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Virtual 3D books?
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They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Virtual 3D books? // Archive: Tech Forum
Post by splinters // Apr 16, 2008, 8:26am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Nice! :jumpy:
(...would've sucked if someone had already gotten the site...)
Well, someone got Buddyworld.com...but there is nothing there; just a reserved domain for now. I was considering getting buddyworld.org too but maybe time to stop with just the UK part...;) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 16, 2008, 8:39am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Hmm... might be worth inquiring to find out how much they want. It'd be bad if someone uses buddyworld.com for an "adult" oriented site, especially if you're targeting kids for your books and stuff... :( |
Post by Délé // Apr 16, 2008, 12:23pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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I agree with Jack. It might be best to try to make an offer on BuddyWorld.com. If you go to www.register.com and enter that domain name, you will be able to make an offer.
If you can't get BuddyWorld.com I would try to think of another ".com" domain name. Perhaps something like "BuddyWorldFun.com". I don't know, that was just off of the top of my head, but I think something like that could work too. I know you take pride in being from the UK, but remember that on the internet you're playing to an international audience and ".com" will be the easiest for people to remember.
I also agree with Jack that you have to be careful of adult sites. As innocent a name as BuddyWorld is, there are sick folks out there that might use that name (or similar) for an adult site. You wouldn't want your young audience accidentally going to a site like that. Although, the parents really should have a filter of some sorts if they're letting their kids surf the net. |
Post by butterpaw // Apr 16, 2008, 12:54pm
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butterpaw
Total Posts: 831
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Paul, I think I've come across this thread rather late, but want to offer my 2cents worth here... and it's this...
Your books are very visual, with the images being the major part of it... I want to suggest moving away from the 'pretend' online book and go at it from much more graphic/ visual point of view with other sorts of image transitions.. and perhaps offer versions with voice, text and voice .. etc.. or even the possibility to set which version you want at the start of reading/viewing. (ues a real voice not the artificial voice). It seems to me that you have the perfect content for the web.. beautifully visual with the possibility of adding appealing audio content as well. .. and offer the books too on the side if you can.. just in case some parents still want the 'hard copy'. and yes offer them on disc.. but possibly also as an online subscription.
ok .. end of 2cents. if somebody already made these suggestions .. then please just view this as reinforcement of the idea
^_^ |
Post by splinters // Apr 16, 2008, 1:09pm
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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These are all great ideas guys, I am just daunted now by the amount of hard work I would need to do to get it up and running.
Still, that is what I seem to do well...:p |
Post by Délé // Apr 16, 2008, 1:20pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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Yeah right...I know how fast you work...you'll probably have it up and running by the end of the week. :p
Seriously though, yeah it is a lot of work. It definitely could take some time to get to the place you want to be. It is something that you can build up slowly over time too though. I also still think that you've got a fantastic foundation to build off of. So really, half of the work is already done. ;) |
Post by v3rd3 // Apr 16, 2008, 7:10pm
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v3rd3
Total Posts: 388
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Please excuse the following as it is the left side of my brain that has absorbed all of the vitamin E.
I have just finished going through the sample pages of your books on the envision site. I have always enjoyed the images you post to the forums and seeing your work in aggregate I am awestruck by your work.
The left brain thinks that children's books as a genre can be delivered to the PC platform with some success. Many of the suggestions/ideas here all have great merit, particularly those suggesting that the books be developed as interactive content as IMHO this would more fully engage your readers.
The left brain thinks one opportunity that may be worth exploring is delivering your content through Xbox360.
1. You may be able to leverage your relationship with Caligari to introduce this concept to MS. Leading to possible support/collaboration (think $$$ here) ($$$ being converted to pounds at some point) with MS.
2. Families do not often sit in front of the PC with their children for activities like reading because of furniture arrangements and screen size. However, they could assemble in front of their telly (Please note continent appropriate language :D) with the Xbox controller in hand and read together.
3. This kind of concept could help Xbox 360 being viewed as more than a gaming device. (help MS sell boxes)
4. Adding your books to the MS Zone content broadens the horizons there as well.
5. MS could use one of your books as part of a marketing premium for the hardware. An image of one of your books on the front of an Xbox360 box would certainly get the attention of your intended audience (Look Mommy! That is pepe! He's one of Paul Woodward's amazing characters, can we get get it! PUHLEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE! repeats endlessly until submission).
6. This option would allow you to deliver your content directly on a disc and through the MS Xbox360 portal giving your customer's a consumption choice.
7. Given that MS has a marketing and distribution system literally built into the hardware you have two major headaches that will be diminished with MS support.
8. The revenue issue you have with working with a publisher sadly remains however you would be working with a publisher with greater experience marketing interactive content than a traditional publishing house. Also given you would be introducing this concept you could position yourself for a compensation premium.
9. If you have not already done so see if you can get a meeting with a professional publicist or literary agent.
10. Set a benchmark for the revenue you need to generate to develop a plush toy, or if you are negotiating a deal with MS (a Paul Woodward plush in every box!) consider the after market revenue. I would not spend a lot of time on this right away but I think if you research this the secondary market on character based entertainment can go as high as 40% of your revenue.
The best plush will be moderately fuzzy and pink to market to young ladies.
The best premium for young gentlemen would be a cricket bat or jersey with a genuine Paul Woodward creation [Planet Hoppers/Creepy Castle].
IMHO your content will sell better to young ladies as opposed to young gentlemen.
Left brain shutting down...
I would say good luck but your work doesn't need it... just new opportunities. |
Post by splinters // Apr 17, 2008, 1:36am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Wow, so many kind words, so many good ideas...so many kids walking around this lesson asking strange questions...:p
Seriously though, I am kinda fixed on having a website with subscription and/or downloadable (subscriber access) content. I still have the CD ready to go with no programming so in the first instance that could be sold. However, I wanted to release episodic content so I will have to strip this CD back to basics and release steadily growing library of stuff. I need to look at installers to make sure this works.
Then...merchandise, Xbox/PS3/Wii content and maybe PSP books as well. I always envisioned (geddit!) this as merchandise and still have a set of Barn Buddies stickers I once made, pop up books, Lift the flap books, interactive games etc.
BUT, it is a big project that needs a lot of time and help to develop properly and on person just cannot do it...hell, I need to make new stuff as well. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get all this stuff sorted. I still have access to the studio equipment I use to make the music and sound effects for this thing.
Maybe it was just before it's time 7 or 8 years ago when I was in a niche market owning a poweful multimedia PC...perhaps the time is right now.
I am gonna mull it over and think when there are no students about...but I am very excited...and I still have those good old fashioned paper books I can sell as well...:D
I do think this would be good for MS too; a book illustrated completely in the program they just purchased...just depends if it shows off the features they want to develop. I could certainly use any money they invested into getting the rest of it off the ground. I could even get on with making a Virtual Buddy World as an escapist Virtual Earth. Maybe Caligari would be interested but my work has been here for a long time and no one has said anything...
Question is...who would I contact in MS to put forward an idea without seeming like I am disregarding Caligari in my concept? After all the software I made it in was Caligari's before MS.
All I know is I have a head full of ideas and discs full of content that need to go somewhere...it annoys me that they are not being shared with kids and adults who may enjoy them. I have yet to meet anyone who has said they are just OK or not good. Even the publishers admitted they were of a high quality...just 'not suitable for their lists!'
More later...and thanks again all. You are helping out more than you know. |
Post by brotherx // Apr 17, 2008, 2:15am
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brotherx
Total Posts: 538
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One word....cartoons :D |
Post by TomG // Apr 17, 2008, 4:46am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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For the XBOX 360 route you dont need to contact anyone - you could get XNA, join Creators Club, then write your app and test it on your XBOX, then submit it to the approval process that will get it rated by other indie developers. The actual distribution through XBOX Live I dont think is finalised yet, in terms of how it will work and pay, but the above is big enough as a project that it would probably be resolved as you go :)
Naturally you would then contact XBOX XNA folks to find out about details, it would be your project, your work, and no need to "go through Caligari" in any way.
The neat thing about that is its self contained and self-driven. Also, anything you develop for the 360 should be fairly easily portable to the PC (or the other way around).
XBOX Live Marketplace does currently offer movies, so perhaps moving to offer books might be an idea. Developing it as a "game" though would be an instant approach, even if the "game" is really just a viewing mechanism for flicking through your books. Of course it might not reach the right audience - most XBOX Marketlplace materials wont be seen directly by 6 to 10 year olds, as browsing the marketlplace is best left to the grown ups. So you'd need to think about that one.
Anyway, that's one possibility. There are many others :)
HTH!
Tom |
Post by splinters // Apr 17, 2008, 9:14am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Cheers Tom, about the 'go through Caligari' bit I was talking about promoting a book made completely in tS, would it be Caligari I talked to or MS, that's all.
Well, while I chew over the possibilities, I am going to design a new greetings page; maybe a large ornamental gate that you can click to enter.
Then I need to redesign the Buddy World map below. It need to be on a full 3D globe in case I want to expand it later. Needs a lot more work too.
Then I will have each book range logo enlarge when you hover over it (when I work out how). The rest should come naturally as I will just port over the stuff from the CD for speed. I will be picking brains about password access and online payments etc. later...:D |
Post by Igor K Handel // Apr 18, 2008, 8:57am
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Igor K Handel
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HI Splinters
Great to see all this lateral thinking.
Couple of points I haven't seen mentioned yet.
1 The minute you distribute cd's its loads of work AND addtional expense/ stock/ time/ /postage/ overheads eating into your earnings.
2 TS trueplace supports good colour/ animation (page flips interactivity IE press here for voice, music, hidden secrets, side games puzzles, bolt on bits, Colouring in of your characters for home print etc) Maybe press here for preview of other books written by yourself?
..........Ok so unless I am barking up completely the wrong tree here, you are surrounded by the animators, the set builders, the script wizards. ERM all that needs sorted is a way of restricting free access. Password bought through secure site? Or some other method. Perhaps time limited access days / a month or whatever?
3 An advantage of online trueplace is fast totally creator controlled updates, amendments, bla bla. IE No need for extra outlay on hordes of specialists.
4 I have a 5 year old daughter. She LOVES to do interactive games and reading with me on the PC. CITV, Ceebebees etc. I sit beside her as she plays or browses, prompting new words as required, her reading and interacting as the puzzle, game plays out. I show her the basic simple keys needed and off she goes. Its a fun thing for a Dad and Daughter to do, its a treat, and its educational without her even realising. We do online colouring in. Online dressing up pictures of dolls or cinderellas house/castle, we read the instructions together, I prompt for anything she has difficulty with, but most of all we have fun AND she learns. I see absolutely NO reason that she would not thoroughly enjoy reading your stories from screen AND she would love your artwork! Even as we speak she has started her (and Mums) pc, navigated to the favorites bar and loaded up CITV. All I have done is type in the windows password.
I encourage you to take a real strong look at some way of keeping it online and simple.
best wishes
IK
Ps She is playing goofy go-carts now, cd loaded by herself, name typed in and colour of car and character chosen. I just navigated through Vista guff for her to get started. Mind you the music is doing my head in lol.
At a couple of pounds for perhaps 1 months access to a book, then on to another of your titles next month is a win win situation from where I stand. Can your churn em out fast enough thats the question :) |
Post by W!ZARD // Apr 20, 2008, 12:29am
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W!ZARD
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why is it these books look better on a screen..;)
Well, I can't offer any better input than has already been shared re online distribution but I can at least have a crack art suggesting an answer to this question.
I've run into the same phenomena myself - pe4ople look at framed prints of my work on the wall and they say "wow, that looks cool" - show them the same
image on the PC and they say "WOW! That looks REALLY cool!".
Light reflecting off an image lacks the ability to stimulate the retina as well as light transmitted by the image, as on a PC monitor or TV screen. I also suspect it influences us subliminally - humans have developed over thousands of years in wide open spaces. spending night after night gazing into the flames of the camp fire.
Any person who has ever fire-gazed knows how easy it is for our mind to see shapes and images and patterns in the flames - and how hypnotic and mesmerising it is. Fire-gazing creates a special meditative state and I believe that this is one of the reasons television, video, movies and images on PC screens have a more powerful impact on us than printed and painted images. Printed images reflect the ambient light, or more accurately, selected wavelengths of ambient light and absorb other frequencies. CRT's Plasma and LCD screens actually transmit coloured light with no absorption taking place. This is visually more vivid and striking than the same image printed - even when backlit.
I know that for myself, modelling and creating CG art is a more meditative and engaging activity than drawing/painting etc. I believe images that actively emit light engage a different part of the brain - similar to that part which causes the meditative state one gets from fire-gazing.
This could be complete rubbish of course but it sounds like a good theory to me!. |
Post by splinters // Apr 20, 2008, 1:49am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Makes erfect sense Wizard. Now if only I could get Dribble running properly, I could start on the Buddy World map I wanted to make...:( |
Post by butterpaw // Apr 20, 2008, 3:03am
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Total Posts: 831
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I agree with that too W!ZARD, I much prefer 'oil' painting with Corel Painter than painting with actual oil paints (for the results) ... although ... the physical kinesthetic experience of brushes and paints on canvas is still much more pleasurable to me than using stylus and tablet connected to PC.
People respond much more strong to my mandalas on a computer screen that to the printed versions.
And, I also notice now, that even my 85 year old mother just loves those. |
Post by splinters // Apr 20, 2008, 9:58am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Just a test for now but I think a little Dribble displacement might just do the trick here....:D |
Post by splinters // Apr 20, 2008, 10:09am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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And slightly tweaked... |
Post by splinters // Apr 20, 2008, 10:15am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Bear in mind that this is only an hours work and most of that was messing with placement of the land etc. I want some light cloud cover, better lighting and much more coast and land detail yet. Iceworld will need work and there are no roads, trees etc, either.
I think it could work though...;)
OH, and Limbo will be a long thin tube snaking around from the back of the planet rather than a small, err, stripey thing in the corner. |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 20, 2008, 10:26am
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jamesmc
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Slip meh a free pass, I wanna go play in Buddy World! :( |
Post by MadMouse // Apr 20, 2008, 12:17pm
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MadMouse
Total Posts: 1069
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Looking great Paul. Already a vast improvement over the old one. |
Post by splinters // Apr 20, 2008, 11:17pm
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Thanks for all the help guys, I know what I want to do with this project now so I am continuing the project in this thread:
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?p=65755#post65755
Again, thanks for all the help with the book idea...:D |
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