THE STORY OF THE ELFISHKI START UP
CONTENTS
* About Elka Palka Production *
* For publishers and consumer goods producers *
* Contact us *
Once upon a time, in a small town of Nevinnomyssk in Southern Russia, there lived an artist named Inessa Kirianova.
She was an illustrator, and she drew beautiful pictures for books and games. One day she created a set of adorable fairy tale characters. Her three children loved her new creations, but nobody knew yet who these creatures were.
On the other side of the planet, in the city of Los Angeles in Southern California, USA, lived an author named Elvira Baryakina.
She wrote historical novels, and Inessa created book covers for Elvira’s books.
One day Inessa and Elvira talked via Skype about their serious book business, then suddenly the subject changed to sharing funny stories about their children. Inessa sent Elvira the images of her fairy tale characters, and Elvira decided to write a story about them. Not just one, but a whole series. That is how in the middle of the Sparkling Sea, the magical Rainbow Island and its inhabitants were born.
Pavel Mamaev also lived in Los Angeles. He knew a lot about computers, iPads, and programming. Also, he loved to play with his son and read good children’s books to him. Pavel took a look at Inessa’s fairy tale characters and read the stories Elvira had written. “If we can make these tales appear on the iPad, that would really be cool,” he said.
Inessa, Elvira, and Pavel decided to call their little characters Elfishki. It sounds like a weird magical name, but if you look closely, you can notice Elfishki is composed of the “elf” and “fish” words. It fits perfectly, since some of Elfishki resemble magical elves, and some can swim like a fish.
The work had started. It was necessary to write new fairy tale stories, find new illustrators, make animated pictures, record music and sound effects so that all of this could be converted into iPad applications. Also Elfishki needed great-looking videos and a beautiful website.
New people joined the team:
Vitaly Kuznetsov, an animator from Ramenskoe, Moscow region, Russia
Andrey Kolodkin, an illustrator from Magnitogorsk, Russia
Max Sozonov, a composer and sound engineer from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Tatiana Kotik, a web designer from Moscow, Russia
Eugene Garber, a programmer from Bielefeld, Germany
Also, there are Dmitry Gavrilov, an illustrator from Smolensk; Anna Muzychka and Benjamin Kuttner, translators from New Zealand; sound engineer Satrio Utomo from Indonesia; and Alexey Blokhin, a programmer from Ukraine. We are still waiting for their pictures for our website.
When the first Elfishki story hit the iTunes Store, the children of all the contributors looked at the results and gave their parents an A+ for their job. And the creators realized that to be a kids' storyteller is the best job in the world.
The End
