Masterpiece
Mag + Project
The goal was to create an interactive book about the atonement of Jesus Christ using an analogy about a box of crayons.
I wanted this book to be fun for children and interesting for adults.
The complexity of the analogy would be over the heads of children and simple for adults. Engaging both audiences in this interactive book would require simple interactions in the graphics and a great deal of focus on the language and presentation of the analogy through writing.
I had big plans to make this book a coloring book of sorts as well as incorporate a tool to mix colors and create new colors that both children and adults could enjoy.
Although the project has not yet reached it’s full potential, what I have so far is still engaging and enjoyable
Sketching out the different verticals was an effective start to my project. Not all of the verticals stayed in the final production and many of them changed dramatically. However, sketching helped to start a flow and an organization of ideas.
The rest of my documentation was saved over by another project and I didn’t notice this mistake at the time. I can not recover the rest of my documentation. I no longer have all of the verticals from the digital publication on my iPad to capture the full story. The only fragments available to present are the following…
Creating a “How To Guide” to help the viewer to navigate around the digital publication is necessary for all interactive experiences. I used primary colors since the story has a primary theme.
I picked a paper texture background because the story talks a lot about coloring and drawing. At this point the viewer is prompted to drag up to reveal another layer to flow over the initial screen.
I recorded my iPad screen while I was drawing different pictures in green. Later I took the video into Premiere to speed up the drawing so that the viewer can watch a drawing in process in under 1 minute. Dragging up provides the viewer with different drawings and videos.
The next chapter had the same drawings done with a mix of yellow and blue crayons to create the color green. In the story the green crayon is stolen away from the child so he had to find a new way to make his happiness by mixing to colors he still had.
When he looses the blue crayon he becomes frustrated until he realizes that yellow things make him happy as well and he focuses on drawing yellow objects to find happiness.
When the child runs out of yellow he feels frustrated and like he doesn’t want to try anymore. Until he sees the red crayon and realizes that red is the best color of all and he never would have realized or discovered it if he hadn’t lost, ruined, or been robbed of the other colors.
Each chapter focuses on a different color that the viewer would scroll down to view the chapter. Swiping right will then take the viewer to the next chapter (next color). Each chapter has continuity between navigational and design set up to make it easy to experience.
In the end of the story there is more encouragement and hope by the promises of restoration and atonement. This is symbolized by all the colors. Even colors that our mortal eyes can not yet see.
Upon conclusion all the colors appear and a video of a masterpiece time lapsed video of a man painting a professional painting. A masterpiece.
Through out the digital publication I created different interactions such as audio, pop ups, videos, user speed control of drawings etc.
Mag + has been my greatest nemesis of all the programs I have been learning. It is finicky that it takes a lot of patience to get interactive materials to view and function properly. I love all of the possibilities with this powerful tool and would love to get to a higher level. Lucky me I get to take advanced digital publication course in the Fall semester!
