From Book to App with Al Yankovic’s WHEN I GROW UP, Illustrated by Wes Hargis, Digital Development by Bean Creative
I thought I’d hate it. It’s not a book. And I love books, with their fusion of author and illustrator’s visions into a carefully crafted whole, results showcased on the printed page. An app, I considered, is an intangible electronic thing, a jumped-up computer program whose relationship to books is dubious. Tasked with creating one, I wondered what, as a book editor, I could even contribute to the effort.
Turns out, the answer is everything—everything I know and value about making picture books goes into creating an app.
“Memo to Bean Creative: The last time I was cutting-edge, I was in Tenth Grade Computer Science, learning BASIC.”
I’m not a programmer. But neither am I an author or an illustrator, and every day I work with people whose skills differ from my own. I quickly realized that an app developer is only one more artist to understand, encourage, and question: What happens to the narrative arc if we highlight this piece of text? How is the art impacted if we collapse two scenes into one dynamic screen? Does this animation or that interaction serve the storyline; is it in character; does it deepen the world? What if we try this instead…?
Soon I faced the obvious—the editorial habit of scrutinizing each component, for its own merit and for its impact on the whole, transcends the printed page.
“Excellent narration, Al. Now I’d like you to scream like an enraged gorilla.”
Picture books are not meant for silence—they live when read aloud. Maybe none of my books have talked to me before, but I certainly talk to them, sounding their cadences, feeling the rhythms, and hearing theambient noiseemanating from the art. Incorporating audio files into the app felt surprisingly natural. Indeed, step after step of the app’s creation felt unexpectedly familiar, much more a simple and direct continuation of bookmaking than I’d ever imagined.
“Dear Wes: Please draw five (5) game screens, two (2) new classroom scenes, and one (1) naked, shorn spider.”
As the app grew, my
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Thanks, Ted! <br /><br />You are awesome!