Five Stars From Technology In [Special] Education!

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Cary Snowden

Ahoy Mateys! Me crafty pirate book for children has received a wonderful review from our good mates over at Technology In [Special] Education; 5 out of 5 stars!

Among the accolades:

“The Day I Became a Pirate definitely deserved its 2012 Best Multimedia in an eBook Award for its content. With the fact that this app has a story, puzzles, music, and even clues to help figure out the treasure to visit the website, The Day I Became A Pirate is a fun app for kids to have at home or even in the classroom.”

The pirate book app received 5 stars for Educational Value as well as for ‘Entertains/Engages’. With an average above 4 stars in all categories, the overall score was a 5-out-of-5!

Other categories in which the children’s book for the iPad was rated: Value for the Money, Ease of Navigation, and Quality of Graphics (Way to go, Zach Clough!).

In summary:

“If you have a school-aged child who is interested in pirates and rhyming books, The Day I Became A Pirate is a definite digital story to add to your collection. There are a lot of surprising elements within the app all about a boy and a pirate ship. It not only contains a story, but also puzzles, suspense and even clues to solve a treasure hunt.”

…Looks like we’re on the right course!

Here’s the link to the Appy Review.

Excerpt: You Can Keep Me Plunder!

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Cary Snowden

Captain Black is a harsh leader, but he takes care of his crew and when one of his men fall ill, he is ready to secure help at any cost. At one point in the story, The Captain offers a chest full of plunder to The Boy if he can make him well.

And with that said he waved his arm and the rowers brought a box,
So heavy it took both their strength and held tight with three locks.
He introduced himself as ‘Captain Black’ from far Down Under
saying “Hurry up and make him well and you can keep me plunder!”

The Boy is ready to help, but later refuses the treasure for a very important reason; he just wants to help. The Captain is moved, and gives The Boy an honor of trust that no one saw coming…

A Moment Of Tension Among Pirates

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Cary Snowden

On page 17 of The Day I Became A Pirate, our hero The Boy expresses a reluctance to accept The Captain’s reward and is met with what appears to be a tense confrontation.

I interrupted as he climbed aboard and said “I can’t take this;
All I did was help a man who had something amiss.”
The captain drew his cutlass and he raised it to my face,
The others in the boat stood as though ready to give chase.
My knees again went rubbery and my heart began to pound,
The captain shouted harshly for me to kneel upon the ground.

This is one of my favorite parts of the book: The Boy has performed a deed out of the goodness of his heart and wasn’t expecting a reward for doing something that he felt was simply the right thing to do. The Captain seems to react harshly…

When I wrote this I wanted to communicate a basic tenet of humanity: that we do good things for other people simply to help. My parents taught me at an early age the importance of pitching in and helping through personal service. The reward is often only the esteem-building feeling that you have something of yourself to offer the world, and that someone else’s life is better because you contributed. That feeling you get when you make someone else’s world a little brighter is better than anything money can buy.

The Captain certainly understands this. So why the stern reaction from he and his crew?…

My Pirate Interview With Karen Robertson

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Cary Snowden

I was recently interviewed by Karen Robertson, who is the author of Treasure Kai and the Lost Gold of Shark Island as well as the proprietor of Digital Kids Author, a website dedicated to helping authors publish digital books.

Karen has a lot of great information on her site, and her free book, Top Five Things You Must Know Before Creating Book Apps For Kids is a great place to start for any author starting a book app project.

Enjoy the interview and learning a little more about how I created The Day I Became A Pirate. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts.

Here is the link to the Cary Snowden Interview.

A Book App Sample Page

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Cary Snowden

We are closing in on the finish line with our new pirate book app titled The Day I Became A Pirate. I have received a few questions about how it works, and how I handled the text of the book, which was an unusual problem for this one. I discussed this first in my post titled ‘Challenges In Creating A Book App‘.

As discussed earlier; I wanted to feature the written part of the story without taking space away from the illustrations. As a rhyming story, the text is not only important but fun to read, and a prominent feature of the book. On the other hand, the illustrations and interactions are also an important part of the story, and I wanted to use every possible pixel to tell the story with Zach’s wonderful illustrations.

I tried several methods, and at one point had every other page alternating as text and then illustration, but this seemed cumbersome and forced the reader to do a lot of back and forth to revisit elements of the story to match with each set of interactions.

I finally decided to add the text on a scroll overlaying each page. This decision came as a result of reviewing the book with Jason over at TaleSpring, who’s experience with a few pages brought out the idea of placing the scroll over the page, and allowing it to be tapped away or brought back whenever the reader wanted. Brilliant!

In the book app sample video above I show an example of a simple page in the book. As it opens, the scroll appears over the illustration and presents the text to read. At any time the reader can tap the scroll and ‘put it away’. Should the reader ever want to revisit the text, they can tap the scroll icon at the bottom of the page to bring it back.

In this example I show another feature of my book; the cheat sheet. Readers can click on a skull and crossbones icon at the bottom to get an overlay to appear on the page with indicators showing all the clickable hot spots. Simply tapping the cheat sheet sends it away and the reader can tap where they remember the hot spots.

There is another button at the bottom featuring a parrot. The parrot button activates a narration in which I read the page for the reader. Often in character. This can be started at any time and make the story fun to listen to for younger children, and ads an entertaining element to the interaction for experienced readers.

Meet Harry

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Cary Snowden

Harry enjoys the irony of being a bald pirate. He also enjoys a good wordplay with homophones because, unlike Red, Harry is very well read.

He often knows more than he lets on, and has a reputation as being somewhat of a walking encyclopedia. He spends his every spare minute reading any book he can find and has a sharp memory.

When the crew want to know about an animal they spot in the water, or about a star they see at night, they turn to Harry for the details and he rarely disappoints. He also knows a lot about how the ship works and what to do with the sails if they get caught in the weather, or knot.

Looming and gruff, Harry is not a pirate with whom you’ll want to trifle. He takes his job seriously and, despite his scrappy appearance, has an eye for detail and knows how to handle a knife. He also knows that his bookworm image softens his pirate reputation, so he practices looking mean and wears a scowl on his face for effect.

He may one day marry. He has a girlfriend and works aboard the ship to earn money and saves every penny so he can return to her and has plans to buy a small cottage near the sea. They are both certain to be merry for ever thereafter. Her name is (you guessed it) Mary.

How To Build A Pirate X-Ray Machine

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Cary Snowden

It’s not often that you need to look inside a sick pirate to see what may be the matter, but when you do, a Pirate X-Ray Machine is just what you’ll need.

Until today, I hadn’t ever considered one, but in a brainstorming session with illustrator Zach Clough I came up with the idea after mulling the comparative dearth of interactive possibilities on page 14 of our soon-to-be-released book app titled ‘The Day I Became A Pirate‘.

Page 14 has our sick pirate, Jerry (you’ll meet him later) lain on the beach where he is being attended to by The Boy. Under circumstances which shall not be divulged at this time, there is a need to see what is in the sick pirate’s stomach. Zach created a collection of items that are mentioned in the story, and I animated them in TaleSpring as a movie of sorts, scrolling through each item in sequence and leaving the page with only a single interactive action.

My first concept draft.

This would simply not do for a book app that has between four and eight interactive clickable actions on each page. Oh, no siree.

I decided to break up the action and make each item (in the pirate’s stomach) a separate action to explore and visualize. This certainly seemed much more fun but required a mechanism to allow the reader to control the action. Enter: The Pirate X-Ray Machine.

The first of its kind, I am certain.

Initially drafted by me as a scroll of pirate parchment with buttons for each x-ray item, I sent my idea to Zach as a draft illustration based on a combination of some items we already had in the story.

Pencil sketch as the idea began to take shape.

Zach wasn’t gelling with the idea, so we kept working it out. We tossed around a few ideas when suddenly Zach went silent for an extra few minutes during our Skype conversation. His next message indicated he was going to send me a text message, and only a few seconds later I received an image on my phone. Zach had penciled out a quick drawing of a pirate x-ray machine made of wood; perfect!

We talked through a few adjustments and it wasn’t long thereafter that I was working on the animation of a full-fledged pirate x-ray machine complete with working switch and some exciting sounds to go along with the action. The page is now fully animated and almost plays like a pirate game. It’s a lot of fun!

A final component of the Pirate X-Ray Machine

We are both pretty excited about our page 14; it has 10 interactive buttons and just over 100 animation elements making it one of our most active and exciting pages to date!

I’m really hoping everyone loves all the fun things we are doing with my pirate story. In the meantime, I’m having a great time building it and enjoy sharing the progress with my wife and children. The collaborative process has been very productive, and it’s been great working with an illustrator who has really jumped in with both feet to catch the vision and add to the story.

Zach is excited, too, and has been sneaking a few peaks to his children, also. We are both thrilled to be so near the finish line after over a year of work, planning and brainstorming.

More to come; stay tuned!

Oh, and if you haven’t yet, please Like our Facebook Page.

Thanks! —Cary Snowden

Captain Black

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Cary Snowden

According to his own self-proclaimed legend, Captain Black hails from ‘far Down Under‘. Although no clarifying back-story is offered, many think this is in reference to his early days as a pirate off the shores of Australia.

According to pirate legend, Captain Black terrified sailors on the high seas near and about Australia including the coastal areas of New Zealand and Tasmania. He was known to find port near Manly Beach in the earliest of days to treat his men to an ale or two before heading out to sea. Sometimes his ship would be at sea for many months at a time, so a break on The Corso was a welcomed treat for the crew.

Not tall in stature, Captain Black makes up for a lack of height with a threatening air about him, and a penchant for wielding his cutlass in the face of danger. Terrifying; yes, but always willing to give a man his due and to offer fair reward for a good deed done.

The Captain is the fearless leader of our band of pirates. He is a very capable seaman and has earned the respect and admiration of his crew. None dare cross him; he has been known to throw a pirate or two overboard when mutinous words have been spoken.

His reputation among pirates is that of a fierce, quick-acting captain who’s only loyalty is to The Pirate Ode. (…to be continued.)

The Day I Became A Pirate, is still on track to be available on iPad in Spring of 2012. We’ll keep you posted! Thanks for stopping by!

Illustration by Zach Clough

Pirate Teaser Trailer

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Cary Snowden

I couldn’t help myself: I made a trailer for The Day I Became A Pirate.

This is posted up on YouTube; please share and share, alike, matey!

Parrots, Turtles, and Clams; Oh My!

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Cary Snowden

I’ve been getting excited about the many adornments that are coming together for my pirate book app. It has been an exciting process and with each page comes a new set of ideas as I continue to learn about the software and build on ideas for sounds, motions, and animations.

One of the things we are adding along the way are what I am calling ‘adornments’; things we didn’t really plan on in the beginning, but that add some activity to each page and even a small side-story or two. I have placed them around the book to reveal clues, play a sound or spark an action to make an already-fun pirate book app just that much more fantastic.

Zach Clough has produced a number of them already, and we’ll likely come up with a few more as we head into the home stretch (we are more than halfway through the pages, and they are coming faster and faster as we go).

A few that we have completed include a group of clams (…that seem about to sing…), a pirate parrot that actually flies through the pages, an automated crab that scurries along the beach and a surprised turtle.

That’s right; I said ‘surprised turtle‘. I won’t tell you what the turtle is so surprised about, but I think you’ll be surprised, too. …I was.

I’ll post a few more adornments as we go along to give you a peek into the book before it becomes available later this Spring. Until then, keep an eye out for new updates and help me spread the word, Matey. -May yer life be filled with treasures! Ayyye!

—Cary Snowden