The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a fascinating new ‘iPad Storybook’ that recently hit the App Store. Developed by Moonbot Studios and lead by an ex-Pixar animator, William Joyce, the book is an intriguing mix of book, animation and game.
Put yourself in Morris’ shoes as you dive into the story of Mr. Lessmore and his flying friends through Moonbot Studios’ first Interactive Storybook. In this reinvention of digital storytelling you can repair books, tumble through a storm, learn the piano and even get “lost in a book,” flying through a magical world of words, giving you a dynamic journey through the story.
Available on the iPad App Store for $4.99, the book contains sequences where you have to interact with the iPad app in order to progress through the story. It includes such activities such as drawing, playing a piano, playing with food and a number of mini-games. It looks like a tonne of fun, jump the break for a beautiful trailer of the interactive Storybook.
On February 3rd, 1986 Steve Jobs acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm. Jobs, who was forced to resign from Apple, renamed the group “Pixar”. After some years of initial business struggle, the rest is history: Pixar is now the most successful animation studio in the world with masterpieces such as Toy Story, Up and Wall-E in their portfolio. The company became a subsidiary of Walt Disney in 2006.
From the unofficial Pixar blog:
When Pixar went beyond the conference and animation-festival circuit and into the multiplex with Toy Story in 1995, it changed the art and business of animation overnight. True, if Pixar hadn’t made the first computer-animated feature film, someone else eventually would have. But if Toy Story hadn’t been a superlative film, it’s doubtful computer graphics would have taken over feature animation as it did.
Pixar’s most extraordinary creation, perhaps, is its repeatable process for creating stories that audiences will want to see. I don’t mean a “formula,” but a way of incubating stories: putting story development in the hands of the director and providing regular feedback from a director’s peers.
Did Pixar Tease The iPad In “The Incredibles” In 2004?
During a session at Macworld Expo, Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff told the audience that Steve Jobs might have tested people’s reception to a tablet computer in Pixar’s 2004 movie “The Incredibles”:
If a device works on a movie audience, it’ll also work as a real-world product. That’s the “meta lesson” fromChris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff who study how sci-fi interfaces in movies make it off the silver screen and vice versa.
We know the tablet project had been in the works for years before Apple decided to release the iPhone first, in 2007. We also know, however, that similar tablet devices were used in sci-fi movies before Pixar’s The Incredibles, because people have always wondered what the future might look like. For example, in today’s movies we’re predicting Minority report-style controls and brain-based human-machine interactions.
The fact that a tablet computer with touch controls was used by Jobs’ Pixar in 2004 is, anyway, fascinating. And perfect discussion material for geeks.
