Children's Interactive Book SeriesThis project involved developing an entertainment property from scratch. The project went through several distinct phases from initial brainstorming to competeley programmed interactive books and ancillary materials.
High Concept, Character and Branding
The logo had to be colorful and appealing to children, suggest something of the mood and character of the brand and reflect the graphic style of the series.
The development of the Robovill character ensemble had two main conditions. Firstly, each character had to be visually unique and have its own personality traits that would be used to drive story development. Secondly they had to be designed so that they could be easily animated in Flash. Writing and Storyboarding
Six stories were written and storyboarded for the Robovill universe. To date two have been produced in both English and Chinese versions. The storyboarding required that I develop a unique style of interactive storytelling and animation. Coming up with fresh ideas for each page was quite taxing but really satisfying in the end. Asset Production
Each book required quite a large number of assets to be produced. Some of these asset types were: vector character sets that could be animated in Flash, backgrounds for each book page, props and extra animal characters. Dialog was also recorded in both English and Chinese. Animation and Programming
This phase of production was the most time consuming. First the template structure for the books was programmed using actionscript, This required integration of image, sound, text and externally loaded XML files. Once the basic structure was in place animation proper began using straight ahead shot by shot keyframing and timeline scripting .
Extra Activities
The Robovill project required more than just books as deliverables. Each title comes with an interactive quiz, a Flash game and a downloadable PDF. The quizzes and games had to be scripted from scratch using Flash. The activities were pencilled and then digitally inked and laid out.
All materials for the Robovill project were created, written and executed by Simon Turnbull.
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