Creating Ziggy Francis: Building a World for Children

Creating a character for children is not simply inventing a cute name and selecting a marketable color palette. Children know when a world has no heartbeat.

Ziggy Francis and Her Amazing Adventures began as an original family concept created by Ariel Werba and me. Its possibilities have expanded across animation, books, music and a staged musical developed with Tiffani Barbour.

A character needs a reason to exist

The starting point was not merchandise or format. It was the experience we wanted children to have: imagination with emotional substance, adventure with something useful underneath it and a central character capable of curiosity, mistakes and growth.

Children deserve stories that respect their intelligence without asking them to stop having fun.

Building across formats changes the storytelling

A musical can let a feeling expand through song. Animation can make the impossible visible. A book creates a private relationship between the child and the page. The character must remain recognizable while each form uses its own strengths.

That challenge is part of what makes original intellectual property exciting. You are not only writing a story. You are deciding what remains true when the container changes.

My earlier chapters belong inside the work

Years in theater taught me how songs move narrative. Building Amazing Fairytale Parties taught me what holds a child’s attention. Acting taught me that character comes from desire and relationship. Business taught me that imagination still needs structure if it is going to reach an audience.

Development is its own creative season

Not every project arrives finished or on the public’s preferred schedule. Some worlds need time. Development includes writing, testing, revising and protecting the core idea while discovering what it can become.

Ziggy represents something central to my multi-creative life: the belief that performance, music, entrepreneurship and purpose do not have to live in separate rooms. Sometimes they are all building the same world.