Pepper's Ghost Productions Ltd. is a children’s entertainment company that provides engaging, high quality entertainment that enriches the lives of youth and develops wonder, critical thinking and an appreciation of our space universe.  Pepper's Ghost has delivered this promise as the creator of the Tiny Planets online entertainment platform as well as the popular Tiny Planets animated television series and companion website. Read more on our parents page.

The Team

Monica Keenan Laurence, Chief Executive Officer

Monica is an experienced technology, consumer Internet and entertainment executive. As CEO, she drives corporate strategy, oversees the company operations, and in particular focuses on product vision, brand, marketing, and business development.

Prior to Pepper's Ghost, Monica held leadership roles at Lucasfilm, managing corporate development and strategic planning; at the Walt Disney Company in motion picture marketing for Buena Vista Pictures; and at Intuit as Marketing Director for Intuit's Developer Network. Monica also brings to Pepper's Ghost experience in the consumer and social web, having served as VP Marketing for several Internet start-ups in Silicon Valley, including a widget and Facebook application for consumer list sharing, a mobile text messaging and web application for connecting groups, and a social bookmarking and search application. Monica began her career as a software programmer with Accenture creating large, scalable systems.

Monica is an adviser to several start-ups. She has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a focus on database design from Bucknell University, and an MBA with an emphasis in strategy and entertainment management from The Anderson School at UCLA.

Carl Goodman, VP Creative

Carl Goodman, VP Creative of Pepper's Ghost Productions, is a pioneer in design and computer animation, as well as an avid space enthusiast. Carl creates the art and animation for My Tiny Planets. During the creation of the Tiny Planets series, Carl handled real-time 3D rendering technologies and set up of a motion capture studio, and directed projects which received two BAFTA awards.

Prior to Pepper's Ghost, Carl co-founded Communication Arts, which became one of the largest Wavefront animation facilities in Europe and produced projects as diverse as 3d metaphors for financial data visualization for Reuters, large scale multimedia database prototypes for BT, architectural visualizations for Foster Associates and animations of the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact with Jupiter for news channels and science journals.

Carl has worked with a number of UK and European universities on a variety of research and development projects including 3d Toolbox with University of Glasgow and the Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre, Tiny Interfaces with the Open University Knowledge Media Institute, PGP GRID with the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, and SALERO, supported by the European Commission.

Carl is a Chartered Designer and has his MSIAD in Graphics and Communication Design. 

Paul Michael, Chairman

Paul, an executive producer and investor whose projects have won two BAFTAs, is the Chairman of Pepper's Ghost Productions. Paul shepherded the production of the award-winning television series Tiny Planets, assembled a team and negotiated a major co-production agreement with US based co-producer and broadcaster, Sesame Workshop, producers of acclaimed Sesame Street. This secured Tiny Planets entry into the USA and led to the creation of an exceptionally high quality educational children's television series, laying the foundation for a worldwide children's franchise.

Today Paul invests in and manages a diverse international business and venture capital portfolio. With 14 years of experience in providing seed funding and growing small technology and media companies, he works closely with individual management teams and venture capital partners.

Paul graduated from the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and completed an MBA at Ashridge Management College.

Pepper's Ghost: Technology Pioneer and Leader

PGP works in government and European Commission supported research and development projects in conjunction with a wide range of universities and companies, including:

3d Toolbox with University of Glasgow and Createc (National Film and Television school) – a project to develop techniques and tools to enhance the use of virtual environments in film and television.

Tiny Interfaces with Open University Knowledge Media Institute and Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre – a project to develop novel interfaces for younger children based on assets from the Tiny Planets TV series.

PGP Grid with Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and University of Glasgow – a project to establish a virtual collaborative organization for the production of computer-generated animation.

SALERO with Joanneum Research (Austria), Activa Multimedia (Spain), Blitz Games Studios (UK), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain), Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland), Taideteollinen Korkeakoulu (Finland), University of Glasgow (UK), Leopold-Franzens Universitat Innsbruck (Austria), Thomson Systems GmbH (Germany), DTS (UK) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain) – a project to make cross media-production for games, movies and broadcast faster, better and cheaper by combining computer graphics, language technology, semantic web technologies and content based search and retrieval.

Insemtives with Semantic Technology Institute, University of Innsbruck (Austria), University of Trento (Italy), University of Siegen (Germany), Onto Text (Bulgaria), Seekda (Austria) and Telefonica (Spain) – a project to facilitate broad user participation in the generation of semantic data, such as annotating video and audio content, by drawing on incentive models driven by economy, social sciences, and game theory