Boots the Monkey. Designed by Helena Giersz.

This is the true story of Boots the Monkey (1999).

I started with designing all original characters that appeared in the pilot. After completing the pilot (right before Christmas 1998), we had to wait for a pretty long time to know if the show was going to go into production. After 5 month we found out that it had been green-lighted. Brown Johnson (the head of Nick Jr at the time) came to my studio (at 636 Broadway, NYC) and told me that I need to redo Boots.  I asked her what needs to be redone? …She said: It needs to be very cute but just a different design and as we sat down that day at my studio, after maybe like an hour of me drawing different sketches – finally she said: “Oh I love this one”! And that’s how the new Boots was born. I still wanted to make him yellow, but after going to research with different color Boots’,  (I provided a lot of options for School research). The gray Boots was a winner (with yellow belly). Also, she did say let’s give him boots – boots were red from the beginning.