Five Questions with Gilly, creator of The Day Henry Met...

1. Congratulations on your nomination for 'Best Director of an Animated Series' in The Irish Animation Awards. How has it felt to see The Day Henry Met… become so popular?

Henry has won several Irish and international awards in the last four years but it's always nice to get nominated in your home country.  We can't believe Henry is now watched in 178 countries worldwide, thats millions of preschoolers who sit down and watch Henry daily. 

 
2. What is the process when creating the TV show? Do you start with drawings before the animation takes place? 

I write the scripts first, then we do designs, storyboards and the voice recordings. Only after every detail is worked out 100% do we start animating. There's a lot of prep work done before an episode even gets to the animators as animation production is very labour intensive and expensive to produce.

 
3. What is it that you want children to learn from The Day Henry Met…? 

Mainly the art of conversation and good manners.


4. How was your experience working on the books?

We're very excited that Henry has moved off the screen and is now available in book form. I love writing books as it gives me a nice break from animation production. 


5. Where do you draw your inspiration from for each story? Is Henry based on anyone?

Every day Henry meets something new, the something new can be anything at all and Henry goes off and learns all about it and has a great adventure.  Henry is based on my son Henry who was four when I had the initial idea of Henry. Like every four-year-old he was inquisitive and loved asking questions about everything.