

You can look at Numberlys as an alphabet book, but it's so much more than that. "It's an adult approach that treats kids with respect. "Bill never condescends to children," he says. "It's Fritz Lang for kids!" laughs Oldenburg, before Enochs talks about the company's determination not to patronise its audience. What's heartening is that Moonbot didn't try to dumb down its creative influences because of its young audience. Numberlys is aimed at children, although not exclusively so. So we threw a bunch of other themes that we loved into the pot and hoped it would make for a palatable broth." "We had a rough sketch of an idea that Bill had done about a group of little creatures that create the alphabet. "The entire company went to see it, and after watching it we knew there was something about it that was so beautiful, we wanted to tap into that vine," he says. Enochs says that a visit to see the latest restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis film was a key touchpoint. Those influences are interesting, at a time when it can be easy for app developers to get sucked into the mindset of just being influenced by other apps. The success of the Morris Lessmore app put a certain degree of pressure on Moonbot's team – creative rather than commercial – to come up with something even better next time round. We all grew up among really talented people in small towns, who all had something they should definitely share with the rest of the world, but there was a wall due to technology or publishing and distribution. "It really comes down to the creative now. "For a long time, it has only been the privileged few who had access to the distribution means or the right gear, but now it's all around us and in the palms of our hands," says Oldenburg. Oldenburg and Enochs remain awestruck by the way it spread globally, which is unsurprising given their previous experience in industries where worldwide distribution involved considerably more friction and middlemen. Thus was born the Morris Lessmore app, which became a critical and commercial hit on the App Store. A new thing with the grand potential that those had."
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This feels like the invention of radio, television or the movie cinema. "It was a way to deliver these mediums in one place in such an approachable way, we knew we had to be part of it out of the gate. "We were halfway through production on a short film when the iPad was announced, and we were fascinated," says Oldenburg. Moonbot was founded by two people with a background in animation and filmmaking – Brandon Oldenburg and Lampton Enochs – together with author and illustrator William Joyce. It returns the focus to storytelling – the origins of the alphabet – with an equally diverse palette of influences: King Kong, Metropolis, Flash Gordon, the Marx Brothers and the 1939 New York World's Fair. Now the company has released its third app, Numberlys.
