The
Story Behind our Children's Book
By Tom Hignite
Our Miracle Mouse children’s illustrated book began first as a potential story for an animated movie. As far back as my earliest childhood memories, I was fascinated with drawing and I particularly liked drawing the comic characters I read in the Sunday funny pages. In middle and high schools in Sussex, Wisconsin, I became the school newspaper’s political cartoonist. After attending art schools and various jobs, my path eventually led my wife Jacquie and I to design and build our own home. A few years later Jacquie and I opened our own home building company for which I created a cartoon mascot character named Miracle Mouse.
For several years, Miracle Mouse was just used in some of our printed brochure materials. Because a mouse is such a small character, he was the ideal character to appear inconspicuously in our advertising items. When we decided to begin doing television commercials, I wanted to create a traditional unique “signature” to end our television ads. I hired Karen Johnson Animation Studio near Racine to animate our Miracle Mouse mascot to close each commercial. Each ad ended with my family and me pictured on screen, as Miracle Mouse would carry our Miracle logo onto the bottom of the television screen. The problem was that most viewers remember seeing our family, but few viewers seemed to even notice little Miracle Mouse. Our solution was to try to have Miracle Mouse surprise the audience by doing different things (tripping, flying, etc..) to bring on our logo. I had wanted to have a full animated Miracle Mouse commercial made, but the costs exceeded six figures so it was not possible.
Eventually a Miracle Mouse commercial became our first project when our
advertising department expanded to include a few former Disney animators.
As our home business and our advertising department (now called Miracle
Studios) continued to succeed and grow, Miracle Mouse became the star
of two fully hand animated commercials and the idea of actually putting
Miracle Mouse into his own movie was now possible. I had an idea of what
I thought Miracle Mouse might do in a full movie. The storyline was simple
in overall concept. Miracle Mouse is the type of character who lights
up a room when he walks in. His over-the-top exuberance and optimism is
the exact opposite of another main character, named Cranky Crane. As his
name might imply, Cranky trusts no one and he goes through life thinking
the glass is half-empty. This pessimist happens to be Miracle Mouse’s
boss for a handyman-type construction company. The third main character
is Miracle Mouse’s co-worker beaver friend named Okey-Doky. He is
an innocent child-like fellow who you might call a lovable naïve
realist. In the story, we attempt to show the dynamics of how an optimist,
a pessimist, and a realist might all see the same problem and how they
all grow from understanding each other’s point of view. Below the
main storyline is the whole subject of whether miracles really do happen
and what you could view as religious undertones.
One
of the main goals for Miracle Homes was to be a business that would support
spreading positive (Christian) messages around the world. The home business
had attempted to do this by financially supporting over 20 Christian missionaries,
and placing positive messages of hope on local radio stations. The possibility
of reaching multitudes of children with uplifting stories of similar hope
was very appealing. What if a story could be created with the entertainment
value of a popular Disney-like animated film, and deliver a deeper message
to children. In a world where once innocent films like Cinderella, and
Bambi had now become largely computer-generated movies spiced with sexual
innuendo and body sounds, this seemed like a noble and worthwhile endeavor.
As the film story idea began to be story boarded and developed, a children’s book author (Stacey Kannenberg – Let’s Go To Kindergarten) visited our studio and encouraged the idea of refining our art and ideas into a children’s book. For the book we had to refine a somewhat long story, with various side stories, into a very shortened and simplified story that could be read to or by children in just a few minutes.
In
conjunction with the production of our animation, a local composer worked
to create a musical score that would capture the feeling of the classic
animated movies of the past and a few minutes of this music is included
on a CD, which is included inside each book. The music was performed in
front of a 36-piece full orchestra along with adult and children’s
choir. This music was actually done about three years ago and re-mixed
for our new project. Ries Graphics in Butler, Wisconsin printed the book
locally.
Now having largely completed the initial creation/development phase for the Miracle Mouse project, most all of our full-time studio staff has been layed-off or has left to either return to their out-of-state homes, or other studio work. Miracle Studios remains, however, as a growing outsource studio whereas talent is brought-in and staffed-up as needed to handle most any size project. We are still working on further final details of the Miracle Mouse project as well as taking on additional outside work for advertising, illustrations, and of course, animation.
Miracle
Mouse is now in the hands of an established Southern California producer,
and a noted published author who is working on scripting details. The
project is/will be shopped to potential investors who may provide the
needed funding to ultimately bring Miracle Mouse to the big (or little)
screen. Ultimately, it is these or other such “angel” investors
who will determine whether Miracle Mouse’s exuberant optimism will
ever get to be seen, enjoyed, and internalized by the worldwide public.
I hope you will got
to your local Milwaukee area bookstore, or stop by our January Home Builder’s
Expo booth at the Midwest Airline Center, to pick up a copy of our book
and CD. The official title is Miracle Mouse: Cranky’s Miracle.