We are excited to announce that we have new uploads to Demibooks Share. But we are even more thrilled that they came all the way from the other side of the world. These four books feature student work from ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands. Although all these books are not in English, experience a new and unique style of art
and how these students used Demibooks Composer to tell their story.
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We are pleased to announce Education Development Corporation (NASDAQ: EDUC) has acquired Demibooks Inc. Read the press release here.
EDC is the parent company of Kane Miller Books. EDC’s direct-to-consumer sales division, Usborne Books and More, helps promotes Demibooks® Storytime.
We have had a close working relationship with EDC since their early investment in us, and feel confident they will grow the Demibooks brand and digital publishing business.
As part of the acquisition, EDC will operate Demibooks Storytime, our curated marketplace for children’s picture book apps. Publishers can continue to create cutting edge interactive apps for Storytime using Demibooks Composer Pro, the premier book app authoring platform on the iPad. Demibooks will be discontinuing selected products and services such as publishing apps to the App Store and the subscription service to Demibooks Composer Studio. More details on these changes can be found on our blog. Co-founders Rafiq and Dan will assist with the transition in the near term.
It has been a fantastic journey since Demibooks Composer first launched in 2011. We are grateful for everyone who helped build Demibooks along the way. We have met some amazing people and have worked on pioneering projects that have touched the lives of children, students and creators around the world. The founding team – Andy Skinner, Christopher Roosen, Daniel Hotop and Rafiq Ahmed – wish our community all the best in your endeavors and hope that our paths may cross again.
Best,
Rafiq Ahmed, CEO
Dan Hotop, CTO
Demibooks fosters creativity, critical thinking and interactive learning. Demibooks® Composer is an app platform that makes it easy to create interactive experiences. Publishers, students and teachers can share interactive presentations, games and lessons on our app marketplaces.
Today we announced the acquisition of Demibooks Inc. by Education Development Corporation. Demibooks will discontinue publishing to the App Store and to focus on publishing to Demibooks Storytime. Let’s take a quick look at what the plans are for our products and services.
The core products for our digital publishing and school offerings stay the same. Demibooks Composer Pro and Demibooks Storytime will continue to be available in the App Store. The limited version of Demibooks Composer and Demibooks Share for sharing projects privately will also remain in the App Store.
Current Demibooks Composer Studio subscribers and anyone with a publishing or update credit will be able to continue to use those products until their expiration date. App Store publishing will be subject to iOS9 compliance deadlines (see below).
As of October 31st, the following go into effect:
Our decision to discontinue App Store publishing stems from the lack of profitability in the App Store for both our customers and Demibooks. The model simply has not worked. Publishing in Storytime ensures high quality content is still published, and at the same time insulates publishers from changing iOS requirements such as the need for higher resolution assets.
Our support emails and support forum at GetSatisfaction remain as before. Please contact us at [email protected] for any questions during this transition time.
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As a startup, one of the hardest things to figure out is who is your customer? Demibooks launched two and a half years ago, and you would think we would know who are customers are by now. Well, we do.. for the most part. Publishers and independent storytellers. But who are the independent storytellers, and where can they found? Honestly, indies as we affectionately refer to this crucial customer base, can be found everywhere. A great resource is the Art and Design school, and we’ve had success fostering partnerships and are seeking many more. Earlier in January we announced our partnership with the Milwaukee School of Art and Design. We expect great things from Stacey Williams-Ng’s class teaching Demibooks Composer at the school. Our first strategic tie up is with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), recently ranked #1 by the Joe Schmo Ranking company. Trip to RISD – Electric Book class The Alumni Network Nicolle Gisell of Pinwheel Books saw a post from Mary Jane on Facebook and chimed in “hey we are using Demibooks Composer, too.”
Turns out Nicole had just joined the indie Boston publisher earlier that year. Finding Talent: – Will Denton and Natalie Murrow.. Get quotes from Wll We love how multi-faceted a tech company’s relationship with an Art and Design school can be. Outside of an initial structure of a formal class, the possibilities for faculty, students and alumni to engage with a new platform are truly unlimited. We love working with RISD, and look forward to
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Spring is in the air at Demibooks Storytime with several new releases and the re-introduction of old favorites.
My Felt World by Digital Toybox helps kids explore farm, ocean, safari and artic worlds with all things felt. Play the delightful animations, arrange your own world and take a picture to share! In The Crumpton Storm by Uncle Lucy Publishing, young Lucy Crump knows that amazing things await the end of rainy day at her seaside town.
City Nights by Tidepool Publishing introduces us to the sights and sounds of a bustling city as it goes to sleep. The review site Cool Mom Picks says “Don’t expect bells and whistles, or fireworks and explosions. This app is gentle and soothing. And, though I never thought I’d say this about an app, it was just like reading a real book. A wonderfully written, beautifully illustrated, lovingly created real book.”
We have a new Storytime Book, create an account to get it free! The Monster Fish educates children about the great outdoors of North America via a 3-dimensional animated environment and an interactive game.
Finally, some great news for fans of Little Bahalia Publishing. Publisher Stacey Williams-Ng worked with us from the early days of Demibooks and we were sad to hear she was shutting down earlier this year. We wanted to keep the great apps created by Little Bahalia in Storytime, and worked with the authors to be able to now re-release a number of titles under the Demibooks brand.
The first four released today: the critically acclaimed series from Julie Hedlund, A Troop is a Group of Monkeys and A Shiver of Sharks; Teeny Tiny Trucks by Tim McCanna/Keith Frawley; and The Box by Sue Moring/Josh Zelasko. Rebecca and Caldecott award winner Ed Emberley’s Itsy Bitsy Spider will be released soon.
We hope you and your young readers enjoy the apps!
Demibooks Composer is capable of many things and we wanted to shed a little more light on the functionality and interactivity that your project has the opportunity to have. We have created two new Composer tutorials that are for our more advanced users who want to learn more about what they can make with Composer. These two videos talk about streamlining your project with function proxies and then using them to help you make interactive games.
Function proxies are a list of events that can be triggered by a single command. Learn more about what function proxies are and how you can use them in “Sharing Behaviors with Function Proxies.”
Learn how to use function proxies to give your book the ability to “remember” things that have occurred throughout the story in “Remembering Completed Tasks with Function Proxies.”
We hope these resources are helpful for you and we look forward to seeing have you apply it to your next project.
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We hope 2015 has begun well for everyone! Nothing like a fresh start.
A nice way to kick off the New Year: Composer Pro has been included in the graphite.org review of “EdTech Hidden Gems of 2014″. “An app that’ll pay dividends all year round. Composer Pro is perfect for PBL, allowing students to create professional-quality ebooks that demonstrate and share their learning with teachers and peers alike.”
Please read the product review, and if you are a teacher who has taught Composer in the classroom, please leave a field note on the product review page!
Over the holidays we announced that EDC/Kane Miller Books would take over publishing operations of Demibooks Storytime. I’d like to welcome Kira Lynn at Kane Miller Books who will take over as Publisher role for Storytime. We have worked closely with Kira for the last three years both as client and partner. Her experience and understanding of both print and digital experiences in children’s publishing will be a great resource for our independent publishers. Kira will work with EDC’s Usborne Books and More direct sales consultants to continue building a consumer base for Storytime titles.
Most of the operational aspects of Storytime will remain as before, with publishers submitting their work via the Demibooks website. If you are interested in publishing in Storytime, contact us at [email protected]. If you have not yet tried the great interactive stories in Storytime, download the app from iTunes.
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We just released Little Bahalia Publishing’s latest book app, The Itsy Bitsy Spider on Demibooks Storytime. The classic nursery rhyme is retold and illustrated by Rebecca Emberley and her father, Caldecott award winner Ed Emberley. The print version is published by Two Little Birds Books, a publishing house Rebecca started up in reaction to what she describes as “an industry that is changing a lot”. The Emberleys have collaborated on 10 books together. With over thirty-five years in the industry, Rebecca has worked on dozens of titles including many published with the likes of Little Brown, Hachette, Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press, Holiday House and Scholastic.
I called Rebecca to chat about all things books and apps, here are some excerpts.
Rafiq: Tell us a little about how you started in children’s books.
Rebecca: It’s a family business! My brother and I started working on some of my father’s books. I did my first book when I was 19. I found being alone in a studio too solitary at that time, so I went to work in the restaurant biz for awhile. When my daughter was born I wanted to stay at home with her. That’s when I started working in paper and found object collage. I did that for about 25 years, now I scan larger cut-paper shapes into the computer to create digital files.
Rafiq: How did you start collaborating with your Dad? Who asked whom?
Rebecca: He [Ed Emberley] asked me. We were both kind of drifting and not doing much of anything. I just wanted to make art and he just wanted to make books. It was kind of a challenge , we didn’t know what would happen – I had been resisting the computer – he is the tech guy on our team.
Rafiq: Wait, your Dad is the tech guy? [As an aside, I'm thrilled that we have a follow from @EdEmberley on twitter!]
Rebecca [chuckles]: Yes! He’s dragged me into the tech era. He’s 83 now but he’s still more into the computer than I am.
Rafiq: You’ve published with the top publishing houses, why did you start Two Little Books?
Rebecca: I’ve always made a living writing and illustrating children’s books but it has become more difficult. I was still selling a lot of books, but not reaping the same royalties. The contracts got longer and more exclusive of authors rights. The industry has changed a lot in 35 years – the big guys have too much overhead, and you know the authors and illustrators often get pinched. I thought “there have to other ways”. 15,000 picture books are produced [during a publishing] season or something like that, I’m not positive of this years stats – but perhaps the top 100 get attention. Trade publishers just doesn’t have time to push the other books. There are so many ways to sell in the US, and only so many bookstores.
When I started Two Little Birds, my theory was that we needed to keep overhead low and focus on new distribution channels. I met some of the AMMO Books team and moved to distribution and sales through them and that has made all the difference for me. Now my audience is: 1/3 book market, 1/3 gift market and 1/3 in fashion/retail such as Anthropology, it has been great working with them!
Rafiq: What about retail chains such as Walmart/Target? How does that work for an independent book publisher?
Rebecca: Huge chains are difficult to work with. While they can order big volume, the publisher foots the printing cost and then may have to bear the risk of lots of books being returned. They want shelves to look full and always the newest thing, so we don’t do that at this time.
Rafiq: Tell us about The Itsy Bitsy Spider and your inspiration for it.
Rebecca: It [working on the print book] was actually a request from our editor at Scholastic. We had finished it but couldn’t work out the terms with Scholastic, so when the opportunity to explore something new appeared, it was there, ready and waiting . It became the first title for Two Little Birds. [check out the Parents Choice Award]
Rafiq: How did you team up with Stacey Williams at Little Bahalia to do the app ?
Rebecca: We were introduced by a producer from Lynda.com, David White. He had been working on the documentary about my father and Stacey was shooting hers, David thought we should meet. Stacey was beginning to create apps at Little Bahalia, he also thought we kind of spoke the same language, which we do and shared a similar sense of humor which we also do. So I contacted her and it turned out we would both be in NYC for one day so we met for dinner and the collaboration began.
The process has been great, I wasn’t heavily involved in the app production. She does what she does well, and I do what I do well. The app looks and works really nicely. We are going to do another one together – probably will launch in early 2016. The print version will be done by Two Little Birds.
Rafiq: You’ve got some app experience now – how do you see the overall market?
Rebecca: Before Little Bahalia, we had worked with Night and Day Studios before they merged with Scrollmotion. We did 3-4 apps with them (3 are on the App Store). I don’t actually use apps very much! [Rafiq: what??] But I do see the use for apps! It seems as if many parents’ perception of children’s apps are that they are disposable. Often, they don’t have enough space [on their device], so they don’t want to keep apps around. Therefore they they don’t want to pay too much for apps. Cloud storage might help with that, but I don’t even really understand how Cloud storage works….[Rafiq: OK, here's an example. If someone buys The Itsy Bitsy Spider on Demibooks Storytime and later decides to delete it from their iPad, they can do so safely knowing the purchase can always be downloaded again.]
When you look at the cost of creating great work, whether print or digital, it’s not reflected in the price. I don’t think in general there is a real perception of how much work, by how many people, goes into producing books and apps. It’s all about perceived value. I think we suffer from a malaise when it comes to the arts in the US!
Rafiq: It is all about distribution. What role do librarians have in the recommendation and discovery process?
Rebecca: Librarians have so many books, ebooks and apps to choose from. For a product to stand out now, it’s so much harder. It’s all about the distribution. Being small we can custom promote. The book should advertise the app, you have to have a link that takes you directly to app. Even so, it’s hard to reach busy parents and teachers in the crazy app world…I see developers looking at lots of different distribution models trying to find what works, it’s tough!
Among the problems with the publishing world – everyone is trying to protect their own brands, not wanting to partner. [We reminisce about the early days of apps/digital when lots of people spent lots of time signing up contracts but alas no apps were made.]
We need more “e” librarians – there are so many review sites! You aren’t always sure what the credentials are and what do parents really have time to read? Parents aren’t reading Kirkus [Reviews], that’s for the trade. I still think the paper book drives the app. Or T-shirts – Angry Birds thought they were going to give the app away to sell T-shirts!
Rebecca Emberley can be reached at @twolittlebirdsb on twitter. Please visit Little Bahalia Publishing.
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OPPORTUNITY:
To create game apps in a month-long, summer camp course
TEACHER LEARNINGS:
- Show a wide variety of sample works
- Give students a specific assignment
- Give students the freedom to decide how to execute a specific assignment
EXAMPLE GAME APPS:
Physics
Air Hockey
Those still skeptical about the ability of a group of untrained students to build apps in a short amount of time, need look no further than the Governer’s School 2013 camp. In just one month, students put together apps for mini film festival, guest jurored by Lynchburg College’s Siobhan Byrns, a professor of art and digital media expert.
Course instructor Kristen Harris took the first 2 weeks to introduce students to Flash software, and used the rest of the time to demonstrate Demibooks Composer Studio and help students with their projects.
Initially it was difficult for everyone to imagine using Composer to create interactive game apps. After all, most users author children’s book apps. But the moment these high-schoolers could imagine a new use, they ran with it in every scattered direction possible.
At the start of week 4, students were already deep into their projects. The popular “Physics” game was already far enough along that the Demibooks team played with it for an entire morning. The class was able to form such complex questions that Demibooks CEO Rafiq Ahmed and CTO Dan Hotop held a joint question-and-answer session.
Students also put together an “AnimaJam.” This is what Harris a short film that consists of a series of animations by different animators that begin and end with the same frame/image so that they can be linked together.
For details on the Governor’s School experience, visit Kriten’s site.
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OPPORTUNITY: Introduce a diverse group of middle-schoolers to a new way of telling the stories of different cultures
STUDENT LEARNINGS:
- programming and app development skills
- storytelling and writing about different cultures
- confidence and ability to create interactive experiences from beginning to end
After one week of writing and storytelling lessons, focused on global adventures, students turned their attention to app development.
With just their iPad, the class created seven interactive book apps in less than one week.
“The power of the iPad is that it can be a complete mobile production studio,” says Kristin Harris, Demibooks Composer instructor.
Harris kicked off the app development session by introducing students to a demo project she made in Composer Pro about the fish and water lilies in her garden. This gave students an idea of the simple animations and video clips they could incorporate into their own apps. They were then taught to use Procreate and Voice Record Pro to make illustrations, voice effects, and narrations for import into Composer Pro.
It didn’t take long before these middle-schoolers started talking about programming, using if-then statements to set up page turns and a variety of other behaviors, transforms, and functions. And because Composer allows users to preview apps as they work, the immediate feedback made it easy to understand the effects of each programming decision.
Students created animated characters, such as kicking Bruce Lee. One student even incorporated a game into her book.
The class ended Friday afternoon with child presenting their apps to a lively group of parents and supporters.
“There is no question in my mind that not only did we encouraged some writers and artist on their careers but everyone who participated in this program has a new sense of confidence and accomplishment,” said Harris, who saw even the students who expressed real hesitation become full-fledged author/illustrators.
Thanks to Patrick Gusman, director of Start Up Middle School, Geeta Raj of Global Sleepover, and Kristin Harris, program sponsors, Lynn Chen, and the junior counselors who made this pilot a hug success!
Kristin Reiber Harris is an artist, animator and media producer as well as an educator. Information about her work is available on her website, www.KristinHarrisDesign.com. She has two apps in the app store, Duck Takes A Ride: An Art Story and ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet.
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Author, artist, and lover of life, Betty Sargeant, creates an adventure to help readers figure out just how far up you can go in her interactive book app, How Far is UP, now available in Demibooks Storytime. Betty loves to create new worlds with words and pictures and has been since she was six years old. Now a big kid, Betty has illustrations exhibited around the world and has illustrated a number of other digital books such as Wayne Boris Carlo and Red.
With the excitement of adding her book to Storytime, we asked Betty to answer some questions to learn more about her and her book.
Tell us a little about yourself. Your love for storytelling. How did you became a professional author and designer?
“I have always loved telling stories. When I was very young I used to write and draw all the time. One of my favorite early stories is from when I was about seven. It is a story about a roller-skating mouse. It is filled with spelling mistakes, but I just love it.
I started school when I was four. And from a very young age I learnt about the structure of stories and I read a lot.
Later when I went to university and I studied design (amongst other things). I end up with two degrees from two different universities – a teaching degree and an Arts degree with Honors. Over this time I studied creative writing and visual art in a University department that specializes in children’s literature. I learned so much about storytelling over this time.
The year after I finally graduated, a New York digital publisher saw my work online and picked up a picture book that I made during my Honors studies. I went on to write and illustrate two books for them. You can see these books here. This gave me the opportunity to work with highly experienced children’s book editors. I have learned so many valuable lessons from editors, and I cannot stress enough, the vital role that they play in producing any literary work.
Believe it or not, I am still at university. Currently I’m finishing my PhD. In my doctoral studies I have specialized in the design of children’s book applications. Being able to pause and complete a deep analysis of the key elements that make up book apps has been a wonderful experience. Storytelling within the app ‘world’ is different to storytelling in the print ‘world’. Apps can fuse ideas central to picture book, film and game design. It is a whole new ball game, full of great opportunities and big pitfalls.
The opportunities that app design offers involve being able to express a story through interaction design, text, image and audio. This enables us to connect to audiences in new ways. Some people learn well through aural means, some are kinetic learners and some are visually based. Apps allow us to design stories that provide for a wide range of audience skills and personal preferences. Of course there are many more advantages as well.
My approach to app design involves: creating a balance between interactivity and narrative flow; being aware of the ways in which text, visuals and audio can work cooperatively to tell a story; being aware of the audience, this may include both children and adults; and being aware of what supplementary materials to include, this involves ethical decisions relating to children accessing online material. I have written about these kinds of ideas in more detail here.
I love learning. Over the years to come I plan to find out more and more about the ways in which we can tell stories. Different mediums offer different opportunities, and apps are proving to be a big game changer in regard to telling children’s stories.”
What was your inspiration for How Far is UP?
“A few years ago, when my son was two, he had the habit of asking really complex questions just before he fell asleep. One night he asked, ‘How far is up?’ I thought for a while, then realized that I really did not know the answer. I told him that I would have to think about it and get back to him.
It took some time for me to respond. After reading many scientific articles and spending a lot of time on the NASA website I realized that this was not the simple question that it may appear to be. Around this time I knew I had a book idea.
There is an old authors’ mantra that says, ‘Write about what you know’. This idea may work for some, but I tend to write about what I would like to know. In some ways I feel as if I am the audience and the author all at once. Sometimes I am discovering new ideas and at the same time presenting these ideas to others.
I like to combine fact and fiction in my writing, so the idea of ‘up’ was exciting for me. It seemed like a great chance to create a quirky bunch of characters that bumbled their way through a discovery of distance and space.
Reality is often stranger than fiction. As a consequence, things that are real, or things that really happened, are a big inspiration for me.”
Tell us a little about using Demibooks Composer for your project.
“It was such a delight working on the Demibooks platform. It gave me the freedom to fulfill my vision for this project. I have written, illustrated and animated this app. I can read some computer code and correct some aspects of code but I am by no means a computer engineer or a computer coder. So this platform was perfect for me.
Demibooks is a platform with such scope. I have not even touched the sides of what is possible within this software so I can see myself working with it for some time.
Alongside of this is the personal approach that the Demibooks team adopts. If I were unsure of how to tackle a design idea, I would jump online. There is a big online Demibooks community, and the members helped me to learn about the software. The Demibooks team are also great at getting involved in answering design questions.”
What’s Next for you and the business?
“I have ten new story concepts that I am looking to develop over the next few years. I suspect that many or most of these will become apps. But firstly I am concentrating on finishing my PhD, I will have this done by the end of 2014. I must say that getting a PhD is harder than I first thought. At times it has made me feel like this:
So I do look forward to a fresh 2015, when I can get back into my studio. The first thing I will do is pick up my pencils and paints and starting to bring a new story to life. Hopefully my world will once again look a little bit like this:
I also tend to travel a lot. I have spoken about book app design at numerous international conferences and industry events. I love this aspect of my job. Travel inspires new story ideas.”
Any words of wisdom for people who want to be storytellers?
“Editors and like gold. They are a vital part of any form of storytelling. Even if you know how to edit, use an external editor for your own work. Use an editor who has specialist knowledge in your area – in this context use one who has picture book experience.
Study, learn and never stop … but with a history like mine you may expect me to say this!
Join or form a writing group so that others critique your work before you send it to publishers. You will need to do many drafts before a story is complete. (That is often the hardest part).
If you want to make children’s books join the International Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). They have chapters and conferences all over the world. This is a great resource and a lovely community.
And finally, never stop finding the strange in the everyday. ”
–Betty Sargeant
Here at Demibooks, we are big fans of Betty Sargeant. We look forward to her upcoming books and the adventures they will take us on.
If you want updates on what is happening in Betty’s world of storytelling, follow her on Twitter @BettySargeant or find her on Facebook - Betty Sargeant, Author.
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A cool, new camp is coming to Washington, DC, this summer!
Demibooks is partnering with Global Sleepover storytellers to help your children publish their first digital storybook! Sign up for the 11-day Digital Storytelling Workshop at Startup Middle School Summer Camp.
The first of its kind in Washington, DC, Startup Middle School Summer Camp is for ages 9-14 and aims to teach young teens about computer science, coding, programming and mobile app development skills.
From July 21 – August 1, 2014, we will work with participants to focus their creativity on writing and creating their own, unique visual story about a world culture. Then, using Demibooks® Composer, a tool for creating interactive stories, your children will turn their story into an interactive storybook app that can be shared with the whole family.
Children become published storytellers and learn:
- visual presentation
- storytelling
- digital storytelling design
- global cultures, and
- basic programming logic (no prior coding experience necessary!)
Registration is open now, so sign-up your child for the Digital Storytelling Workshop today! Similar workshops and courses for other age groups and audiences will starting September 2014.
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Twenty-four year old Alfonso Cervantes was a student at Universidad de las Americas Puebla, in San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, Mexico and made an interactive book app dedicated to his baby nephew using Demibooks Composer in his Visual Information Design class. Cervantes said, ”[Demibooks Composer was] the easiest, most straight forward app I’ve ever used in my life. No one taught me how to use it, our teacher didn’t know the app because it wasn’t part of the course; using it was a proposal made by the students and even though we knew nothing about programming, we were creating impressive books within a week.”
Visual Information Design class at Universidad de las Americas Puebla making interactive books.
Cervantes opens his book, Tiempo Lento y Perezoso (Slow and Lazy Time), by dedicating it to his baby nephew, Alex Mejía Murrieta. Throughout his story, he combines deep conceptual thinking with his fun and playful artistic style to create a bittersweet story. Cervantes pours himself and his experience of losing his dad into the story but leaves room for readers to make their own connection and interpretations. His talent really stood out to us and we were determined to publish his book to Demibooks Storytime.
We reached out to Cervantes and asked if he would tell us more about himself and his book.
“The idea [behind Tiempo Lento y Perezoso] was to create a storybook for kids in which they could play and, by using phrases of a somewhat more advanced subject for them, create a similar relation to the one we had with our first books where we didn’t understand everything in the plot, but we grew and started to get the meaning behind the merely superficial cuteness of them and also understood how they unconsciously prepared us for future life events.
“I decided to create a book based in the phrase (and belief that) “time heals everything” because, even though it is proven to be true, no one is capable of specifying how long it will take and how it will happen. “Tiempo lento y perezoso” (Slow and lazy time) talks about this, how time stops when you wish for it to pass by fast, the personal process of healing and how as the days go by, we overgrow the initially pain and use it as the foundation of our happiness. Expressed at first sight in a pleasant, goofy and playful way, we could think it is just a common story book, but by reading and interacting with it I’m sure it’ll become obvious that it goes much further than that.
“I initially created this book as a way of helping myself in a time I was in need of advice, just to find out later that the ambiguity in the thoughts I shared could be useful for people no matter age or context. This book helped me heal and understand things inside me, and I hope it has a similar effect in every reader.
“The book was born at a time I was going through a deep depression, I started to make illustrated stories as part of the healing process, helping myself with the tension and pain. Then in one of my classes we were asked to create a book, so I found the perfect way of merging my situation with illustration, and that’s when Tiempo Lento y Perezoso (Slow and Lazy Time) came to life, from the hatred of the phrase “time heals everything” and my theory that, even though the statement its true, time does tend to be lazy and unaware of what people need.”
–Alfonso Cervantes
Cervantes is currently a conceptual artist at Branta in Puebla, Mexico that encourages children to run after their dreams. He hopes to learn how to be a better storyteller by understanding the theory and history behind storybooks and plans to never stop learning, illustrating, and telling stories.
Keep making, Alfonso!
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The World Cup in Brazil has enthralled the world over the last month. It’s a great time to release our first multi-language Demibooks Storytime book in Brazilian Portuguese, French and English. We are excited to introduce this month’s Storytime Book: Moon and Sun by Márcio Monteiro.
In this beautifully illustrated interactive children’s book app, the moon and sun are alone in the sky until one day their paths cross and they become the best of friends.
This book app has already gotten outstanding reviews.
“The interactivity on all 16 pages makes this story a lovely addition to any young child’s iPad. It is particularly handy for when you are in need of quiet time. Easy for your child to listen and play independently, or switch to the ‘I wanna to read’ mode for older children. This mode is also good for snuggle time with someone to laugh and giggle so gently with.” –The Appy Ladies
Márcio is a 37 year old Brazilian who lives in Recife. He graduated in design and is a children’s book author and illustrator. He says, “I’ve got a little time in this universe and now I’m doing something that the heart always wanted. Taking the stories that were stored in the drawer, illustrate them and finally show to the people; let a little light into the world.”
When asked about his inspiration for Moon and Sun he replied, “Life and its subtleties, the little and important things that often go unnoticed… feelings.”
“The biggest problem for the creation of my book-app was programming, which was eliminated with Demibooks Composer, it has a simple and intuitive interface that eliminates thousands of lines of code. Without it, I’d probably still be on the road.”
With this love for book making, Márcio will continue to work with children’s books, currently working on two new ones. And we look forward to his new creations.
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Life’s Big Questions. How do we answer them? Brenna Finnegan presents the subject in an innovative way in her book app “Answer This – A Big Book of Big Questions” based on the book Soulpancake by Rainn Wilson, et al. The project won her an Honorable Mention in the Spring 2014 Digital Storytelling on the iPad class at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. As Demibooks Composer is the the storytelling platform used at MIAD, I was on the jury.
“I’m a Communication Design student with a love for typography and simple graphics and imagery. I wanted to approach the interactivity of this media in a similar way by using simple and subtle behaviors. I wanted to use the interactivity to push the message of that page and the meaning of the question without distracting the reader. They are valuable questions and I wanted them to be the focus. Enjoy the book!” —Brenna Finnegan
I was so impressed with her work with Composer in creating Answer This I hired her later that day to intern with us this summer! She’s turned out to be a wonderful addition to the team. See more of her work on her blog.
You can now read her book in Demibooks Share. I hope it inspires you to use Composer for your own presentations, and perhaps the book will inspire you to think about some of Life’s Big Questions as well.
We also have a number of new books in Share all the way from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands. The student work is in Dutch. Experience talented new art students and how they used Demibooks Composer to tell their story.
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A shot of the expo.
Last week, we asked our New York based friends, Widad Franco and Lisa Goldman, to check out Book Expo America in New York City this weekend. Widad is an illustrator and co-founder of PixelPanthers and Lisa Goldman is a media producer [Women in Animation]. They were very excited to share their experience with us and our community.
The Usborne & Kane Miller booth set up.
Lisa and I got to BEA on Saturday at 9:30 AM and started roaming the trade show section. It seems the majority of independent or smaller publishers are doing children’s books and graphic novels. I was pleased to see that independent publishers doing books in different formats like accordion books, or even hand made books are sprouting—I found Nobrow Books to be an interesting venture that opened in the US in the past couple of years. Even highbrow publishers like McSweaneys are starting to publish children’s books and expanding here. I see these type of publishers, with cult following and with potential to grow, as potential partners for PixelPanthers and Demibooks Composer.
There is a lack of digital products that are accessible to the user in a direct manner like Demibooks Composer. Most services seem to require them to do design and composition of elements. There is a lack of publishing options for those who want to retain control of the design process.
By 9:30 AM on Saturday morning most of the digital area was gone, there was only a Korean digital publisher who does a 70-30 revenue share. They offer to convert the books across platforms. There was also an independent firm who has 1 project where they teach kids about animals in Africa and the rainforest. The art was beautifully executed, very realistic but the book was simple in terms of behaviors and effects—only a few sounds and voiceovers.
At BookCon, there were many independent authors using Create Space and happy to share their self-publishing ventures and success stories. Mostly, they were children’s books but curiously there were too many books about yoga. Within the big publishing houses, mystery novels took the center stage and I managed to get a free copy of Walled City by Ryan Graudrin at Little Brown.
On Saturday, one of the most popular events was Grumpy Cat’s appearance. Lines formed 3 hours in advance. One of the most bizarre things about the BEA was the gigantic empty stands by the Qatari Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the Government of Oman, when I approached them to ask if they were there because they had some great literacy programs and if they were interested in partnerships to create digital books for the Middle East and the world, the man just looked and me and said – “No, we just bring the books”.
–Widad Franco
Lisa Goldman with Michelle Nelson-Schmidt at BEA.
Demibooks is most loved at BEA. At the booth for EDC publishing, I met popular children’s book author Michelle Nelson-Schmidt who used Demibooks Composer to create her children’s book, Jonathon James and the Whatif Monster. BEA is the happening place for authors, publishers and fans. It was wonderful to see so much excitement about books and eBooks. Although it was quite overwhelming due to the size of the show at the Javitz Center, I left feeling quite inspired.
–Lisa Goldman
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Hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! We’ve got some Storytime updates to share today but first, the premier publishing event in the US, Book Expo America, just wrapped up in New York City. Widad Franco and Lisa Goldman attended the event for us and will share their takeaways soon. In the meantime enjoy some pictures!
Lisa Goldman with Randall White, CEO of EDC
Some of our favorite Kane Miller Books characters, the WhatIf Monster and Bob!
Recently we announced the release of Storytime 1.8 available free on the App Store. This new edition of Storytime allows users to read books in up to 4 different languages. Earlier this year South African publisher Picsterbooks launched in the App Store a 6-part interactive book series built with Demibooks Composer that teach young deaf readers how to read using sign language. Four of these six books are offered in both Afrikaans and English. Unfortunately we found an issue that requires an update to Storytime before you can enjoy the dual language books. We expect the Storytime update and the dual language books to be available very soon pending Apple approval.
The good news is two titles are available now in Storytime – get your free download of Die Gemmerkoekman (Gingerbread Man) and Die Drie Varkies (Three Little Pigs). Please watch the Apple South Africa video on the impact the iDeaf books are having at the Transoranjie School for the Deaf.
Today’s spotlight is on Die Drie Varkies, written by Ancri Swanpoel and illustrated by Karen Hart. This was the first South African Sign Language App from Picsterbooks available for Afrikaans speaking iPad users. Help the pigs get the better of Wolf in this delightful Afrikaans retelling of the classic story The Three Little Pigs.
With the use of simplified text, SASL sign video, animation, as well as finger spelling. The app is suitable for both sign-, auditory-deaf or the hard of hearing user. The app is suitable for both Afrikaans first language and Afrikaans first additional language users.
A reminder that the current Storytime Book has an update. The enhanced edition of There are Fish in My Tree by Reuben Miller and Night Knight Books is now available on Storytime (sign into your account to receive it free) as well as in the App Store. Note: if you have an earlier version of the book from last week, please delete that in “My Books” and re-download to get the latest release from the publisher.
There are Fish in My Tree depicts a cute story about a little boy and the new friends he finds in his tree. The app provides an interactive environment where kids can read and learn at their own pace. The app is full of animated surprises, encouraging children to explore and making learning fun. The new version includes a fun interactive game where kids can learn about keeping our oceans clean of trash and debris. Watch the video here.
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Demibooks Composer Software
Incorporating technology into the classroom is a definite and important focus for modern education. iPads are becoming a permanent fixture of our classrooms and as teachers, we must try to make use of all the tools available to us to enable the creation of interactive and beautiful teaching resources.
On February 7, 2014, Crawford Preparatory School Pretoria hosted our first-ever workshop to launch Demibooks Composer Software to other teachers within our group. Music educators from four different schools were introduced to Composer Software as a means of creating interactive and relevant learning resources for their students. Class music, music theory and instrumental teachers were represented and delegates were eager to discover the potential that lies within the software.
As an introduction, teachers were introduced to my own app, Audio Sleuth, that I had created using Composer Studio. Then the real fun began. Teachers received an iPad to work on and were given the opportunity (after a little bit of tutoring) to try out Composer Pro. They soon discovered how easy the software is to use and the benefits of being able to create an app without having to learn to code. Soon, flutes were playing audio at the touch of a finger, cellos were flying across the page and animations were causing squeals of delight! As the delegates began to consider the possibilities of using Composer to create lessons for piano students, music history apps and theory books for their classes, the excitement levels in the room reached a crescendo!
There are plans for follow-up workshops and tutorial sessions to give teachers the chance to develop their myriad of ideas. I will also be introducing Composer to my Grade 4 pupils during their iPad Skills lessons in the second term, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of our staff and our pupils’ creative endeavours!
Download Audio Sleuth today!
Written by Jean Payne, Crawford Preparatory School Pretoria
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“I was thrilled how quickly the students accepted my challenge to explore Composer’s physics and gaming potential. They had great results and learned a lot in the process.” Kristin Harris, Adjunct Professor, Dept of Illustration The Summer Residential Governor’s School for Math, Science and Technology at Lynchburg College used grant funds to purchase iPads in 2013. The “@d Animation and Media Design” class used Demibooks Composer as a tool to create interactive narrative apps, as well as games with physics capabilities.
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“We are thrilled to be offering this new design elective, which not only utilizes the iPad as a reader, but also as a content creation device. Thanks to the Composer software donated by Demibooks, this course will help to expose many additional possibilities for our design, illustration and animation students as potential digital storytellers.” Phil Belar, ex-Chair of 2D/4D Design MIAD became the first Art and Design College in the US to offer a full semester course based on Composer in Spring 2012, and are continuing the class for a second year this Spring. The class combines storytelling theory with learning Composer Pro and creating apps good enough to publish. The first, The Box, will be launched in the App Store
and Demibooks Storytime by Little Bahalia Publishers early 2014.
“Children should be prepared for jobs that do not exist yet, fostering thinking out of the box and encouraging entrepreneurship” Colin Northmore, Head of School Beginning in 2012, Sacred Heart College has piloted a iPad-only
approach to application development centered around Demibooks Composer. Students finally have a way to take ideas to working apps. Over an 18 month period, 120 7th and 8 grade students will produce books and games in English and Zulu for 1st and 2nd graders at the school. Curriculum jointly developed by Demibooks partners Picsterbooks.
“My project in particular took a great deal of time to build, photograph, and edit. I was thankful that the easiest part was putting it together on the iPad. I was able to compile everything in Composer over the course of a weekend.” Natalie Murrow, RISD alumni and Demibooks alumniAlmost always ranked #1 in global design schools, RISD is well known for it’s innovative Electric Book class. The course teaches undergraduate illustration and design students how to make illustrated
ebooks and uses Composer as one of the foundation tools.
Digital Book World 2014 kicked off in New York City this week with a great win for the Demibooks community. Congrats to Little Bahalia Publishing for receiving the Digital Cover Design award for ‘A Shiver of Sharks‘ available both in the App Store and Demibooks Storytime!
At the same time, innovation in digital publishing suffered a blow in the last week with the closure of one of our early competitors, Moglue. We were saddened to hear the announcement, made a couple of days before Christmas, that the New Year would bring with it an end to the South Korean book app platform maker. It was a difficult and courageous decision for Moglue to make. I wish CEO TaeWoo Kim and his team the best of luck in their new pursuits.
Today, we’d like to reach out to the Moglue community to try our platform as an alternative. Open an account with us in the next 7 days, and we will send you a promotional code for 60% off on credits towards app publishing and support services. Be sure to enter “Moglue” for Your Company.
According to the Moglue announcement, ”For users who already purchased a Moglue product we will give a permanent offline version of MoglueBuilder (which means no publishing limit but no more future support) to each one to keep your work.” A really a nice advantage of the Moglue platform for technically adept users is the ability to build their own final apps. But its not easy for everyone to do, and at Demibooks we include final packaging and submission to Apple as part of our publishing service. Additionally, without the Moglue team able to make updates to their platform, operating system updates from Apple may cause apps to not function properly.
Demibooks offers a robust ecosystem to established and aspiring digital publishers:
Demibooks Composer Workbench
Demibooks Composer Preview
The screenshots above are from a soon to be released update to Knight Night Books’ ‘There are Fish in My Tree’. Help clean up debris in our oceans in this awesome game at the end – the counter and timer are both coming soon!
You’ll also find a great support community of people as passionate as you are about interactive storytelling, and plenty of getting started material. Please find more information on our publishing process on the Printshop site. But hurry and open an account on Printshop in the next 7 days (don’t forget to enter “Moglue” for Your Company), and receive the promo code for 60% off on credits towards our publishing and support services.
We hope Moglue may still find strategic alternatives to stay afloat. But in the event that does not materialize, we would like to extend a warm welcome to the Moglue user community to try Demibooks Composer – the leading iPad-based platform for authoring interactive media apps.
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This has been a hard week for South Africans, our beloved Madiba – everybody’s favourite grandfather – has passed away. He was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary vision, he knew how to inspire instilling hope, love and understanding and created a much more caring and engaged society in South Africa.
“You know if I was not kept in jail for 27 years, I don’t know whether I would be so kind to children, but for 27 years without ever seeing children, that was a terrible experience. And when I came out I tried to make up for those 27 years.” – Nelson Mandela (2003).
In our country there is still a huge discrepancy between the haves and have nots. This project to create books for disadvantaged deaf children is my contribution to try and make things a little better.
Picsterbooks is nearing completion of the the iDeaf project to create 6 interactive book apps for the Transoranje School for the Deaf. We have built the apps in both Afrikaans and Afrikaans Sign Language, as well as translated to English and South African Sign Language (SASL). Demibooks Composer was chosen as the development platform. The book apps will all be available in the App Store by the end of this year of early January 2014, and in Demibooks Storytime shortly thereafter.
When we started the project we weren’t sure how the children would react and interact with interactive storybooks, so we played it safe using classic tales like The Three Little Pigs and The Gingerbread Man. We are excited about the next three tales written for South African children by local teachers using their curriculum to inspire our storybooks. Our first South African story is The Clever Plan. This is a story about how a mom and a little girl make a plan. Mom and Thuba plants mielies (maze) and sells the maze to make enough money to buy Thuba a red bicycle, within the story we tell the tale of sowing seeds, taking care of crops and harvesting the maze. Illustrations for this book is by Sandy Mitchell, a Kalkbay, Western Cape based illustrator and artist with a witty sense of humour.
Our Second book the Big Carrot written in Afrikaans, English and South African Sign Language tell the tale of an enormous carrot, that ends up feeding the whole farmyard from the farmer and his family to the sheep, the pigs, and the very naughty goat. Our illustrator for this book is Natalie Murrow of Demibooks. It was quite an interesting task to acquaint Natalie with our local architectural style and landscape, as we really wanted a local feel for the book.
Then the last of the three curriculum based books The Kings Questions is a tale set in a distant land. The Kings Question teaches the lesson of humility. The illustrations for this book were also done by San Francisco based Natalie Murrow. She created a wonderful world foreign to our local landscape inspired by the tale of a King surrounded by people who think they are better than others.
About the Author
Karen Hart is the Publisher at Picsterbooks, an independant creator and publisher of interactive applications in South Africa. Karen focuses the conversion of truely South African stories into interactive book applications for children. Earlier in 2013 she presented the iDeaf design using Demibooks Compsoser at the 2013 Interaction Design and Children conference. Karen can be reached at [email protected]
In the second post of this series, I showed how a 3D object could be manipulated as a complex sequence by interacting with two layered animations and a spinner. Using the same concept of layering animations to simulate a seamless environment, this demonstration took on the challenge of creating an exploded view of an assembled piece of equipment.
The first part of the video is a proof-of-concept showing that 3 blocks stacked on top of each other could be expanded (or exploded) outwards with each piece turning into individual spinners. One video was created from the 3D animation showing the expansion and a full 360-degree rotation of all three blocks.
1. Separate the animation into the expansion sequence (60 frames) and the rotation sequence (20 frames)
2. Export both animations as PNG sequences into Photoshop
3. Crop each frame to reduce image size for the expansion sequence
4. Separate and crop each of the individual block rotations
5. Zip each set of sequences
6. Import expansion zipped file as an Animation
7. Import the individual block zipped files as Spinners
Note: When cropping in Photoshop, make sure each set of sequences are the same size.
Since the original 3D animations were developed in 1024 px X 768 px to match the Composer stage size, there was a lot of unused white space on either side of the blocks.
Memory management and image size is always a top priority when developing for the iPad, so I brought all 60 frames of the block expansion and 20 frames of the rotation sequence into Photoshop and cropped them down.
Once the correct size for cropping was determined, I recorded the cropping and saving steps as Actions to process the remaining frames. Using the Actions panel in Photoshop greatly reduced my processing time.
Now that we know the exploding view concept worked with the 3 blocks, it was time to test it out on a real piece of equipment. The object in the second part of the video is a 3D object of a building automation controller that my company manufacturers and installs.
For those of you that are curious, when you go to your thermostat at the office and change the temperature setting, this is the piece of equipment in the ceiling that controls the temperature or airflow into your office.
The third part of the video was created with the same procedures as the 3 blocks, but now each of the pieces were overlapped during the spinner operation.
The challenge now is figuring out how to create 3 overlapping spinners that are triggered by a smaller area than the spinner object.
Basically, the spinner trigger areas cannot overlap each other even if the animation sequences do overlap.
This 3-part series flexed Composer in a 3D complex sequence environment to see if this mighty app was up to the task. In my opinion, Composer does exactly what I need it to do for manipulating a simulated object inside an eLearning course.
Objects and animations can be layered to create very complex simulations that would take a lot of coding to accomplish in other programs like Adobe Flash.
With Demibooks’ pivot into the realm of education, it only seems natural to think of “eLearning” as belonging to the same category as “educational apps.” After all, the same Learning and Development concepts apply to all areas of education whether it’s grades K through 12, college-level, or corporate training.
This next series of blog posts will take a detailed look at using Composer as an educational app development tool.
Leave a comment and let us know how you use Composer in education. Are you teaching classes on how to use Composer? What are your challenges with using Composer in the classroom?
About the Author
Andrew Weaver is a Project Manager for Online Resources at Siemens Industry Inc., Building Technologies Division. He is responsible for customer support and administration of their Learning Management System (LMS) and is the eLearning developer for external customer online courses. Andrew has a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA) and has over 20 years experience in Learning and Curriculum Development. You can reach Andrew on his LinkedIn page or his personal blog at eLearningBuilders.com.
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