Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/26533
Interactive Interest Nook: online and in stores N EW YORK — In a crowded e-reader marketplace filled with iPads and Kindles, Barnes & Noble knew it needed to cut through the clutter to introduce the world to its Nook e-reader. That’s where New York interactive agency The Wonderfactory and design/visual effects house Resident Creative Studios (http://weareresident.com) come in. Together they created a series of multimedia videos — seen online, in-store and on the Nook itself at the end of 2010 — that explain all this device can do. Resident’s creative work centers on an extensive amount of subtle-yet-complex 3D animation, including crafting a completely photoreal animated Nook device and compositing numerous book and magazine covers onto the 3D Nook. Resident also created the opening sequence seen in all four videos that depicts seemingly thousands of popular books, maga- zines and newspapers covers free falling in slow motion to form bringing these things together.” While keeping the soul and story of the the Nook logo.Animator Adam VanDine and fellow Resident ani- mator/CG supervisor Matt Foglia used Adobe After Effects, Pho- toshop and Maya to complete the job. In all, Resident produced four videos. Kate is a four-plus- minute video featuring a live-action young woman who speaks directly to viewers and highlights all of Nook’s many features. Shorter :90 videos, Newsstand and Kids, show off specific Nook capabilities.A fourth video, a basic Nook introduction, plays when users first turn on the device. In addition to designing the actual 3D animated Nook,Van- Dine reports the opening sequence of covers falling to form the Nook logo,as well as a similar sequence that shows thousands of magazine and newspaper covers orbiting the Nook device, was among the most complex to execute. What also stands out for VanDine was the fact that the Nook product itself was still in development, even as Resident began work on the project.That meant revising the 3D animated Nook every time there was a change to the interface of the actual Nook.“Which is quite unusual,” VanDine notes,“but it offered us the opportunity to revise and perfect our animated Nook over the entire production.” How did creating this interactive project differ from more traditional work? “In the end, a screen is a screen, so it’s not such a big deal whether it’s going to play on TV or the Web,” he says. “There are certain issues like title safety you don’t have to worry as much about,as well as different aspect ratios.The video we did for the Nook device had to be set to a very specific as- pect ratio that you never see in television.” 28 Post • March 2011 book intact,Auryn adds an interactive expe- rience that includes games, puzzles, anima- tions, doodling and audio. For example, What Does My Teddy Bear Do All Day? fea- tures a girl with binoculars and users can focus them in on what she is seeing. “You are looking for the teddy and when it pops up you can move it and touch it or then teddy comes and paints the whole screen and you have to wipe it to get on with the story,” describes Shukla. The kids are also encouraged to explore on their own. “If there are flowers on the wall, you touch them and they become pin- wheels,” explains Shukla.“In Teddy’s Night, we have a bathroom sequence where the bath tiles turn into a memory game.” Some books are based on existing stories, and new ones are being created as well. The company’s newest non-storybook offering is Auryn Ink, a watercolor drawing application for illustrators.Their proprietary technology has allowed them to create ap- plications that “keep currency intact, mean- ing there is no flicker. It allows us to feed a style-DNA to the system — an image or collection of images— and the software we’ve written is able to capture an artist’s style, and we can apply that style to any other image of our choice.” Shukla wanted to make sure the technol- ogy worked on all platforms, from mobile phones to feature films — that it would withstand the resolution dependency of any format. Auryn also opened an office in India because “we didn’t only want to be a tech- nology company,we wanted to be a content company too,” he says. When Auryn began, YouTube was just taking off.“We were watching the habits of people change, and watching what was coming next — from Internet-connected TVs to tablet devices and Netbooks,” ex- plains Shukla.“We wanted to make sure our www.postmagazine.com Teddy: Auryn uses proprietary technology to create digital storybooks that come to life via Apple’s iPad. technology was ready to be de- ployed on any pipeline.There were three areas where we wanted to test the technology: films, digital books and commercials.” Thanks to these tests, they real- ized the technology was “best suited to tell children’s stories.We knew our technology shines be- cause you can add interactivity and animation and other things iPad allows you to do.We dropped the other two efforts and moved solely to iPad last year.We are just waiting for Android devices to come out. Galaxy is the only other one out there, and we are looking at that as well.” While creating its interactive applica- tions, Auryn calls on traditional tools, such as Maya for 3D animation, along with Adobe’s After Effects, Photoshop and Flash.They employ their own ren- dering technology. Auryn’s goal is to release one app a month. Next up is Little Mermaid, based on the illustration by Lisbeth Zwerger, a water colorist. They are currently working on Camille and Sun Flowers, an app based on the book by Laurence Anholt. Culver City-based creative agency Hello Design (www.hellodesign.com) helped launch a new Website (www.tillamook. com) for Tillamook Cheese, a farmer- owned diary cooperative. The site hosts video footage shot while on a quest to find the best “cheese” chefs in the country. After culling it down to a top three, the winning cooks are featured showing their creative cheese recipes. Hello shot the videos with Canon 7D cameras using a combination of Canon 70-200, Canon 24- 105 and Tokina 11-16 lenses. For post, they called on Final Cut Pro, After Effects and a variety of plug-ins.