published on August 11, 2024 in Star Power

Kote Kitty, Blue Tractor, and Kukutiki are going global: Creator of popular toddler animations share

The projects’ creator works to ensure that children worldwide learn to sing, count, and love nutritious vegetables alongside his characters.

Arthur Dneprovsky, Creative Producer and Founder of the production studio BigPapa, reveals how to create popular storylines, find a common language with toddlers, and overcome challenges posed by modern YouTube algorithms. His company currently manages 16 successful YouTube channels.

Audience Development

Arthur, the popularity of your content has expanded far beyond your original audience in the CIS region. Your English and Spanish “Kote Kitty” channels gained over 3.5 million combined subscribers in less than a year. How did you achieve this?

“The numbers first and foremost confirm that we understand the interests of our target audience—viewers from one to five years old. The songs we create in the original Russian language are also well-received in adaptations. The storytelling clearly shows what’s happening on the screen, even without dialogue. Plus, our main characters are universal: animals and vehicles.

Furthermore, I believe that children, whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, share more or less the same interests. And their parents deal with the same tasks —teaching their toddlers basic things, like how to count to ten, distinguishing between round and square, different colors, and so on. We do not touch upon any highly social issues. As a result, we don't have to make significant changes to our content.”

Do you plan to promote your content in the global market or to focus on specific regions?

“It is definitely interesting to catch the world’s attention. We have these ambitions, and have already seen good results: our videos are popular in India, the United States, Spain, Germany, and other countries. We strive to cover the most widely spoken languages. Currently, we are working in the English-speaking market. We also plan to start releasing content in Chinese and Arabic languages.

Sometimes, we are asked to adapt our videos for a specific country. For example, representatives of the Mongolian diaspora approached us with a proposal to translate “Blue Tractor" to Mongolian. They were even willing to take care of all the work themselves because it was so important to them.”

Why did you choose the age range of 1 to 5 for your target audience? Do you have any plans to expand it so that viewers stay with you for years?

“It's simple. Around four to five years old, children's habits in consuming content change. Before this age, they tend to rewatch the same videos. If you give a child a choice between a familiar and a new video, they will most likely choose the one they've already seen. As they age, things change.

We earn revenue from views. Therefore, it is more advantageous for us to create content that will be rewatched many times. I don't see the point in ‘growing up with the audience.’ However, I admire my older colleagues in the industry, such as large American studios who have managed to stay with their target audience for years.”

Cuteness and Action

What do you believe are the key components of a high-quality children's video?

“At the core, there should always be engaging storytelling and a compelling narrative. Even in the case of a music video, it's not enough for simple visual transitions. Our videos combine entertainment and education.

The second important aspect is the characters on screen. I apply the criterion of ‘cuteness’ to them. The heroes must be endearing and lovable—something toddlers would want to hold and hug. With cuteness, intuition is key. The third criterion is also crucial: the frequency of scene changes in the video. Children's attention spans have shortened in recent years, and they seek dynamic content. No slow-building plots.

Finally, the song should be memorable and enjoyable while conveying a positive message. An indicator of quality is when a parent writes to us saying that their child has started asking for vegetables every day thanks to our song about vegetables.

However, all of this cannot be measured with a ruler. If any producer had found a formula for the perfect film or cartoon, they would be churning them out one after another.”

How are your characters and plots created? What is your role in this process?

“I am usually the author of ideas. All of our projects start with my scripts. Once they move from the pilot stage to regular production, I delegate the scriptwriting to a team. However, I continue to serve as the Director and Creative Producer on all of our projects.

All the content I work on is music-driven. I have a background in music school, and my professional ear helps me identify which compositions will be melodic and pleasant. The content has to be something that I would want to show my own children.

Perhaps the most prominent example is the song "The Tractor Is Coming” (“In the fields”, the English version). The idea behind the song was to teach children how animals communicate. It quickly gained views (now reaching over 1,2 billion). I believe that in this case, it was a combination of my creative qualities and the possibilities offered by YouTube. The song attracted hundreds of fans and followers, and many attempts were made to copy it.

I also had a collection of simpler songs that did not fit the format of "Blue Tractor," where we used interactive game elements. So I created "Kote Kitty" (Kitten Koté), where this material blended in seamlessly. The inspiration for the character came from the "Koté" meme that became popular in 2012. Then the idea arose to have live children singing our songs on camera, and that's how "Kukutiki" came to be. (The Russian word "kukutiki" does not have a direct translation. It is often affectionately used by parents to refer to their little ones).

It is important for me to inspire my team members and ignite them with the right emotions for their work. We simplify some stages of content creation, such eliminating storyboard creation. Instead, I describe in text step-by-step what should be in each frame to the animator. Usually, the process of creating one episode takes a couple of weeks. We cannot afford to delay. We need a lot of content. Ideally, we release a video on our channel every one to two weeks.”

Who is your benchmark in the global animation market?

From the very beginning, I have relied on my own taste and intuition. There is no point in competing with major studios like Disney or Pixar without the same budgets, skills, and teams. But at the same time, I didn't want to imitate the non-commercial art-house animation popular in Japanese culture. It has been more interesting to come up with something of our own.

If we ever drew inspiration from other projects, it was certainly unconsciously. But they say ideas are in the air. Sometimes the same project is created by different authors in different parts of the world without any coordination.

We turn to the experience of our colleagues mostly when we need technical references. For example, we had long wanted to create an episode of "Blue Tractor" where the vehicles would drive through the mud. After all, it is known that children love to play and mess around in the mud. The script was written, but we couldn't figure out how to animate the mud. Rain, dust, and similar effects are considered difficult in animation. They can cost up to five times more than the entire episode. I was very impressed by how these elements were depicted in a Korean animated film that I stumbled upon during a flight. Everything was done simply and visually, just as it should be for little ones. My colleagues and I took note of it.”

Youtube Recommendations

Animation is traditionally considered an expensive production. How much does one episode cost you?

“Cost depends on the complexity of the animation and its duration. The range is approximately between 300,000 to 700,000 rubles per video (around $3,500 - $8,500 USD). We don't have a big investor behind us. We’ve earned money gradually as our popularity grew.

Many can create a successful project with a huge budget. But consistently producing successful content with a limited budget, without descending into something primitive—that's the real challenge.

I have an internal term for it: ‘guerrilla production.’ Meaning simple ideas that don't cost much to implement but result in explosive success.”

What is your promotion strategy? How much have you invested in advertising?

“We have never spent anything on promotion, instead growing solely through organic reach. We earn money through monetization on online platforms, and the cost of advertising on those platforms is higher than the potential revenue. Therefore, our only task is to create a project that is highly demanded by the online audience.

Here lies the main challenge. We are at the mercy of YouTube's algorithms. They constantly change, introduce new metrics, and raise the quality requirements. The most important indicator today is audience retention. If a new video on the channel fails to hold viewers' attention, it reduces the channel's viewership and stops being recommended.

So, it's better to not upload anything on the channel than to upload a poor video. On the other hand, YouTube doesn't forgive inactivity either. If you take a break, your channel will fade into obscurity due to passiveness. That's why you need to keep producing content consistently.

The bar is raised by studios that come to YouTube with big budgets. They release new animations every other day—15 episodes per month! That scale is currently unattainable for us.”

Outside the Screen

Your cinematic projects are also available on Kinopoisk, Start, and Premier, and your music is featured on Apple Music, Google Play, and Spotify. What about your content is appealing to these major platforms?

“It's worth noting that YouTube is an extremely competitive environment. If a project survives on YouTube and gains the interest of millions, it will undoubtedly be in demand on any other platform or TV channel. I believe this logic is followed by the platforms mentioned when they approach us with collaboration offers.

We don't have to initiate it. We focus on the content, and everything else happens naturally. Perhaps that's how it should be: if a project is good, platforms themselves will want to feature it. From there, we carefully choose whom we collaborate with. But our main task is to produce a lot of high-quality content and constantly improve it.”

What other projects are your characters integrated into and what are your plans for expanding their presence?

“We constantly sell licenses for the use of our songs in different projects. This primarily applies to the songs of "Blue Tractor." The character itself and the songs have been widely replicated, becoming viral. They have appeared in evening broadcast shows, as well as on social media platforms; predominantly TikTok.

We often receive collaboration offers from major brands. For example, we created a music video with Colgate, where each of our characters took turns teaching children how to brush their teeth. We have had integrations with oil and airline companies as well.

I strive to expand our presence in the global market. The characters will not only live on the screen; we plan to promote our merchandise, including toys and children's items. We aim to enter into agreements with global leaders in the production of these goods.”

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