JumpStart Fact Of The Day

A set of character bios on the JumpStart website during the late 90s ascribed mottos/favorite sayings for various characters in the series at this time. A selection of these are included below: Frankie: This world's going to the dogs! Yay! Hopsalot: One of the most important things a teacher can communicate to a student is a sense of their personality. CJ: Life is one big adventure. Casey: That is that. Kisha: Ay, mate - put some shrimps on the barby for me. Eleanor: I am not an animal, I am a human being! Pierre: Il a rendu à mes déserts quelque chose de leur beauté heureuse, et du romantisme de leurs sites alpestres (translation: He has restored to my wilderness something of its smiling beauty and a touch of the romantic to these Alpine scenes) Botley: When at first you don't succeed, try, try again! Giggles: Laughter is the best medicine! Flap: Get going while the going's good.

Frankie has most commonly been associated with the color red, with this being used as the primary color for many of his outfits (top), and being stated to be his favorite color in a profile pertaining to the JumpStart 3D Virtual World series (middle). This seems to have originated as far back as 1997 with the release of JumpStart Reading for First Graders, which was the first game to depict him with a red outfit (bottom).

In the Arabic release of JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade, Botley is named Tariq, which is often translated as "morning star". Polly is named "Hiba" which can be translated as "gift" or "blessing".

In the JumpStart 3D Virtual World series, most character assets either use their character's name, or a shortened version of it. For example, Frankie's model uses the name Frankie, and Eleanor's model uses the name Elen. However, all of Ivy's assets use the name Eddy for her. This is even reflected in the file for the location Ivy's Meadow, which is referred to as "MeadowEddy" in all of its associated filenames. Why this is the case or whether it means anything significant is currently unknown, although a couple of possibilites are that Ivy was originally going to be named Eddy or something close to it (such as Edith), or that a different character was originally planned to be in her place.

When asking how JumpStart characters would scale in proportion to real people, there isn't a clear answer for every era of the series. However, in the early 2000s, there are two particular instances that seem to give an idea of the scale of JumpStart characters. One is from a promotional trailer for the series, in which Frankie is depicted next to a live action child actor, and another comes from JumpStart Artist, in which CJ has his height measured by a very realistic looking man who is squatting. This seems to place Frankie and CJ (who are the tallest of the main cast in this era) at slightly shorter than most adult people, with other members of the main cast being shorter, closer to the same height as kids aged 8-12 roughly.

In the early 2000s, the box art for JumpStart's 3rd-6th grade games used a moderately realistic art style that didn't match any of the in-game art styles. Pictured here from top to bottom are Polly Sparks, TJ Adams, and Jo Hammet. Each character's in-game appearance (left column) is constrasted with their box art depictions (right column).

In the JumpStart 3D Virtual World series and MMO, Eleanor's main interests are most notably reading, gardening, and dancing. However, another one of her interests that isn't referenced particularly often is that she apparently likes cooking/baking. A direct reference to this is a JumpStart Blog post which describes her as a "known baker" (top), while other blog posts that seem to correlate to this are a few written "by" Eleanor that have her sharing recipes for cookies or cupcakes (middle). This might also serve as the inspiration for the appearance of her house in the JumpStart MMO, which somewhat resembles a cupcake (bottom).

The original designs of the Jumpeez in the JumpStart MMO were at least partially inspired by anime, especially with regards to certain facial features. For example, the default nose type is named "AvHeadKidFaceAnimeNose" within the game files. Certain eye types also seem anime-inspired.

In JumpStart Reading for First Graders, Frankie returns to a circus he used to work at and reunites with some of his old pals, who are being antagonized by a malicious magician named Mel. Occasionally, Mel will appear and play a mean prank on one of the performers, such as attaching rockets to them or dropping beehives on their heads. When this happens, Frankie will react by saying something like "whoa!" or "oh no!", but with more or less his regular upbeat tone of voice while smiling (due to his default speaking animation being used here), which debatably makes him appear relatively unfazed by what's going on around him.

In the JumpStart MMO, Windy Hollows contained a shortcut to the VIP Lounge in Poseidon's Hangout. This could be accessed from a building that normally appeared to have a rectangular door, but would rotate to show an arched entrance when approached.

JumpStart Reading for Second Graders contains this placeholder graphic, which can only be seen by extracting it from the game files.

However, a preview for JumpStart 3rd Grade from a few months before the game's release shows Botley in the classroom with the window still intact (bottom). This could suggest that Botley was originally going to enter the room in a different way, such as by politely opening the door, but it's more likely that the background simply hadn't been modified yet when this preview was made.

One of the minigames in JumpStart World Pet Playground is a matching game called Highrise. When the background image for the minigame is extracted and viewed seperately from sprites that would normally be displayed over top of it, Casey Cat can be seen in the upper left corner, a character who did not appear at all in the 3D Virtual World series, but appeared in many older JumpStart games.

In a few 2D JumpStart games, non-animated parts of a character are included as part of a background image, as seen in these examples from JumpStart 1st Grade (1995). In the first set, only Frankie's lower mouth is animated during this screen, so the background includes every part of him except for his lower mouth. In the second set, Frankie's entire head and arm are animated, so the background only includes his torso and tail. This practice is quite rare, since in most cases, all character sprites would be entirely seperate from the background, regardless of whether they are animated.

JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain and JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island were the first JumpStart games to make use of graphics created with 3D models (prior to being rendered as 2D sprites for in-game use). In JumpStart 3rd Grade, 3D graphics were mainly used for background/environmental elements, while all characters were depicted with 2D sprites. In JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island, 3D graphics were used more extensively for various characters, cutscenes, and scenery.

Over the years, Botley has had one of the most consistent character designs of any frequently recurring JumpStart character. While every other main JumpStart character has underwent fairly significant design changes that diverge from their original designs, Botley's design has maintained largely the same overall look for nearly 25 years, with only relatively minor alterations.

In JumpStart Academy Math, several characters appear as possible avatars for the player. The avatars all share the same base for the bodies, which often makes them inconsistent with the original Academy character designs. Shown here are Pierre’s and Dee Dee’s standard Academy designs (left) compared with their Academy Math avatars (right). Pierre’s avatar makes him look much thinner, and Dee Dee’s avatar has paw-like hands and feet instead of wings and webbed feet. (2018)