Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

As music sensations ZingZillas prepare for their daily Big Zing on CBeebies from 5 April, aspiring young musicians can join the magical music mayhem online by playing the Big Coconut Adventure at bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/zingzillas.

Designed to accompany CBeebies' landmark new music show, the ZingZillas website is all about introducing new sounds, instruments and musical ideas to young children. By tapping in to its immersive musical universe, the ZingZillas site hosts a suite of musical games to get children tapping along, singing out loud and dancing around the front room.

The Big Coconut Adventure offers four different environments to explore linking directly to those seen on screen on ZingZilla island. The worlds are populated with animated versions of the show's characters including the band, Zak, Tang, Panzee and Drum, and each comes to life with the scroll of a mouse: wind chimes tinkle, loud speakers boom, shells click together like castanets, dustbin lids clatter and bicycle wheels whirr!

Hang Loose with DJ Loose in the Coconut Hut

At the heart of each environment are two musical games. In the Coconut Hut, be a gooseberry groover and splat berries in time to a rap to make a smoothie or explore the sounds of the Coconut Hut in Beat Blender.

In the Clubhouse, drag-and-drop different instruments to make the ZingZillas play a personalised musical sequence or compose tunes with the Ant Chorus.

In Todd's Garden, harmonise with hummingbirds in a game of musical pairs or paint with musical paintbrushes to make back drops for the Big Zing.

As children explore the site, they are rewarded with coconuts dropping into the Coconut Clock and, once all four coconuts are in place, it's time for the Big Zing.

And the fifth member of ZingZillas is… you!

Once on the beach, and preparing for the Big Zing, youngsters can choose from an impressive array of instruments and appear alongside the ZingZillas themselves using a webcam and their own movement to play along in an interactive music video – or simply play along with a mouse.

In building the site, the ZingZillas actors were shot against a green screen and composited against a background which incorporates the personalised backdrops the child has created in Todd's Garden. Just like the TV show, the Big Zing offers a fitting climax to their musical experiments.

The site has been built for Flash Player 10 and uses Papervision 3D to deliver real-time 3D environments that give the user an impressive first-person experience of ZingZilla island. The ZingZillas characters have been created in 3D using Maya and then layered over the top of this real-time environment – appearing to seamlessly populate the online world.

Finally, the Big Zing webcam game uses motion detection to deliver a physical gaming experience on the web. By using bitmap comparison technology the game is able to trigger user interaction based simply on movement – so the young audience can play their virtual guitars simply by miming strumming: the ultimate air guitar!

As well as demonstrating an impressive use of cutting-edge web technologies, the project combines a huge number of different production disciplines. Truly "360" in its conception, the project has been generated as a collaboration between interactive production company, Plug-in Media, animation studio, Blue Zoo and the in-house interactive team at CBeebies.

Head of CBeebies Production, Kay Benbow, said: "Our website development was run side-by-side with the television production. This meant that both linear and interactive projects were able to benefit from combined resource of scriptwriters, composers and performers to produce one of the most ambitious CBeebies online projects to date."

Marc Goodchild, Head of Children's Interactive and On Demand, added: "The ZingZillas website provides a technically ground-breaking and hugely ambitious online offering. Using a clever mixture of interactive animations and live action it encourages children to immerse themselves into the fantastic musical world of Zak, Tang, Panzee and Drum. It's certainly pushing the boundaries of what we have attempted previously and includes a unique suite of interactive music and performance tools that young CBeebies fans can't get anywhere else. We hope that they will be infused with a passion for music and keep coming back to try out the different instruments and join in the 20 available Big Zings."

ZingZillas Early Years Music Education Consultant, Linda Bance, sums up: "The ZingZillas are crazy about music. Watching the programme will help children understand where music comes from, how it is made and how music is used and changed. Playing the online interactive games will allow them to go one step further and participate in playing with music just like the ZingZillas. All of the games in this unique interactive musical experience have been designed to grasp the imagination and concentration of young children between the ages of four to six years old."

As well as being home to the Big Coconut Adventure, the ZingZillas site will also provide many of the CBeebies online staples such as print and colour, access to clips from the show or joining in and singing along to the theme tune.

And, looking ahead, from 10 May for two weeks, youngsters will also be able to Zingalong at home with six karaoke Big Zings available on the Red Button.

Notes to Editors

Launching on Monday 5 April 2010, ZingZillas features Zak, Tang, Panzee and Drum – four primate friends who live to create great music and get youngsters across the nation bopping, jiving and swinging on down to music from across the globe. Gorilla and lead singer, Zak, provides vocals while musical genius and lead guitarist, Tang the orang-utan, creates the toe-tapping, finger-clicking compositions. The band is styled by chimpanzee bass guitarist and keyboard player, Panzee, and monkey percussionist Drum always lays down a great beat.

During each episode, the tropical island glade is visited by a different musical guest, including some of the biggest names in the international music scene.

With its exemplary blend of high production values, core music education principles and lively, inspirational content, ZingZillas is just one of the programmes that demonstrate the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's commitment to making outstanding children's content. CBeebies is dedicated to delighting and surprising its young audience and it remains the UK's most watched and loved channel for the under sixes, with almost half of the target audience tuning in each week (parents and carers with children aged 0-3 and 4-6 year olds in digital homes).

The CBeebies website attracts more than 800,000 unique users a week, peaking at over one million unique users in February last year, and last May saw the launch of the specially designed, child-friendly CBeebies iPlayer.

FW