Hi!

We are Robin and Judith, the creators of “Windy & friends”. Thank you so much for visiting our website. If you stop by our blog, you’ll find crafts, patterns and recipes. Please come by and say hi!

Both of us are moms of young children and book designers. Often, we design children’s books. We are also old friends. For the past two years, we’ve been working with an amazing team of stop-motion animators and extremely clever interactive designers and programmers to bring our original series of children’s books Windy, to life in an exciting new series of apps. These apps will be released on iTunes beginning this October as a series of appisodes.

“We are inspired by all sorts of things, but especially by nature, our children and the everyday objects around us.”

We are inspired by all sorts of things, but especially by nature, our children and the everyday objects around us, which we like to imagine in new ways. Could a pencil be a telephone pole? Could a potato be a beaver? We love to make things and to tell stories, but we also like to have a good laugh. We believe the fun of crafting is in the process and not a perfect result.

Putting together these apps has been incredibly fun and incredibly challenging. We feel so lucky to be working on them. To our amazement, when you touch our characters through the screen of a tablet or phone, they now come to life! They can rollerskate, get bonked on the head by a pear or try on halloween costumes. As they do, they teach us things and make us laugh. They help our kids learn colours, counting and music (not to mention big things that they won’t even know they’re learning, like how to acknowledge and help someone’s fears). We can’t wait to see Tulip the Buffalo ice skating on his homemade paperclip ice-skates (appisode 5).

As moms and as designers, it’s important to us that our apps serve a purpose in the world of a child. We don’t see them as books, but as educational toys. It is important to us that each story conveys a warm, homemade feeling to children. In our workshops with children in schools, we’ve found that classes are very excited and inspired to create their own books and movies when they see our funny dioramas. “I can do that,” they say, and they are right! It’s also important to us that each story is gentle and kind and about the importance of making our own fun and working together.

“As moms and designers, it’s important to us that our apps serve a purpose in the world of a child. We don’t see them as books, but as educational toys.”

We owe a special thank-you to our producers at TwoFold Films and Sheepnoir Films and to the team at Loud Crow!

We hope you enjoy your visit to our website, your interaction with one of our apps, or just walking outside and admiring a leaf that looks like a turtle.

xo Robin & Judith

robin mitchell cranfield and judith steedman

Ps. here are some features of the app — just saying them out loud makes us feel quite fancy:

· Groundbreaking mix of handcrafted stop-motion animation with innovative interaction and cinematics
· Touch, tilt and drag the screen to explore the world of Windy & friends
· Original music, narration, and sound effects
· Three reading modes included for your enjoyment: Read to Me, Read Myself, and Autoplay
· Language support in English and French; toggle languages on-the-fly
· Musical Soundboard allows reader to play instruments with Windy and her friends
· Visual Word Map promotes word association in both languages
· “Parents only” area safely separates adult controls from child-friendly content