KNOXVILLE, Tenn — A South Knoxville animation studio creates children's programming that's fun and educational. Their shows connect letters and sounds for beginning readers.
The local company is taking a big leap onto the national stage through streaming video on demand.
A former teacher and tutor takes her love of learning from the audio booth to an animated episode.
Cathy Vangieri is the voice of Miss Cathy and also the Content Director for Children's Media Studio in South Knoxville. The animation studio produces a letter-learning series for preschoolers called Sing and Spell.
"This is the beginning of their reading journey. And when you can read you can learn how to do anything. It just unlock the world," Cathy Vangieri said. "The series is called Sing and Spell and it's an animated series and it features lessons and original songs which were composed by an amazing song writer, Mark Radice who has worked with Jim Henson on the Muppet television shows and then did many seasons writing songs for Sesame Street."
Todd Carter takes care of the animation. He's an experienced director and producer who now uses software to create the characters on his computer.
He enjoys the creative control.
"As long as I'm here I can make everything happen. So I can move this here and move that there and make this person say that as long as I have the audio. So it's a lot of fun at the same time," Todd Carter said. "I get to be creative and create and at the same time we're helping kids learn how to read. And it's fun."
This Christmas episode is on Amazon Prime right now.
The ad-supported Sing and Spell series is on a Roku Channel and expects to expand distribution to other streaming services.
They series includes the vowel sounds, counting one through 10, opposites, colors and jokes.
"Over the years it's been, ok, we've got all this content. What are we going to do with it? Well, we need to put it episodic segments so it can air on Tv and with all the streaming stuff nowadays," he said. "We just keep the momentum going and creating more content then we'll just keep having fun."
It's fun with a purpose.