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Once upon a time, when my youngest child was still in preschool, I came up with the idea for AlphaPod, a children's learning app featuring colorful steampunk animal illustrations to help little kids learn their ABCs through simple and fun interactive games.
At the time, I was working as a creative director at an app development firm, and was only able to work on AlphaPod in my free time, so it took a while.
A long while. By the time I was able to finish it, we were in the middle of the pandemic and my kid was now in middle school and had a pretty decent understanding of the alphabet, so it didn't help him all that much.
But parents loved the art, kids loved the games, an it (almost) won a few awards – it was a Communication Arts finalist, a Webby honoree, and was shortlisted for the World Illustration Awards! I also like to think it helped me land an illustration agent not long after. All in all, I'd say a good outcome after spending so many years of my life in this project.
The app is no longer available but the art was so popular, I decided to relaunch it as a collection of accessories for kids (and for the young at heart) using the same art but without the constraints of the A to Z, and PonkZoo was born – you know, because steampunk animals (and before you ask, PunkZoo was taken!).
I'm planning on adding fun new animals to the PonkZoo collection pretty soon, so keep an eye out. Enjoy!
J.D. Paulsen
