Blog Event: Day three - A letter describing how Roxie Munro helped to create Roxie's A-maze-ing Vacation Adventure

Today is the third day of the Blog Event that I am hosting that is about the creation of an iPad app called Roxie's A-maze-ing Vacation Adventure. So far I have posted a review of the app and a letter from the app's developer. Today I have a letter from Roxie Munro, the illustrator whose artwork inspired the whole idea for the app.

Dear TTLG Readers:

From the artist’s point-of-view, creating “Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure” was exactly that – an adventure, with all the challenges, problems, and thrills involved in a real life adventure.

When I got Omar Curiere’s email in mid October, 2010, I remembered him. Five or so years earlier I’d received a “fan” email from him. I remember noting the Netherlands location and responding (I forgot I sent a B&W maze to print out). I was very excited, because for the last few years people had been telling me what a great interactive game my maze books would make. I had even sent a couple emails to gamers, with no result. I now realize that making an interactive random maze game is not the same as an animated enhanced e-book. It is much harder to develop, and requires a lot of technical expertise and time-consuming computer work. 

I immediately answered back that it would be a cool thing to do (although I was under deadline to write and illustrate a picture book about bugs), and as Omar says, we emailed back and forth, and very soon decided to do original work, rather than adapting or licensing one of my five maze books. He sent some diagrams with choices of ways we could go…linear, or up and down, or randomly moving through 16 screens – the most complex and hardest, and, naturally, the way we both decided to go.

After roughs and sketches, and a short trip I took to the Netherlands, we settled on a plan, a huge “world” - I would create the maze, which they would make a game of, animate, enliven, and add music to.

The first challenge I had was to find a sheet of paper big enough to create the whole art piece on …we didn’t want to have to “marry” or match up 16 screens on top/bottom and both sides. I usually use Strathmore Bristol board…I called the paper company and they were less than helpful and unable to supply a large board. Eventually I found a 44”x60” sheet by Coventry that was acceptable. It had more of a “tooth” (rough surface), and was a little more absorbent than my familiar paper, but would work.

I refined the sketches, scanning and emailing to the Netherlands for comments/changes.  When we had all the changes incorporated, I began the inking.  Each screen was sketched in pencil. I transferred them with pencil on to the giant paper one by one, using a small 8”x10” portable light table underneath each screen area. Then began inking. The paper was so huge I couldn’t reach the top half bending over my main drawing table, so I taped it to a big strong piece of cardboard, and did the top half climbing up on the table, covering finished areas with tissue, lying down on the table, and supporting my arm with a pillow. At first I though I’d have to do it on the cement floor of my studio, which Omar said didn’t sound ergonomically healthy. He was right – even lying on the high table and drawing was a strain. I wound up with back pains from the tension of doing hours and hours of detail (am perfectly fine now).                 

You can see a 12-part illustrated “blog” on OCG Studios website, showing my studio work, their studio work, testing etc, as well as a trailer for the app: http://www.ocgstudios.com/roxies-a-maze-ing-vacation-adventure/portfolio-1/

When all the inking was done, I had it scanned by an industrial scanner and emailed the black and white files to the Netherlands, where they started doing the layers. Or levels. Or whatever magical stuff they do to create the interactivity. The team bought extra computers and worked days and into the night – very intense, complex, time-consuming work.

Next for me was the fun part – painting. Which went well and took about 6 weeks (at one point after returning from my mid-Nov visit to the Netherlands, I went to the studio 24 days in a row …Monday through Sunday). I’d lay awake at night, thinking about the next day’s work on the app – totally obsessed by the process.

Omar and I have a great relaxed creative working relationship…at first I think he was hesitant to ask for changes - maybe I wouldn’t agree, or thought there were too many spots to illustrate, etc, but we were always in sync about what needed to be done to fulfill our vision of this app. We also had the same sense of “impatience,” energy, and optimism.

                          

In late January, I took the huge painting and almost 350 spot illustrations to a fine art scanner in Manhattan, where they spent a couple days making the files, which were sent to Europe. Then Omar and his creative team really got to work …(they needed about 40-50 more small spots; I did hi-rez scans of those in my studio and transferred the files to them).

I didn’t have my iPad yet, so Omar did videos of their progress every few days and emailed to me.  They hired a marketing person. Omar did extensive testing. At the end of March, they submitted it to the App Store, and now, as of two weeks after launch, it has already sold in 51 countries – it works in all languages; you don’t have to “read.” I managed to get an iPad2, and now, every time I play I find something different – besides the maze and the finding/counting games, at the touch of a finger a helicopter rises, flowers bloom in fields, soccer balls rise up out of stadiums, penguins appear in a different place on the screens each time you play…. it’s new to me all over again.

Thank you so much Roxie. I can't wait to see what you will come up with next! 

Blog Event: Day two - A letter describing how Roxie's A-maze-ing Vacation Adventure was created

For day two of my blog event, I have a letter from Omar Curiere, the man who helped develop and create Roxie's A-Maze-ing Vacation Adventure, an interactive iPad app. I had no idea how an app is created so I asked Omar to tell me (and you) about the process.

Dear TTLG readers:

My name is Omar Curiëre, born in Amsterdam in1968. I have two children - Julian is 10 and Robin is 5; both were born in July, so they are almost 11 and 6. I started my own company 14 years ago called OC Graphics specializing in 3D visualization, mainly architectural and technical visualizations.  We make still images, animation and interactive websites. http://www.ocgraphics.com

When my son was 3 or 4 we bought him his first Roxie Munro book called “Mazeways,” and then another, and another, and another. He loves to read… well, he couldn't read back then but he loves to look and search and discover. Over the years something strange happened. Most of his books, after 3 or 4 times he read them, stayed in the bookcase, but some books, and especially Roxie's books, were being read over and over. When he was older, he was drawing mazes of his own. My daughter found the Roxie books when she was around three and together with her older brother was reading them again and again, searching letters and following the maze.

Since my original company is an interactive presentation company, the iPad had a huge impact on how we could give presentations, read our email, and above all, make fun. Then the idea started to appear that we can make really fun apps, especially for children - we had the technical programming knowledge, we had the creativity. But what to do, what to make, what to develop?

One night in October 2011, my daughter was on the floor reading - all our Roxie books were scattered around, with my son Julian next to them, drawing his own maze. This is it, I thought. We must make something like that - I am pretty creative but not a great artist. I have to contact Roxie.

Six or 7 years ago I had emailed Roxie with a request for a BW version of one of her mazes for my son to color. She sent a very nice email with a B&W image attached. But now, 7 years later, I was going to ask her to work with us or ask her if we could make one of her books into an app. I was kind of nervous sending the email, expecting a sort of laugh on the other end:  “Why is this small company in the Netherlands bothering a world famous artist about an iPad app.” But Roxie was extremely kind and extremely interested, and, more important, none of her publishers was working on an app. The main reason, I guess, that she wanted to work with us was a simple one - we wanted to make the best product possible, no quick book-to-app conversion … the most beautiful drawings in a very nice app that would be fun for children all over the world.

The first ideas were about how to transform an existing book into an app, but this caused all sorts of problems, business-wise and technical. If you take a normal digital image and you cut something out this image, it leaves a hole. We wanted to animate a lot of things in Roxie's drawings; this means filling up a lot of holes digitally. It is like restoring a painting, a tedious time-consuming job, which hardly makes it better. So the decision was made to start from scratch. We had tons of ideas, dozens of emails going back and forth. Roxie made 16 B&W screens, very basic, no detail - when put together it created one immense maze. It was going to be a Vacation Adventure.

In November Roxie came to our office in Holland. We had 3 or 4 days ahead of brainstorming. We had to discuss every piece of the maze - the search items, all the things to animate, and most important, we had to get to know each other because we never met. We talked once over the phone and emailed a couple of hundred times.

At that point we decided we had to start a new company - a company that had more of a creative sound to it. OCG Studios was born.

Roxie creating the big drawing

When Roxie left she had a busy time ahead; she was going to make a huge drawing (5 feet by 3.5 feet). This drawing when finished was going to be cut digitally in 16 pieces. Each piece a page on the iPad. On each page letters and numbers are hidden and a lot of other things are random. Roxie made the huge drawing and almost 400 spots to animate. Every item that was going to move has to be drawn separately. The strange thing for an artist like Roxie it that she has to make a very detailed drawing but leave a lot of stuff blank, so actually not finishing the drawing. Because we fill all the blank spots digitally.

First Roxie made the B&W outline drawing, so at that point, around the middle of December, we really could start developing. We already started a month before but that was purely testing things out. We started with the B&W drawings and build the almost complete functional maze version.

The middle of January Roxie finished the painting - almost 3 months work. Now we could replace the B&W maze in our app with a beautiful colored version. We also received all the different spot drawings for us to animate and hide in the drawing.

The next 3 months was full time programming - our team did a remarkable job. During the day we developed, animated, looked for the right sounds, worked on the music. In the evening we tested with our children or their friends. What a great feedback these kids give… they tell what they think and tell you how you could improve. Every day the same, developing and testing. Our children quickly started to know the maze blindly and were asking each day, “So what is new and what is changed? Why did you change it? That isn't any good… or that is great.” And the strange thing is after three months, my 5 year old daughter still loves to play it every day. I knew at that point that we had a remarkable product. Every couple of days we would send Roxie a video with the progress for her to comment.

The music is an important part of our app; there are several screens or world in our app that could use a different ambiance in music. We wanted one main tune but with variations in style, instruments and speed. We have a skiing area that has different music; then the Theme park area and the raft area has a more speedy sound.

The middle of March was an important date, I had arranged for a full day of testing in the elementary school of my children. Seven classes, more than 150 children, 15 ipads. We had 6 people from the studio - 4 in the class and 2 programmers on standby. Luckily, we found some small things we could fix right away during the day. We got a lot of great feedback from the children. We noticed so much difference between the 5-year-olds and the 12-year-olds… how they played the game, and there is even a big difference between boys and girls. Most girls sit down with the app and take their time searching for all the hidden things, while the boys love to drive the car through the maze. The biggest confirmation we got that day is that each and every child loved to play “Roxie's a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure.”            

The next week we spend fine-tuning the app and adding or changing the recommendations the children gave us. We worked late every day. Then at the end of March we were finished and ready to submit to the App Store. After a 7-day wait we got the green light from Apple. It is in the App Store.

Now our marketing starts a very exciting time ahead.

We have 16 screens, hundreds of animated spots, hundreds of sounds, 8 different music styles, 85 items to search for, and 6 months of work. It all started with a little girl and boy reading a book on the floor.

Thank you for this letter Omar. It was wonderful to read the story of how this app came to be. I hope to have the opportunity to review more apps produced by OCG Studios in the future.

The David Godine Blog Event Day Five - A review for poetry lovers

As it is Friday, and I like to post reviews of poetry on Friday, I asked the folks at Godine if they had a book of poems that I could review for this blog event. They do, and here is my review of Absolutely Wild.

Absolutely Wild

Dennis Webster

Illustrated by Kim Webster Cunningham

Poetry

For ages 4 to 8

David Godine, 2009, 978-1-56792-375-9

    People of all ages all over the world like to learn about animals. They read books about animals and watch films about animals. They go on safaris in Africa and cross mountains, lakes, river, and oceans to catch a glimpse of some rare and exotic creature. In this collection of poems, Dennis Webster takes readers on a delightful poetical journey around the world. Readers don’t even have to leave the comfort of their favorite seat to visit some of the world’s most interesting animals.

   There is the yak who has a “hairy top and hairy bottom.” It is true this shaggy animal is not exactly beautiful, but if you were in Tibet you would “dress as he does.” The ptarmigan on the other hand is a very handsome bird. In the summer months she is dressed in feathers of brown, while in the winter those same features are a soft white.

   The puffin is a little sea-bird who has “quite mild” manners and who tries to “live a modest life / Like any normal fellow.” Unfortunately, this is very hard to do because the bird is blessed with an over-sized beak that is bright “red, blue and yellow.”

   If you not interested in the exotic, you can spend some time with an ant who “goes to lots of picnics / But never has much fun” because she is working so hard. Or there is the snail who “slips and slides along the ground” so very slowly. This singular lack of speed is not surprising really when on considers that the poor snail has to carry his house with him wherever he goes.

   This collection of poems will tickle the funny bone and charm readers who enjoy poetry. For every poem, Kim Webster Cunningham has created a beautiful full color print that is expressive and a joy to look at.

Thank you Daniel Pritchard and David Godine for helping me to put this blog event together. It has been a pleasure!

The David Godine Blog Event Day Four - A review for cat lovers

Today I would like to share a review of a wonderful book that was published by David Godine Inc. a few years ago. This is the prefect title for all you people out there who have a fondness for cats.

Cat, What is that?

Tony Johnston

Paintings by Wendell Minor

Picture Book

Ages 6 and up.

David Godine, 2008, 978-1-56792-351-3

   Many of us share our lives with cats. They are our friends and our family members. They live in our homes, and yet sometimes we find ourselves wondering: what are cats really like? Well, it all depends.

   Some cats are “fat / round as a jar” while others are lean and lithe. They are creatures that love to lie in a puddle of sunshine “swimming” in its warmth. They will sit all day watching a goldfish swim around its bowl. They will disappear in a moment “in summer grass,” and haunt the dump looking for scraps. They are elusive, mercurial, and then, quite out the blue that will curl up in a lap for a nap, a bowl of warm fur and purrs. One never knows what to expect with a cat.

   This wonderful picture book with its clever rhymes, its brilliant imagery, and its gorgeous illustrations will delight cat lovers of all ages. Throughout the book the rhyming text and Wendell Minor’s artwork perfectly captures the elusive nature of cats. 

The David Godine Blog Event Day Three - An interview with David Godine

For this third day in the David Godine blog event I have an interview with David Godine, the founder of this unique publishing house. 

David Godine and his son

Marya: How did you get into publishing in the first place?

David: We began, forty years ago, as printers in an abandoned cow barn on the last farm in Boston. So our background has always been, to some degree, in printing and graphic design. I think this is why we take so much care with how the books look and how they are printed, because that is embedded deep in our history. We really switched full time to publishing ca. 1975.

Marya: Your credo is to publish a few books of substance rather than large lists of books that are of varying value. Is this something that you consciously planned, or did it just naturally evolve?

David: I think I realized from early on that I was simply not capable, as an executive, of either leading or building a large organization, so the size of the list is as much s result of my own personality as a deliberate business decision. But it has certainly served us well: I think if we had grown into a much larger organization with greater ambitions, and by publishing more books every year, we would probably be extinct by now. In many senses, our size has saved us. It allows us to publish what we really like and do our crying in private and it also helps preserve a certain sense of "personality" in a business that has really seen the demise of the publisher as an individual or of a house with a distinctive and identifiable personality.

Marya: The publishing world today is so different from the one that existed forty years ago, which is when your company began. What do you think is the biggest change that has taken place?

David: I'd say two big changes; first the arrival , and recent perfection of "on demand publishing, which allows publishers to keep books in print while doing relatively small print runs and maintaining the same, or close to the same, production quality, The second is the number of titles published every year, which has grown from ca. 40,000 new titles when I began in 1970 to over 250,000 new titles in 2009. And this doesn't even include the books that were privately published and printed, which now exceeds those that are commercially issued. 

Marya: Many people think that e-books are going to replace print books. I think there are too many people out there who love the feel and smell of paper, and who like to hold a book in their hands. What are your thoughts?

David: My thoughts are that there is not gong to be single soul out there ten years from now who either owns, or will remember how to operate, a Kindle, but that we get very few phone calls with queries on how to operate the book. It's been around this long because it is a product that is perfectly suited to its use and to the user's needs. We get these scares every decade, and every decade the number of books published and the circumference of exposure continues to grow.

Marya: The books in your children’s book list are very eclectic and unique. What do you look for in a manuscript?

David: Something that says something originals, and hopefully that says it in an original, and literate, way. I look for a "voice,” something that is unique to the author and recognizable. I look for books that I want to reread, as opposed to just reading once. I always think the text is more important than the illustrations. The latter can sell up to 3000 copies, but the text is what carries the book, and stays with the reader.

Marya: Why are so many of the books in your children’s selection reprints of old books?

David: Well, think about it. Who buys these books? For the most part not children, but parents and grandparents. And they tend to buy, more often than not, books and authors who they remember fondly from their own childhood. And every list needs a certainly number of both authors and titles that are instantly recognizable to a buyer, that makes him or her feel comfortable with a list. Ours is certainly not the only edition of "The Secret Garden" on the market, but it is probably the best and certainly the only "full text" edition available. But we'd sell it even if it weren't. Because people recognize it, and probably have read it.

Marya: Which of all the children’s books that you have published is your favorite and why?

David: I have lots. That's like asking for your favorite children, but one of my all time favorites, still in print, is Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales" illustrated by one of my favorite artists, Edward Ardizzone. I bought it for our very first children’s list, at Frankfurt. No one else wanted it as the Dent edition was so badly printed and it just looked anemic on the uncoated paper. We redid the calligraphy, reset the book, and printed it on a dull coated paper and it's still going strong three decades later.

Marya: Are you planning anything special for Godine’s 40^th birthday?

David: Yes, both a silkscreen poster (see the front cover of our Fall catalogue for the image, and that is me standing in front of our original type cases) as well as a forty year history of the firm with a fairly wide ranging selection of the more important and/ or interesting titles we have published.


Thank you so much David and congratulations on Godine's 40th anniversary.

David Godine Blog Event Day Two - A review of The Lonely Phone booth

For this second day in the David Godine blog event I have a review of  The Lonely Phone booth, a delightful picture book that reminds us that sometimes it is important to hold on to things that appear to be out of date and useless. After all, you never know what might happen. 

The lonely phone booth

Peter Ackerman

Illustrated by Max Dalton

Picture Book

Ages 5 to 8

David Godine, 2010, 978-1-56792-414-5

On the corner of West End Avenue and 100^th Street in New York City, there is a phone booth. The phone both is happy because it is well used by people of all kinds. When the cellist leaves her cello in a taxicab, she uses the phone booth to find out where her instrument is. When the ballerina wants to find out if she got the part for Swan Lake, she uses the phone booth to make her important call. There is even a secret agent who goes into the phone booth to change his disguises. The phone booth is needed and he is cared for. What more could a phone booth want?

   The something truly terrible happens. The cellist, the ballerina and all the other people who use the phone booth stop using it because…prepare yourself for this…they all get cell phones! The poor phone booth is neglected, and he starts to look shabby and dirty. As he watches other phone booths being carted away, he knows that he is running out of time.

   This delightfully unique picture book will not only entertain readers of all ages, but it was also serve as a reminder that there are some things that should not be replaced by new technology. There are some things that belong in our communities and that deserve to be saved and used.

   Peter Ackerman’s winning text is wonderfully complimented by Max Dalton’s retro style artwork. The art not only tells a splendid story in and of itself, but it also celebrates the colorful and diverse people who live in New York City.

David Godine has very kindly given me two copies of this book to giveaway. Please drop me an email if you want to be in the drawing.

Here is the real phone booth mentioned in this story

The David Godine Blog Event Day One - A profile of the publishing house

This week I am going to be focusing on David Godine Inc, a publishing house that I have a particular interest in. Godine is turning 40 years old this year,  and I asked David Godine to tell us a little about the house and how it came into being. Here is his response. 

"Godine began publishing children’s books in 1975 on the suggestion of Roger Straus, one of our directors, who observed that we probably wouldn’t survive very long as a “literary” publisher unless we began publishing children’s books. I reacted by saying that a) I had no children, and b) I knew nothing about it; but he countered by insisting that you didn’t need half a brain, just a good eye. “Go to Frankfurt and wander around the foreign publishers and pick out a few good titles. You can’t do any worse than what you’re doing with poetry, and with any luck a few of the books you pick out will still be in print a decade later.”

How right he was. On that first trip, I saw the Dent edition of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales illustrated by Edward Ardizonne and also, from a German publisher, a superb version of Peter and the Wolf. Both titles were subsequently selected as among the ten best children’s books of that year by the New York Timesand we thought, “This is easy! Just pick out a few good books, etc.”  It wasn’t true, of course, since publishing children’s books is not that easy, but over the years we have managed to attract some real talent and to publish their books with care and attention. The first titles by Mary Azarian, Barbara McClintock, and Kevin Hawkes were all issued by this company, and we have a strong list of important reprints that seem to have struck a real chord among readers. Most surprising among these have been the books written and illustrated by Daniel Beard (and one also by his sisters) in the late nineteenth century: the American Boy’s and American Girls Handy Book series, which have combined to sell over a million copies.

I am also proud of the classics we have rescued, most of them entirely reset and many of them newly illustrated. A short list would include William Steig’s classicRotten Island (the only example of Steig printed in Day-Glo colors), the only “complete text” edition of The Secret Garden, illustrated by Graham Rust, and, more recently, the immortal Captain Najork titles by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Quentin Blake, as well as Noel Langley’s The Land of Green Ginger (also illustrated by Ardizonne), and Elizabeth Goudge’s I Saw Three Ships. We have also actively bought softcover reprint rights to titles from the beloved Wendell Minor (Shaker Hearts andCat What is That?) and two New England classics by Donald Hall (Lucy’s Summer andLucy’s Christmas), which were illustrated by Michael McCurdy.

Several authors have been with us for quite a while now. We have five titles in print by the author / illustrator Glenna Lang, including her recent young adult biography of Jane Jacobs, Genius of Common Sense (in collaboration with Marjory Wunsch), and three titles by the illustrator Ilse Plume. And we continue to actively solicit and publish “first books” by unknown authors and illustrators. I would cite last year’sAbsolutely Wild, with linoleum cuts by Kim Cunningham, The Goat-Faced Girl, with gouache paintings by Jane Marinsky, and The Lonely Phone Booth, with its mid-century modern illustrations by Max Dalton, as three recent outstanding examples.

The program has never been large in terms of titles issued, but most have been kept in print and many have found their way into the homes and hearts of what is now an entire generation. Children’s titles are the one genre where creativity in design, writing, illustration, and production are apt to intersect. They are now, and will always remain, an area of vital interest to everyone working here."