Creating interactive children's ebooks

[Bigbad]

Hi to all. I'm very new to animation, my profession is in book illustration. In recent weeks I've been looking into the best way to create animated book apps. Can anyone, please, tell me if this is possible to do with Anime, and if so, where I would find tutorial information. Apologies if this is a bit brief and random. Brian.

[jahnocli]

Interactive stuff isn't Anime Studio's thing. Up until recently this was exclusive territory for Adobe's Flash, but recently a number of other options have started appearing, stimulated in part by things like the iPad not recognising Flash.

Anime Studio is a great piece of animation software, and you can animate quite efficiently with it once you are familiar, but it ain't gonna do what you want on its own. Time for some research...

[Bigbad]

Hi, thank you for taking time out to respond. Yes, I know what you say is right, I have been looking into various options: Chipmonk, Corona, Flash / C..
It is not always that clear where to invest the time for the required result, especially for a newbie to this side of computers.
Thank you again.

[DK]

Do you want to create an actual app or just an interactive book? For apps you need a Mac. Android you need windows PC. Flash allows you to import AS animations and create interactive content.

I looked at all this and came to the conclusion....you may as well make a pdf as it can be read in almost anything. If you want interactivety you may sell a few Mac apps and a few android apps but if you want to reach the majority keep it simple.

For apps Corona is good and also Runrev but be aware apple will hit you bigtime with joining fees etc.

Cheers
David

[Bigbad]

Hi David, expect you are warmer where you are than me in the Highlands of Scotland. Thank you for your reply. You have given me one or two things to think about. I would much prefer to keep it simple, but also, I like the idea of small amounts of animation/sound/interactivity on pages. I do understand that Anime Studio, or any one software, able to to the job in it self. It's just I was hoping, perhaps asking too much, that someone could briefly outline the software needed and process. I do agree, Apple seem out to take full advantage of the situation. I have looked at going through a newly set up company who allow you to use their code, this, for a percentage of the profit. Maybe this is the better route for me at this early stage. Anime looks a great bit of kit for the price.
Brian.

[DK]

Hi Bigbad. Yes There are comnpanies that offer online limited features and do all the marketing placement for your app. Enough to create a nice interactive ebook. Might be a good place to start. I hope you do well and I am very keen to find out how you go in this venture as I did'nt take it all the way myself.

Is there a real market for intreractive ebooks? please start a thread on this or a blog and let me know as I am extremely keen to see how it goes for you. I have a few professional cartoonist friends that wanted to go with ebooks but they were scared off with too many options.

Cheers
D.K

[Bigbad]

Hi, Yes, I will once I know where it is going! From all accounts, It does seem to be the way the book trade is heading. The main publishers seem hesitant, but I believe from talking with writer friends, this is changing. I've worked as an illustrator for some time producing art for other peoples ideas, and getting just the one off fee, while the publishers go on reincarnating my art on project after project. Not 'too' bitter about this, it's good business sense, for them...

More and more, publishers ask me to just do the actual drawing, and for them to get it coloured in India or China where the illustrator work for a cheaper rate. (it's not always possible to negotiate with publisher especially in this financial climate.) So the ebook option, in whatever form, does seem a, if vague, light at he end of a once thought unchangeable tunnel.

I agree completely regarding your friend being scared off by the many options. It is so confusing knowing what route to take.
B.

[Ronbo]

Hi Bigbad. If you're on a Mac you might want to check out the recently-released iBooks Author if you haven't already done so. It's free and allows you to create interactive e-books that can be saved in different formats to share or upload to iBookstore. I downloaded it but haven't tried it out yet.

[Bigbad]

Hi Ronbo, yes I was quite excited by that, as I work both on mac and pc, but what I've seen of it so far, it does not seem to allow actual frame animation of individual elements within a picture ( I might be wrong) There is an American company called Interact Books, and using their (Free for a percentage of profit) software, seems to make the process more possible, at least in the way I mean. I was just taken by the apparent simplicity of Anime Studio and hoping with it and the use of other software the end result of a page turning interactive (touch) children's book could be achieved. No matter which road I take I'm sure it will be a steep one. Brian.

[hayasidist]

Hi -- sorry to crash this thread... and at the risk of adding little to DK's idea of "use PDF" ...

the AS manual is maybe an interesting case study ... it's PDF but has embedded SWFs which could be created by AS... you click the image to play. (see tutorial 5.1 by way of example). it's also a breeze to add hyperlinks to PDF so you can hop around the document by clicking on images or text ... and it supports input fields for text etc (geared towards "form-filling" but might do what's needed). I don't know what the full range of options in a PDF doc might be (e.g. video other than SWF, pop-ups, input validation ...), or if they're suitable for your needs.

But in principle, PDF offers text plus (animated) graphics that you can easily string together to create a story tree / mesh with the path through the book dependent on the reader's inputs and actions.

[Bigbad]

Hi hayasidist, no worries, all are welcome, it's an open house! Yes, I've looked at PDF, and it might well be an option. I'm told Adobe's latest 'InDesign' does some great things, such as page turn and even some modest animation. In conjunction with Flash, even more can be achieved... But nothing is straight forward and there are gaps in what I've managed to glean so far. Basically, what I'm finding is, it's hard to grasp where to invest the time for the result I want. I'm thinking

I may just go with a company(to begin with) that allows you to use their code/engine, then they take a cut of any profit... if any.

I think what drew my attention to indesign was their App: Sock Puppet, which is free on the iPad and allows for interactivity. Although this is not a book app it does have some of the qualities that I believe I require. It says at the bottom of of its advert, Powered by Anime Studio. Can anyone enlighten me what exactly this means. Does this mean created? If so, was it solely, or in conjunction with other software?

Thanks for you interest and time.

[Bigbad]

I think what drew my attention to indesign was their App:
Sorry!! not indesign, I meant: ANIME STUDIO... Friday mornings too busy thinking of the weekend.

[hayasidist]

I hadn't seen SM's Sock Puppets before you mentioned it. from what I can see from a cursory glance it has a quite a few limitations you might like to consider before going with it as a professional tool (e.g. platform, recording duration, ...) I also couldn't find any assets or otherwise on the SM main site. my guess is that what "powered by AS" mans is that the base assets were created in AS; that lipsysnc is, in effect, Papagayo. But as it's based on AS I can only assume that if you can do it with sock puppets then you can do more / better with AS - but you'll have to work to do it... and there's no direct interactivity... that's where you'd need to create animated segements and embed them in a harness of some sort.

good hunting!

[Bigbad]

Hi again, yes, I was beginning to assume there was more there going on, than just AS. There is no easy way, Think I will just have to take the plunge and be prepared for a high learning curve and spend some dosh! -easy as that...not.
Thanks to all for your very helpful input clearing the fog. I hope to keep you up to date on my progress as I think more will pass this way in time.

[nbryant]

Well, there are actually a lot of works for interactive storytelling though I am not sure if they could be related to anime here.

I was actually a part of the Picture Books group on our small research congress and it is great to have something brewing already.

Probably the biggest trade off with this is how you are going to port in on usual platforms like computer or tablets, as of late.