was for an older age group we could have DottyWot seeing an animal through the periscope and then we could cut to a shot of her arriving at the enclosure, they would accept that a little piece of time had been snipped out and our view of the story had jumped to the next important moment. But our younger audience would not; they would see this as two DottyWots, one in the ship and one outside. The convention of cutting and jumping units of time is something we learn slowly in these early years. So in the WotWots all the narrative beats in a sequence are shown. The WotWots will spot an animal through the periscope, they will open the ships hatch, we see them leave the ship, and we have a short ‘travelling’ moment as they zoom through the zoo and only THEN do we see them arrive at the enclosure.

But the show is only ten minutes long so we needed to give the WotWots the means to zip quickly through the zoo. The hover chairs were dreamed up by our wonderful design team to be safe child centric vehicles that our audience would instantly understand. And on the issue of exercise and health we address those directly in some of the episodes, and I will cover those in a future blog. Now, as I approach the other end of the age spectrum, I would really love a WotWot hoverchair myself, the ultimate mobility scooter for scaring dogs and traffic on my way to the corner store.

- Martin Baynton, Co-Creator.
Originally written for the websites blog.

23/02/2022

“Show, Don’t Tell.”
Core values are demonstrated throughout the series, they are not preached. Our lead characters have a spirited sibling relationship that is seen to be rock solid because of their demonstrable love, respect and admiration for each other.
They display respect, affection, support, honesty, empathy and compassion, but these values are the constant foundation of their behavior, we do not usually single out a specific value as the focus of a story. A value only becomes a theme element if one of the characters, usually SpottyWot, acts in a way that is counter to this ongoing backdrop of positive behavior. We will then demonstrate a specific change in attitude. But this is usually a secondary storyline, and we don’t slam it home with a hammer, and the ‘wake up’ is always delivered as a comedic moment.

21/02/2022

"Everyone here on the creative team set out to make something with heart and passion that we could pour our talents into and take great pride in, but as the scripts and storyboards and then the characters themselves started to take shape, there was this mysterious evolutionary process that writers often talk about – a moment when the characters are no longer ideas, but become independent of their creators with identities that outgrow their initial descriptions. They morph from interesting placeholder personalities into real characters who start to dictate their performances to the whole team. That moment came early when the director said to one of the writers – no, SpottyWot would never do that. And we all knew it, the whole team suddenly knew exactly how SpottyWot would respond to the problem he encountered in the script. And from that moment on the WotWots became members of our family, and it became a joy to work with them every day. They were alive to us and we started to believe in them and want the best for them, and like a large extended community of parents we started to worry about them, would they be loved when they stepped out into the world, would they be accepted for who they were given a chance to be all they could be.
If no-one liked them there would be no second series, we would never get to work with them again and they would never have all the adventures we were starting to imagine for them. So it was a very nervous collective of parents who watched as their children went to air around the world. It’s hard to express the mix of relief and thrill that we experienced as the WotWots received their first wonderful reviews. They were off into the wide world on the start of their big adventure. And now here we are, they are loved around the world and we have had the joy of making a second series with them.
Bye bye for now, and I’ll be back with a new blog very soon."

-- Martin Baynton, Co-Creator.
Originally written for the websites blog.

07/12/2021

! Check this out…

We are heading into the holiday season and to celebrate we are running a ! 🎄

We have made packs of WotWots & Kiddets merch to give to 3 lucky winners (drawn in a post next week.)

To enter:
📍 Share our post
📍 Comment your favourite WotWots or Kiddets moments

🇳🇿 This giveaway is New Zealand only.