How does a professional in the film business and cinemagraph creator all of a sudden become a kids App Developer?
For me, a video director and producer, wireman on Star Trek: Discovery and now the creator of Toys Away! Snow Today! – The Interactive Storybook App For Kids, it was a multi-step process. I became aware of cinemagraphs as something that I wanted to create and experiment with. Very early on, sometime in 2014 or 2015 I decided that this was a medium that I wanted to use for more than just single images. I had this idea to create a digital pop-up book – something with basic interactivity to keep kids engaged while reading a story. In the spring of 2016, I shot what would be the first moving image for Toys Away! Snow Today! on Woodbine Beach in Toronto, Ontario.
Once the shooting process had begun, I started to explore HOW to create a storybook application for iOS. Although I’ve since learned a lot, I knew next to nothing about coding when I started the production process. I figured my best bet was going to be to shoot and compile all of my assets, using the Adobe CC, then hand them off to a coder to build the app for me – until I stumbled upon CartoonSmart.com and the Story Teller’s Kit 2.
The Story Tellers Kit 2 can be used to create everything from simple straight-forward tales to interactive books that change with each reader, all without ever writing code.
What I wanted to do was still pretty complicated, but Justin Dike, the founder of CartoonSmart.com, ended up adding some options into the kit for me, and giving all kinds of helpful advice along the way.
All that being said, the process still wasn’t a walk in the park. After the initial production process, it took me many months (and cups of coffee) of getting up early in the morning and working for an hour or two in Xcode before going to set. I managed to get it done with the help from my small team and CartoonSmart’s kit. My father, Steve Boyd, the main writer and editor for The Lapine, wrote the words to accompany the images, and both my he and my wife Kathryn (also a photographer) helped to wrangle the kids and props on all of our shoots. It would have been impossible to complete on my own.
Check out Toys Away! Snow Today! for your kids ages 2-5, available now in the App Store.
