PBS KIDS is increasing its list of digital offerings for curious young people with the announcement of a new interactive series: Team Hamsters! Hailing from GBH Kids (formerly WGBH), the production is led by creator Melissa Carlson, Senior Producer, Digital Series for the studio; and Marcy Gunther, Senior Producer, Video.
Team Hamsters! help children think creatively and use engineering skills to solve problems with everyday tools. This interactive digital series allows viewers to build, test and redesign to save the day with hamsters Sadie, Mateo and Tasha - pets by day in the classroom, secret engineers by night. Users enter the world of hamsters through animated stories integrated with games. Stories create problems that children help solve by playing using simple machines, tools and creative thinking. Little hamsters show children that "big or small, they can solve everything!"
Team Hamsters!
This digital series explores a “game-first” production model, with characters inspired by a game in The Ruff Ruffman Show, story ideas from game concepts, and a bespoke design and animation pipeline for games. Team Hamsters! it integrates video and gameplay, with video acting as a narrative driver for games, creating compelling, character-driven problems that kids can solve.
The world of stories includes three interactive games (via the PBS KIDS Games app) and five videos (PBS KIDS Video app) designed to teach players engineering and design skills in a way that is recognizable to children. The solutions to the problems presented throughout the digital series involve simple materials, tools and machines that children can see in the world around them. Printable activities support the development of children's art skills while helping players connect with characters from the digital series for continuous “off-screen” learning. Families will also be able to access printable activities via pbskids.org.

Team Hamsters!
Games:
- Powerful painters: Players help the hamsters fix paintings that Janitor Ruff accidentally messed up. This STEAM-centric game teaches players simple machines, using gears, ramps, springs and pulleys to create different shapes. Players can help complete existing graphics or create their own art in Free Play mode.
- Roll to the Rescue: Players help the hamsters roll through a dozen mazes to find their favorite things before Janitor Ruff throws them away. Players use simple machines to help them reach high places and get to the end of each maze. They can navigate hamster mazes or create their own.
- Splash Dash: Janitor Ruff left a bunch of leaking pipes all over the school, and the players help the hamsters redirect the water, so the school doesn't flood. Players use tools such as a funnel, stapler, and even a clock, to creatively move water around the library, canteen and hallway.
Independent videos:
- Bubble Trouble: When Janitor Ruff turns on the dishwasher in the teachers' lounge, he accidentally uses too much soap and the hamsters must find a way to clean up the giant mess.
- Fix it all: Tasha, Sadie and Mateo sing about the design process as they test different ways to recover an accidentally misplaced Janitor Ruff special art project.

Team Hamsters!
PBS KIDS also announced a second season of GBH Kids' Scribbles and Ink (Scribbles and ink), the original digital interactive character-based series that allows children to discover the absolute joy of using artistic tools to make their way through an adventure, based on the famous books and characters created by author-illustrator Ethan Long. The friendly duo's artistic adventures have garnered 8,4 million plays since launch and became one of the top three most played PBS KIDS games of the year.
In the second season, children draw, paint and create collages through fantastic new animated adventures - in the clouds, in museum paintings, on a desert island, in the entertainment world of Snoogleandia - where art is made in unexpected ways, mediums including sand, bubbles, polka dots, scratch cards and more. The new episodes not only provide new digital art tools that allow users to expand their artistic and creative horizons, but also new ways to interact and collaborate with Scribbles and Ink in the studio, including allowing users to draw throughout the story, too. while the animation is playing.
Key Features:
- To draw - The main screen is a "blank page" where players start the Scribbles and Ink Experience. In this space, players encounter Scribble and Ink, then choose what to do next: (1) Draw and interact with Scribble and Ink. (2) Look at the art they have saved in the gallery. (3) Throw yourself into one of the stories that blend interactive art and animated storytelling.
- video - Independent videos feature Scribbles and Ink (1) discovering how many ways they can turn a giant ball of yarn into art, (2) figuring out how to fix things after a disagreement (which tears their studio in half!), (3) do a mad dash in the magical kingdom of Snoogeland.
- Printable activities Promote offline art marking with Doodling and Ink-specific drawing instructions; now available in Spanish (pbskids.org).
Available via the PBS KIDS Games app, Scribbles and ink is produced by Emmy and Peabody Award winner Marisa Wolsky, Children's Media executive producer at GBH, and Emmy winner Dave Peth.
Go to the source of the article on www.animationmagazine.net