Small Stories

Tag: Pixar

  • The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore by William Joyce (Moonbot Studios)

    Hey, what’s this? An iPad App in a blog about children’s books?

    Sacrilege?!

    No, in fact The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is the kind of e-book both my kids and I had been waiting for. What’s more (and somewhat ironically) it itself is an ode to the pleasure of books.

    We’ve had a number of the ‘interactive books’ in the house since the iPad set foot in our abode. First the Dr Seuss titles from Oceanmedia – really just early readers with a ‘read-it-to-me’ mode. Then those interactive ‘reference titles’ like the Solar System.

    But none, until now, have really started to show the potential of the medium in terms of storytelling. No doubt Lessmore’s richness is a result of its parallel life as a short film, and the talents of Pixar-quality illustration and animation (Joyce used to do character design for Pixar). But the first thing that struck me about this title was that the interactive elements were so well integrated into the story itself. Whereas other titles intersperse a classic story with an interactive scene (Alice in Wonderland being the first example of this), every scene in Morris Lessmore is ‘interactive’ – but not to the point where it takes over from the story itself.

    Apart from the illustrations, animation and interactivity, what matters most is that it’s a worthwhile story too – a man who gets lost in books – with the same wistful quality that Pixar’s Up did.

    Being a well designed App, the sound effects, music and voiceovers can all be toggled as well as the text itself – so you can go completely ‘book-like’ or completely ‘film-like’ depending on your preferences.

    At US$4.99 The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is a complete bargain – you’d be paying $20 if it was a hardcover picture book. And it’d be half as fun. Highly recommended.

  • Ramayana: Divine Loophole by Sanjay Patel

    I’ve never read the Ramayana nor really delved deep into Indian mythos. Brought up on the Greco-Roman and Chinese pantheons, the only other mythos I really explored intently as a child were Egyptian (no child can really resist pyramids?) and Norse (Thor! Loki!).

    However tonight I read my youngest the first half of Sanjay Patel’s seriously abridged Ramayana (24,000 verses condensed to 107 pages!).

    Patel is probably best known to those in the illustration and design world as one of the Pixar animation team. And here in Ramayana: Divine Loophole he tells the general story through vibrant illustration and some not-quite-so-vibrant text.

    I really can’t fault the digital illustrations. They are stunning and stylised to capture immediate attention – indeed, they reminded me most of the style of The Incredibles – one of the Pixar titles on which Patel worked. The demons are menacing and fierce without being terrifying, and the colour palette is completely saturated, vibrant. The heroes bright and bold. (Check out Patel’s site Ghee Happy for some spreads from the book.)

    The text, for the most part, is functional. But there are some clunkers. I’m not a fan of unnecessary colloquialisms like this – “But [Soorpanaka] was love struck, so much so that she transformed herself into a beautiful maiden and tried making a pass at the blue prince by showing off some of her dance moves”. They end up cheapening the story. Fortunately there aren’t too many instances of these.

    Slightly problematic, at times, too is the contrast on the text. With almost edge to edge illustrations there are a quite a few pages where the small point text vanishes. The worst offenders being the pages with pale yellow text on an orange background (ugh!). I almost unintentionally skipped those paragraphs!

    The final third of the volume, after the main story, is a collection of key characters, gods and demons; a map of the story locations; and several pages of process sketches.