The app/book version of Treasure Island we are building is pretty ambitious. It's a full novel which is a much larger book project than most app/books out there. The manuscript is 200 - 300 pages depending on the layout. Treasure Island also has a slightly different audience compared to most app/books - its for kids ages eight and up; not really small children. This is a market that is virtually untapped in our opinion.
Treasure Island was first published in 1883 so its text is in the public domain. That was one of the attractions for us. But really, the story is superb. A true classic in every sense. The modern notion of pirates we have today came directly from this book which set the stereo type for thousands of books that followed. The art work we use in the app/book is done by two different artists both of who illustrated Treasure Island books around the turn of the 20th century: N.C. Wyeth and Walter Paget - N.C. Wyeth paintings are dark and beautiful and Paget's drawings are full of energy. It's an excellent combination.
One of the things we've focused on a lot is application design. As you may know from earlier posts I, and the rest of FlyingWord, feel that good design is absolutely critical to a good product. So, given that as our motto, we've been experimenting a great deal with different interfaces and effects. We are a few weeks from being done with Treasure Island and the interface has evolved a lot but I thought I would share one of our early "tests" as we call them. That's where we whip up a mockup of the app book in After Effects to get a feel for how it works in practice. It's faster than prototyping allowing us to do more iterations on design. We believe that these lightweight tests are one of the keys to creating great app/books. The video, which was created by our talented Motion Graphic expert, RJ, is below.
Note that the music and narrative that accompanies this video is original and was created for us by very talented folks including a voice artist and a music composer - I'll talk about them in another post. For now take a gander and a listen at one of our early tests and let us know what you think!
Treasure Island for iPad from FlyingWord, Inc. on Vimeo.
7 comments:
Sorry, but I'm not convinced by the interest of your design. It's cool to move a 3D image for a few seconds but a book is hours and hours of use... you could spare designer time
The speech with text highlighted is pretty interesting though
Great feedback, Cedric! We are working on adding more interactions - I'll share more about that later.
Well initially i was amazed by you turn from java to fancy apple graphics...
I do java as well for the latst 10 year,but since I put my hands on an ipad I said that this is how all the apps
Should look like.
I loved playing with it,working with it because of the feeling it gave to me.
I just w8 for the moment to affrod doing what you did :)
Hope it will not be too late.
You are on the right way….this is the future…
Cheers
Nice work, Richard, and great choice of voice and music talent for this book.
The use of multi-media around a literary work has always brought up a lot of issues/questions for me, many of them also raised by film adaptations, and by the cd-roms i worked on (as a programmer and as a composer/musician) in the early 90's.
A viewer/user/readers' imagination gets engaged in particular ways by the written word alone. Adding any additional modalities (even static illustrations!) changes the readers' experience of the written word, and, some would argue, cuts off an opportunity for engaging full attention and the imagination.
As a musician and music lover, i have the same issue with music videos; my brain/psyche is engaged by music alone in a way that's very different than with music + moving images. Music videos are really a different medium altogether, distinct from recorded or live performance. i enjoy both.
So, i wonder if you've considered adding parent/teacher (for kids' titles) control over enabling audio, video, animation, interactions, etc. - letting a grown-up tune the experience for the child. i wonder if parents would even find this useful.
Anyway, i think you're heading down a great path here in general, especially in recognizing the importance of strong design and high production values. Good luck, and keep up the great work.
Hi "dissolving"
Thanks for your comments. It is an interesting idea that the art work might distract from the words. This, however, is nothing new. It's the same reason some people objected to the first moving pictures. The thought was: a moving picture detracted from an experience that was better enjoyed in print or on a stage with live actors.
I suppose this seems a little much comparing the introduction of Rich Electronic Books to the introduction of moving pictures, but I think its justified. The impact of combining computer programming (applications) with written, spoken, animated, and even live-action entertainment cannot be under stated. We are only now starting to see the possibilities but in 10 years we'll look back and laugh at our crude first attempts.
As to distraction: In the case of treasure Island the interactions are designed to entertain briefly rather than to distract. This is especially true when listening to the audio and playing with the interactions. If you are reading, you can pretty much ignore them - they fad off into the background without bothering you. This is all designed into our application from the start. It's easy to create something distracting that has novel interest, but far more difficult to provide something that complements the narrative. I think we have accomplished that - or at least that is our objective.
As far as children go: Between myself and my co-founder, Joe Weber, we have a total of 7 kids so we are very sensitive to that. We've set up in this book to create an experience for slightly older kids (teens and young adults), but we will be creating titles for children too and we will be thinking very hard about how to do that.
Thanks again for your thoughts!
Richard
Have you thought of "writing" multimedia books that will be conceived and written/created ESPECIALLY for the iPad? Such books,created by writers that already write children books,will not raise the many issues "dissolving" raises--most of which are important.
The whole idea of a fiction book is to cultivate one's imagination,make one think for oneself etc.However,a book that is conceived at its very inception as a multimedia book,can have other advantages.Not to mention the fact that the whole idea of what a BOOK is,will change as a result of the invention of the tablet computer.
Hi Jane,
Yes I have thought of creating completely new works from scratch specifically for a rich electronic books. I don't think I'm alone in that. Actually, there are probably a number of books out there that were built in exactly this way.
That said, none of them stand out that much. A good story is perhaps the best part of a book and is supported by beautiful images and wonderful interactions. I don't think you have to invent something from whole cloth to accomplish that.
Richard
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