The creation of “Emkei the Monkey.”
Baby Goes Pro created an animated character, named Emkei the Monkey. Here is his story.

Hi...I am Emkei the Monkey. My name is pronounced \em\ \kā\ according to Webster’s Dictionary, or simply M.K. for short. That may seem like an odd name but, you see, M and K are the initials of Ms. Gigi’s twins, Madison and Karson. Ms. Val and Ms. Gigi thought that my name was cute, but, they also thought it needed a purpose. They developed the acronym, E.M.K.E.I., which you can read about in these pages.

Once they figured out my name, they decided I needed to come to life through animation so they found the best character creator you could imagine. He even works for a very well known media company….you have probably seen many of his characters before but didn’t even know it!

When we began, my character creator came up with 15 versions of me on the first go around. Here is a sampling. Can you find one that most resembles me?

The next step was to narrow down the features which were most appealing about each and put them all together. Here is what I looked like next…

From this, Ms. Val and Ms. Gigi were undecided between the first one (on the left) and the second one (in the middle). To help them decide, they surveyed children and adults. Adults liked number two and children liked number one. So they picked number one, of course! They liked the hat on number two so they added the hat to number one. They also gave me shoes so I could play sports. Notice my washboard stomach and my biceps!

This was close to being me, but they weren’t happy with my coloring, so they decided to get some color variations.

Here are many color variations. Can you find me here? I am the last one on the right.

Finally, my creator did some turnarounds so they could see different views to allow my 3D animator to model me properly.

This is me in all my sporty outfits!

There you go , that’s my story….short but sweet. I hope you get a chance to check out all the sports that I love to play and realize that sharing those sports with your kids inspires them to move!

There are great plans for me. A mascot is being created to introduce me to the world at the International Toy Fair in New York City. It will be my first time flying. I am told I will get to wear real Olympic Gold Medals! Ms. Gigi won two of them playing tennis, one in Barcelona and one in Atlanta. I will also be featured in DVD’s that will teach children how to play sports. I have a dream to be featured in a book or on a TV show giving me other ways to introduce children to sports and all the lessons that participating in sports has to teach. Boy, there are so many lessons, I don’t even know where to begin… but to name a few off of the top of my head, there is teamwork, sportsmanship, courage, discipline, stick-with-it-ness and so many other lessons. I will visit schools and talk to children about the benefits of participating in sports and encourage them to join me and move!.

I want to get kids excited about playing sports early in life so when they grow up they will want to be just like me, a healthy and active (adorable too if I do say so myself) sports loving monkey!