"Me and My Friends" was a live-action pilot filmed at Nickelodeon Studios Florida in September of 1998. It was declined by the network. However, the show's concept was revisited and transformed into an animated pilot in 2001, which was picked up as The Backyardigans.
No plotline is known, as the production was never released to the public.
Production
The pilot was finished eight years after the opening of Nickelodeon Studios Orlando in 1990. Seven years after the pilot's completion, the studio was shut down due to staff cuts.
Costume designer and developer Yvette Helin in New York worked with her team and sculptor Sal Denaro to realize the two-dimensional characters into life size walk-around character costumes. Yugi Yashimoto and Dan Quinn were hired to realize the head sculpts full size and engineer various remote control effects such as moving eyes and mouths. Jim Kroupa (who puppeteered a meerkat) had his company, 3Design, make the Meerkat puppets.
