When traditional story-telling meets iPad technology the results are outstanding, especially when they come from the creative minds of Matthew Talbot-Kelly and Jacqueline O. Rogers of Gibsons.
The couple have designed and written animated stories for adults in a series titled Moving Tales, available for your iPad through iTunes.
When Apple's Steve Jobs demonstrated the new iPad in 2010, the couple had an epiphany moment. Jobs read a newspaper from his device - cutting edge at that time.
"What would we like to read on this?" Talbot-Kelly wondered. "It needs content." They set about to create the stories that would show best on the screen of an iPad. It's a collaborative effort. They work with dozens of others: programmers who build the interface, professional narrators, animators, sound people and translators who work with the basic design and text from the couple.
The idea didn't start with the technology, but instead with a story-telling group the two attended in Toronto that sparked Rogers' imagination.
"I love words, I love text," she said, and she looked to folk tales from many traditions: Irish, Jewish, English or similar stories heard in many cultures. Rogers took the basic premise and reconstructed them into new versions, using intelligent language and visually impressive illustrations.
One story animated for the iPad is titled The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross and tells the tale of an old lady who wishes for something more in her life. While in her rocking chair, she dreams three times of a city to which she must journey to explain her dream. But when she arrives, she finds that the answer lies at home in her own back yard.
This is a particularly ironic tale for the couple because, since moving to the Coast, they have journeyed three times back to Ireland (Talbot-Kelly's birthplace) but have always returned home to Gibsons to find their roots here.
When a reader buys the app (a term for application software built for specific purposes) and touches the icon, they are transported into a story book world in which they travel with the characters. They can mute the voice and read it quietly to themselves, they can convert the English to other languages, or they can narrate the story themselves using the built-in recorder. Moving Tales has not escaped the attention of the Apple people and the company has spotlighted the apps on their promotional pages describing them as a hot trend.
Talbot-Kelly has recently produced an anti-bullying app, written by spoken word poet Shane Koyczan. If you don't remember this talent from Sechelt's Festival of the Written Arts you might remember his recitation on the Olympic stage in 2010. Koyczan's poem/story can be viewed on an iPad or iPhone. Aimed at kids, teachers and parents, it was released a month ago and it shot to number 10 in the U.S. charts for views and number three in Canada.
Talbot-Kelly's background in architecture and his facility with special effects gives him the design ability to direct several filmic art pieces, some of which have been shown on the Coast.
At a TEDx conference in Sechelt in 2011, the film-maker explained the process of building the set for an animated production, his second film, The Trembling Veil of Bones. It included crafting miniature three-dimensional sets, much like he does for major film production companies in Vancouver, and the use of a robotic camera to follow the action through a digital landscape. The sound design is particularly interesting as there's no dialogue, though there may be music and other evocative sound effects such as ice cubes clinking or a squeaking bed - and the audio does not have to synchronize with the visuals. The result is cinematic art, not your average animated film.
Though the Moving Tales designers are happy with their creations, they want to reach out to larger audiences and not be lost in the many thousands of apps available.
"We are treating it as an art form and showing it in our own community," Rogers said.
Their submission for a future exhibition at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery has been accepted and it will likely include Rogers' paintings, Talbot-Kelly's three-dimensional designs and their animated collaborations.
A Moving Tales story can be bought at the app store at itunes.apple.com and more about the artists can be found at www.matthewtalbotkelly.com and www.jacquelineorogers.com.
