Steve Dooley at The Bristol Comic Con 2013
Steve Dooley, the illustrator of The Wind in the Willows App,was seen having a great day with friends at the big Comic Con gathering in Bristol, UK. Those friends were the mysterious Rex Van Ryn, illustrator and co writer of the graphic novel John Barleycorn Must Die, Howard Gaton the other co writer of this noir fantasy thriller and the awesome Jason of England dressed as Vali, a character from the novel.
Of course, Steve took Toad along to meet a few other old friends. Click on the images to enlarge. Were you there too? Let us know.
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Chagword Literary Festival March15-17, 2013 - Poop Poop!
This weekend we are in the The Marquee next to Chagford Library in Chagford, Devon.
Pop along, meet Sam North, Bobby Gilbert and Steve Dooley. More importantly, of course, meet Toad, Ratty, Mole and Badger! Play with the app, race Toads car, touch a dragonfly!
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We are off to The Independent Bath Literature Festival!!!
Bobby, Steve and Sam will be giving a workshop for up tp thirty people on how to make an app this Saturday morning. In the afternoon they will be entertaining a large crowd with how they produced The Wind in the Willows App. I'm very excited. Poop, Poop! - Toad.
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iPhone Stocking Filler...
We have designed miniature apps for the iPhone. Our mega-app, The Wind In The Willows, for the iPad, is too big a thing for a phone’s screen, so we have decided to make four cut-down versions, with each one featuring the track taken through the story of one of the four main characters. You will be able to follow either Mole, or Toad, or Rat, or Badger.
The first of these, ‘Toad’s Story’ becomes available here on the app store today!
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The Wind in the Willows now available in Chinese and Spanish
Anybody out there trying to think of a last minute christmas present for you Spanish, Chinese (and English!) speaking friends? Click here and gift it to them!
- Toad
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We have four pages in Devon Life!
There are some eccentric photos of The Wind in the Willows App team to be seen in December's copy of Devon Life Magazine. It's the one with... a squirrel on the front. Badger has been out and bought a copy already.
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The making of the App.
Steve and Bobby have just returned from giving their talk on the making of The Wind in the Willows App to a packed theater in Plymouth College of Art.
It was wonderful to meet so many interested, interesting, creative young people. Given the publishing game is changing so rapidly, it is important for art students, whether graphic designers, illustrators, fine artist or games designers, to ask lots of question. This is just what they did. I hope we answered reasonably clearly and maybe even inspired a little. Thank you for a warm welcome and thank you Martial Bugliolo for the invite.
Steve
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The Brewhouse Theater's Christmas Show is...The Wind in the Willows!
Christmas Show Friday 7 December - Saturday 5 January 10.15am 2pm 7pm
A charming world of companionship, carefree boating and delicious picnicking opens up for lovable Mole as he joins kind-hearted Ratty, brave Badger and the bumptious Mr Toad in this wonderful classic story.
Come and join in this whirlwind riverbank adventure from the team at The Brewhouse Theater Taunton, Filled with music, humour and special eff ects, this much-loved story will enchant all ages.
Take a look, for your family treat this Christmas THE BREWHOUSE THEATRE
The Wind In The Willows Boat Rides before or after the performance. Book online or at the Box Office.
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Toad Hall famous throughout the world!
The Wind in the Willows App is being downloaded in many countries, from Australia, Russia, Canada and the USA to Skandinavia. It's not surprising, Toad and his great friends Ratty, Mole and Badger are known and loved the world over. Here our friend Holly Hertzell-Reviglio spotted Toad Hall in New York City. Perhaps Toad spent a night here, he looks pleased about it!
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iPhone Version - Tell us how much to charge?
We are working on iPhone/iPod versions of stories from The Wind in the Willows and hope to release two, "Toad's Story" and "Mole's Story" shortly. They will consist of about 60 pages from the full 200 page app and tell the stories in fewer words (but bigger words!) that can be easily read on an iPhone. The pages used will be just as interactive as in the full version and don't even need particularly small fingers.
So how much should we charge for these (the full iPad app is £4.99 / $6.99)? Which of the following do people think?
- 69p / 99cents?
- £1.99 / $2.99?
- More than this? Something in between?
- Whatever is necessary to own such a quality app - including taking out a 2nd mortgage on my home.
Let us know your thoughts by commenting on our Facebook page.
And relax, we wouldn't dream of putting your home at risk. Why? Well read Chapter 4 of The Wind in the Willows App. -Croak!
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The Wind in the Willows - Education Pack
There is now a set of educational resources to go with the iPad version of The Wind in the Willows app. It's early days yet for schools having access to iPads but we wanted to make sure material was available for this wonderful story.
To download click on "Resources" on the menu, or just click on the image on the left.
We would welcome feedback from any teachers or even parents who might want to give it a go at home. Let us know how it can be improved. Email us, or join in the discussion on our facebook page.
The content has been written by an experienced school teacher (thanks Jenny) and meets the requirements of the United Kingdom Key Stage 2. We'd love to hear how useful it might be in other English speaking countries. Drop us a line from the U.S., Australia, Canada... Could it be translated into Spanish or Chinese in line with our upcoming release in those languages. We'd love to hear your views.
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Weasels have a day in The Sun
We were very excited today to find that UK National Newspaper, The Sun, carried an article on The Wind in the Willows iPad App!
Because of an oversite in our great marketing machine (er, that would be me this week) we don't have a copy of the article which we think was published yesterday or monday of this week. Has anybody out there seen it? Even better, if you have a copy that you could send us that would be great.
Click here to see the on-line article. Leave a comment! Spread the word!
Bobby
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Internet app brings Toad, Ratty & Mole into the 21st Century
Toad and the gang are at large in Britain's West Country, setting for many of the original scenes in The Wind in the Willows including Toad Hall.
Click here to read full page article in Western Morning News.
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ChagWord - Toad Stars in UK Literary Festival
The authors of The Wind in the Willows for the iPad, Sam North, Steve Dooley and Bobby Gilbert have been invited to the ChagWord Literary festival. They will be describing how they worked together to produce the words, illustrations and iPad magic that brings this much loved classic into the 21st Century. See ChagWord for more details.
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Chinese symbols - some geeky figures
I've been working on the Chinese language version of The Wind in the Willows iPad App. I now know a lot more about how many Chinese characters there are. There's a lot!
Developing apps for the iPad requires you to keep a tight rein on memory resources. All the fonts we use are hand crafted (with the help of some great software - Glyph Designer) and memory usage builds up with Chinese.
So I wrote a utility to list all the characters we use for each of the fonts to avoid putting any extras in. This showed me that we use 1779 characters for the main story! However we only need 42 of these for a large title font used in chapter headings so quite a memory saving there.
Contrast this with English which requires 74 characters (26 upper case, 26 lower case + some puntuation) and Spanish which requires 90 characters (a few more accented characters in Spanish).
I have a lot of respect for Chinese school children learning to write!
Bobby
We will shortly be updating The Wind in the Willows to run in Chinese or Spanish on iPads with those language settings.
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Apple App Store reviews!
It's been an exciting first week for us on the App store. We've already have some great feedback...
"Genius. Five stars. You will not be disappointed."
"Get this!!! It's an absolutely brilliant app!"
"...the work that has gone into this is unbelievable..."
To see the full reviews, go to the App Store
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The Wind in the Willows - Storyboard 3
Some people say this is their favourite page. There is no denying the delight on people's faces when they discover what happens as Mole, our new friend, reaches the sunlight.
The cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae) is a brightly coloured moth, found in the UK, but not in the north of Scotland, Europe and western and central Asia, is an artist's delight. When painting something with such vivid colour it leaves one in awe. As for swallowtail butterflies, 'Oh my! Oh my!! As mole would say.
The first seed of an idea can be the most basic of sketches. Here is how this delightful page began life. S.D.
I wanted the butterflies and bees to have a realistic flight pattern. I started by researching flight patterns but in the end it was easier to give them a number of movement properties and play with these until it looked right. The butterflies flutter, rotate, get nearer and further away. They have a fairly random flight pattern. The bees are a bit more purposeful in their flight.
See how many you can get on the page in one go. I like to see how long it then takes for them to all fly away. Can you tell which corner of the page they escape from? B.G.
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Wind in the Willows - Storyboard 2
Tunnelling to the surface - to give Mole and the ladybirds the urge to reach the surface Bobby created a physics world in which they had buoyancy, so they try and rise to the top.
Steve's grandson Freddy likes to chase Mole back down the tunnel with one of the ladybirds, which isn’t strictly what happens in nature, that’s for sure. Poor Mole.
Both the ladybirds and the worm were drawn by Bobby’s daughter, Josephine – as it turned out, they were the only drawings in the book not done by Steve Dooley.
It’s more fiddly than it looks, because for the worm to be flexible and to be able to move, it had to be drawn as a series of worm sections that Bobby then joined together to make a flexible chain. It wriggles when you move it around with your finger...
Have you worked out how fill Mole's kitchen with smoke?
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The Wind in the Willows - Storyboard 1
This page was one of the first we tackled. Mole is fed up with spring-cleaning, and the sunshine filters down through the tunnel and into his home, and he decides to go up to the surface to feel the sun on his face – something that a real mole wouldn’t like at all. But - this is a ‘human’ mole.
Here you can see Steve's early pencil drawing of Mole. Click on it to see more detail in the drawing. He also produced an image of Mole dusting and another of him sweeping.
These images were worked up to full-colour versions and then cut up into component parts (body, arm etc) so they could be moved independently, allowing us to create the animations. Don't worry, Mole wasn't hurt and he was really pleased to be able to use his arms properly.
Bobby programmed the animations so that they would move across the room, either when a period of time elapsed, or when they were touched. When the broom and duster are dropped by Mole, they become "real" physical objects that the reader can pick up. Try balancing the broom on its end by tilting the iPad…
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