Sure! You can quote me on that. : ) Thanks for the "about" hint. Get ready to hear from some seven year olds.
[Book] Three Little Pigs
(90 posts) (40 voices)-
Just bought this app and it's phenomenal, beautiful. My 7-year old nieces are going to love this. I'm building a few interactive kids books for them and I'm just getting acquainted with Cocos2d features. I have a handle on the animations and interactions, but I'm trying to determine if Cocos2d is the right framework for digital book apps that have lots more text than images. Any thoughts, anyone? Any tips on how to display a large quantity of text on every virtual page, with some animated elements embedded as well?
thanks in advance
Posted 1 year ago # -
Followup: My twin nieces loved the app and were fighting at first over which used the popup features and which one got to turn the x-ray feature on and off. They were so excited that one kept going to the next page before the other had finished playing with the popup features. (But they cooperated after some bit of urging on my part.)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Beautiful job... love the trailer. I hope you do well with it!
Posted 1 year ago # -
@ultrageek: Cool to hear about your nieces playing with the book - thanks for sharing!
As far as large quantities of text go, I wonder whether a good way to do this is by using a UIKit label. CCLabel, which I believe is a wrapper around it, might work well, especially if your text is static. I use CCBitmapLabel in this book because I wanted to have a little more control over the font, positioning, spaces between characters and such. So, I beefed up the original CCBitmapLabel a little bit and use that for my text rendering. However, knowing what I do about Cocos2d now, I think if I went with CCLabel I would probably have been better off.
BTW, thanks for all your kind comments everyone. If you posted something on iTunes as well, I'm doubly grateful.
Just FYI, the gamble I played by publishing the app before Christmas didn't pay off as the app got buried under an avalanche of others during the holiday, but it was still interesting to see how the app store works in that time period from the inside. Right now I'm trying to figure out whether I should publish another book, resurrect Doodle Blast!, or go get a job like everyone else. As much fun as it is to crank out indie apps, the bills are starting to pile up. Maybe we should pool up our resources and put together an indie label :)
On a different note, happy New Year everyone! Thanks for a great community and an awesomely geeky past twelve months!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Dunc
MemberMy daughter is still playing with this book every time she gets hold of the iPad. It's been a bedtime story quite a few times now!
Have you had much success sales-wise? You could try a free version, like Matt Rix did with Trainyard... Or get a sampler book out there (free), and cross sell...
I dunno - I haven't actually got any personal projects finished yet!!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thanks for the CCLabel/ CCBitmapLabel tip.
Re what to do next: Have you tried to leverge your experience? The site http://mobile.tutsplus.com/ would probably be interested in mobile dev tutorials written by you. Or consider writing up a mobile dev book proposal and contacting publishers. And don't forget to have friends promote your apps on Facebook.
Posted 1 year ago # -
One other thing to consider: If you wrote an ebook on how to develop interactive books for iPhone/ iPad, with at least a few of the design patterns coded, I'll be first in line to buy one. Consider, an ebook like this could sell for $27-99, depending on size and amount of code included. Then revenue is just a matter of numbers. 100 copies sold at $49 is ~$5,000.
Of course, it's not as simple as that, but with a bit of perservance, promotion on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, guest blogging (tons of mobile dev tutorial sites out there, some of which pay) and your own landing page promotions, you could probably sell 2-300 copies at $49 or less in 1-2 calendar years. It's not a lot of money, but it's supplemental income. Even better for you might be if you do a series to solve various design problems, each with their own ebook, at a low price point (say $24-27).
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ultrageek's general point is worth considering by everyone: when there's a gold rush, it may be easier to make money by selling picks and shovels. Books/chapters in compilation books, level/ebook creation tools, etc. may be the best way to go given an App Store in which success often seems to require a good amount of luck.
Posted 1 year ago # -
For those of you who are thinking of offering 'picks and shovels' as FPC put it, check out this article: http://blog.endloop.ca/blog/2010/10/06/5-steps-to-appiness/
Came across it while browsing and thought it's quite valuable in helping promote your own apps.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I love the book (so do the kids), the concept and the Promo Video. Definitely the most original one out there.
I have a Cocos2D question. When doing an Interactive Book... do you do it all with Cocos2D?
I mean apart from the animation and physics... do you also handle all the navigation with Cocos2D.
Thanks for any assistance you may. I have no experience with Cocos2D at all, and would like to attempt a book. I find that sometimes the hardest part is just knowing where to start.
Steve
Posted 1 year ago # -
@daydreemer: Yes, the whole app is pure Cocos2D, from text rendering (CCBitmapFont) to page transitions (CCScene and CCLayer). Good luck with your project!
@joep: That's my (very) bad market research. I somehow failed to notice that I wasn't the only one with a "brilliant" idea :)
And yes, I could use an endorsement from Oprah. Anyone have her number??Posted 1 year ago # -
@joep: I have and I haven't. This booked opened up some doors to me that were previously closed. So, as far as I'm concerned, it was successful. I was also kidding about Oprah. I'm not really seeking world domination. If something I create catches, great. But if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. To be honest, I'm just trying to entertain my nephew and, to a great degree, myself :)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Packet
MemberJust purchased it. As my wife said "This is the best thing I have seen on the iPad". I wouldn't worry too much about it catching on immediately. I can't see how this will not become a huge hit ... just the word needs to get out. Have you sent free codes to the major blogs with a small write-up and a link to the video?
Two suggestions:
* Any thought of having the book read to you? You do not need to hire a voice actor. Anyone with reasonably clear accent neutral voice will work. After you record the story, run the audio through Audacity adjusting the pitch and speed so the voice sounds professional.
* I'm personally not crazy about the options button. My son kept on hitting it and having the options menu appear. Maybe that could be the x-ray button? The options menu could be much smaller in the corner somewhere? Virtually every page you are clicking the x-ray button but it is almost never necessary to click on the options button. Yet the options button is more prominent.
Just suggestions. What you have done is better then anything I could even think to accomplish.
So who did the amazing graphics for the book?
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Packet: Great suggestions, thanks! Sorry for the delay in replying, but I was dealing with a family emergency.
* Narration: I initially had mixed feelings about it. My thought was that the book should not act as a substitute for parents interacting with their children. On the contrary, it should be something that brings the two together. However, over the past few months, folks have become accustomed to narration in electronic books and have requested it from me as well. For the next project, I'll probably add the narration component as a test and, possibly, retrofit the existing books I already have.
* Options button and navigation: I received similar feedback already. Over these next couple of weeks I'll try to improve upon the UI to make it more streamlined.
* Images: The original illustrations were created by L. Leslie Brooke over 100 years ago. I adapted them for their use in the book.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Narration, gotta be Brian Blessed!
"Flash Gordon APPROACHING!"
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey, you got a great review by tuaw, seems to be a very popular apple site. Congrats :)
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/12/three-little-pigs-and-the-secrets-of-a-popup-book-brings-a-new-t/
Posted 1 year ago # -
jetstream
Memberbeen researching ipad ebooks. i thought alice was pretty neat and then i found 3 little pigs. you nailed it, and you make it look easy and i know the level of detail/programming that goes into an app like this.
also cool to read your thoughts on cclabel for large amounts of text. i'm going to be creating an ebook that has 30,000 words. pretty short book overall. i'm hoping cocos2d will turn out to be a solid solution.
Posted 9 months ago #
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