Our work on Ben10 - My Favourite Alien was showcased as part of Cartoon Network's showreel entry into the shortlist of this year's BAFTA Kids' vote. The showreel highlighted the best creative work from across Cartoon Network this year so it was an honour for our project to be included.

The BAFTA Kids' Vote embraced all media platforms and celebrated the rich diversity of children's media. For the first time, children got to have their say in a nationwide poll to choose their favourite film, television programme, website and video game.

A big shout should also go to the glorious Aidan from Sheffield whose "flaming" antics in his back garden were the standout highlight of the campaign :)

We build a fair few sites that facilitate all kinds of user generated content, but we wanted to share an absolute jewel with you!

We designed and built a competition microsite for Cartoon Network's Ben10, a program about 10-year old Ben Tennyson, who discovers a watch-like device with mysterious powers which allows him to transform into 10 different alien heroes. 

We created a site where users uploaded video impressions of their favourite Ben10 alien, either by recording entries using a webcam or uploading the video file straight from their camera or mobile phone.

In the words of Aidan, aged 5, from Sheffield, "My best alien is Heatblast because he's great at shooting fire at rocks!" And then Aidan himself shoots fire into the corner of his garden from his very own human fingertips! How he does this we are still trying to figure out ;) but we suggest that if you are ever lucky enough to meet awesome Aidan, you are don't get on the wrong side of him!

Check out Aidan's entry in the Ben 10 Gallery now!

If you wanna know more about Ben10, then check out the Ben 10 site on Cartoon Network.

We recently worked with Cartoon Network on another site, Sonic Chronicles:The Dark Brotherhood, where users have to search the site for Sonic the Hedgehog characters in order to win cool prizes!

Boomerang (part of the Cartoon Network) asked us to create a site to promote the new series of two of their children's TV shows: 'My Spy Family' and 'Life with Derek'.

In response Codegent designed and built Ask the Cast (www.askthecast.co.uk). The idea was to get children to engage with the characters by allowing them to upload videos of themselves posing questions to the characters in the shows.

Using our FilePipes system, which allows users to easily upload videos either from a webcam or from their phones or videocam and then encodes to flash on the fly, children can record themsleves asking the question and submit it to the site.

Codegent has a wealth of experience working with user-generated content and young people. For Boomerang, we introduced a parental consent stage to uploading the video. Users can rate videos but cannot write comments.

The site has only just been launched and video questions are appearing on the site as they are approved by the Boomerang team.  Once the best questions have been answered, the TV characters will answer them online and on the TV shows.

This is a great example of online and broadcast content working together to create a fun and engaging experience for the audience.