Chloe and Phil contribute to content for Astrolabe Channel!
William Overington
Copyright 2002 William Overington
Saturday 2 February 2002
Chloe and Phil, international characters that have featured in our family webspace since 1998, are to contribute to content for Astrolabe Channel. Chloe and Phil are protected by copyright. However, as Chloe and Phil were devised by the present author, their usage for Astrolabe Channel, in its current initial stages, has not presented any intellectual property rights problems, as the present author has simply used his own intellectual property from some of his creative writing activity to enhance his research on Astrolabe Channel.
A little further down this document are links to the web pages that include the five Chloe and Phil items that have previously been added into our family webspace, in the order that they were added.
The first three items are .gif files, made when learning to use a .gif animator program. The program used was the Ulead Systems, Inc. GIF animator. The pictures in the frames of the animations are mostly made by customizing items from the Microsoft Office clip art gallery. The Microsoft Paint program was used to produce the artwork for the frames.
The other two items are song lyrics. There is a graphic at the bottom of the page of the second song. The graphic was made using Microsoft PowerPoint to customize a picture from the Microsoft clip art gallery, which included colour changing and rotation and the adding of the lettering. The original graphic in the clip art gallery is in grey and the base of the jug is horizontal. The page was then saved in HTML format and the .gif file that was produced by that process was then manipulated in Microsoft Photo Editor so as to trim the margins and to have a transparent background.
Chloe and Phil's Butterbean Stew
The thinking behind Chloe and Phil is that although they are, in fact, not major characters as cartoon characters go, they are protected by the same copyright laws as are major characters, for the gaining of rights under copyright laws does not depend upon success in the market place and does not depend upon any assessment of artistic merit or any assessment of creative writing merit.
So, although Phil sometimes speculates about the possibility of hitting the big time Chloe finds goals to achieve that are less grand, yet still worth achieving.
Yet, knowing about Chloe and Phil can be a worthwhile experience.
For example, please consider the Chloe and Phil animation in the Distance Education index above. A particular language is mentioned. Investigation of the matter shows that all of the accented characters needed for that language must be included in the in-built font of a minimum DVB-MHP terminal. So, maybe Chloe and Phil will become famous in that manner!
That investigation exercise may perhaps interest readers in considering which languages can be displayed using the in-built font of a minimum DVB-MHP terminal; and which languages cannot be displayed using the in-built font of a minimum DVB-MHP terminal.
Another example is to study the possibility of Chloe and Phil figures being made. A large scale manufacture of some characters involves expensive tooling for plastic injection moulding machines. Maybe Chloe and Phil figures might be made of cloth, either as complete figures or as glove puppets. This eliminates tooling and the task comes down to designing patterns around which to cut cloth, cutting the cloth, and then sewing together the parts. So, manufacture of Chloe and Phil figures under license could be a small scale venture which has a much greater chance of happening. Indeed, maybe Chloe and Phil figures could be made at home from a pattern that is obtainable by sending in tokens cut from the back of packets of breakfast cereal or from packs of frozen vegetables or some such scheme. Naturally, only quality products at reasonable prices will be able to be licensed to use Chloe and Phil for advertising and promotion purposes. Chloe and Phil are very particular about things like that!
Also, Chloe and Phil figures could be manufactured under license by small craft potteries, which could make plaster moulds in order to produce the figures in moderate quantities.
However, some items, such as the spoons mentioned in the song Chloe and Phil's Butterbean Stew would need special plastic injection moulding tools to be made in order to become manufactured. If Chloe and Phil were to become popular on DVB-MHP channels, then maybe the spoons might get manufactured eventually. The song has a claim to fame as, as far as I know, the first song ever to include mention of the United Kingdom intellectual property right Design Right. One of the aims of Chloe and Phil items is to increase awareness of intellectual property rights as a valuable commodity.
Chloe and Phil, hoping to make the leap from the internet to DVB-MHP channels!
Since the time of authoring the Chloe and Phil items hyperlinked by the hyperlinks above, I have tried writing a couple more Chloe and Phil songs, one about Chloe and Phil going on tour with their band, including in the story Phil producing a spreadsheet for merchandising Chloe and Phil merchandise. Down the left of the spreadsheet in a column he has row headings for items such as badges, tee shirts, CDs and recipes. Along the top of the spreadsheet in a row he has two column headings for each venue, one for the number of each item sold and one for the value of that number of items. The spreadsheet then allows merchandising sales for each type of merchandise, both by quantity and value, and for each venue to be analysed.
If the song gets recorded, then perhaps session musicians and session singers might be hired to produce the recording, with the CD available in return for collecting tokens on breakfast cereals and frozen vegetables. On the other hand, maybe Chloe and Phil, if popular on DVB-MHP channels, could transfer and become realised in a musical play about their tour with a band with two actors dressed up in Chloe and Phil costumes for a TV movie.
The other new song is about a board game that involves Chloe and Phil and their friend Polka the Pantomime Horse. The song is, in fact, called "Polka the Pantomime Horse." I implemented the game in a draft form in JavaScript before I knew any Java and I am now hoping to convert the program to Java so that it can hopefully be broadcast on a DVB-MHP system. The idea of the game is that Chloe and Phil have to get their friend Polka from the theatre to the village fête. There are, however, a lot of trees in the landscape and Chloe and Phil need to cooperate in order to guide Polka to the village fête without bumping into any trees. There is also the possibility of the game being made in hard copy form. The game also has the potential to be used in management training courses in order to get people to learn how to cooperate in a team.
An advanced option to the game is that there are also hedges in the landscape and that Polka can jump over hedges, provided that she is advised in advance when to get ready to jump. In true pantomime horse style, Polka can also flick her rear right hoof into the air! The game can either be played by one person or by two people or by two groups of people. The game is about cooperation. There is no winner. Either everybody solves the problem by cooperation or the problem does not get solved.
Another possibility is that Chloe and Phil will publicise the possibility of learning about the food grains of the world by encouraging people to grow small plots, say one metre by one metre, of food grain plants such as wheat in their gardens. Due consideration will be given to viewers who do not have a garden and the prospect of growing in patio tubs and window boxes will also be considered.
Along with that, a possibility that is being considered is the possibility of growing rice plants as indoor plants. The possibility of a special moulded container with a protective transparent dome is being considered, so that a few rice plants could be grown, for educational interest, indoors in a manner that will be suitable for a domestic environment.
Yet another possibility is that Chloe and Phil will host their own cookery program, suggesting meals made from cereals, vegetables and fruits.
Will Chloe and Phil become established on a DVB-MHP platform. Will they be a study example of the licensing of intellectual property rights for the DVB-MHP content market with merchandising as an offshoot?
Always on the verge of hitting the big time, Chloe and Phil are now preparing to contribute to content for Astrolabe Channel and hoping for that lucky break as internationally famous characters upon the DVB-MHP platform.
Astrolabe Channel
Copyright 2002 William Overington
This file is accessible as follows.