Before the popular TV series of the same name, I worked for a place called CSI (circa 1998). I was an animator, hired along with a group of artists, coders, and website designers. We were all hired to create an educational website called SchoolKidsOnline.com.
Long story short, the project lasted about a year before the Internet bubble burst. Stock shares plummeted, our investor pulled the plug and our group of artists, coders, and web designers had to be let go . . . all except for a handful of people who remained to do other websites. I was one of the few kept on the payroll. But the work just wasn't the same. After another year, I left CSI in 2000 and went back to freelancing.
But in that first year, I had designed many characters to be used for the SchoolKidsOnline website. This character, Chip, was never used for the site. He was one of about 25 characters I had developed to interact with the main children characters.
It's a shame the website never got to see its launch. The idea was fantastic. It would have been a website that teachers could use to test their students, get automatic test scores, a database study of each child's progress and it was able to retrain each child on specific lessons they found difficult.
