A Sweet Story: An enhanced e-book for kids
Meet David (except his name is now Oliver!), the main protagonist in A Sweet Story.
We love experimenting with new media and applying some of our specialties, like animation, film production and design, into projects that push boundaries and break ground with innovative ideas and tool kits. We’ve delved into mobile games and now we’re delving into ebooks – specifically, enhanced ebooks with animated illustrations.
We are currently in the development stages of an enhanced ebook for the iPad called A Sweet Story, by Jono Howard (you should really click on his name!), which is a quirky and imaginative story about a boy and his relationship to food.
It truly captures the whimsy of a child by bringing food to life – and by extension, the animations being developed for the book also bring the story to life.
Working closely with Kris&Brake who are animating Francois-Marc Baillet‘s beautiful illustrations, we hope that this latest production will bring joy to both children and adults alike.
Here’s a sneak peak at some of the earlier illustrations of the main character. See how’s he’s evolved:
Early sketch of "David," prepared to jump into a pool of jellybeans
A more evolved sketch of the protagonist, Oliver Pumpernickel, on the diving board - notice that he is also a bit older looking.
As we continue working with all the principals for this project, we’re gearing up to create a new way of reading an ebook linearly. Trying to keep the ebook behaving like a traditional book is one of the main objectives of the project – as well as one of our main design challenges. We want to give animated scenes the ability to encourage immersive reading, while also make them compelling throughout the reading experience. What’s more, this process is also aimed at creating a workflow and design that will serve as a template for later enhanced books we produce.
Thankfully, we have a great team that’s passionate about artistic innovation and the creation of ways to make traditional aesthetics more accessible – and compelling – in new media forms.
Stay tuned for more updates about the process!