Archive for the Category »Artists «
30
Mar 2010
Adam flinched as something hissed in the dark hallway. He grabbed a heavy stone pedestal and jammed it against the door, nearly unending the gargoyle statute sitting on top.
A video, nestled within the e-book’s text, begins to run with slow, grainy flickering. It shows smoke floating under a thick wooden door, twisting upwards to wrap around a gargoyle statue perched on a low pedestal. The statute slowly blinks and then grins widely up at you, the reader, before springing out at the camera.
Dream or reality? On the dominant e-readers of today (the Kindle and Nook) this scenario is fiction. Embedded video is not supported by Amazon’s AMZ-formatted books. The Nook uses the popular ePub format – which can support embedded video – but does not support videos on the device. Apple’s iPad offers a potential step forward, utilizing the ePub format while also possessing the capability to run videos.
It is not clear, however, if the iPad will make use of this capability. Steve Jobs announced that there will be no Flash support on the first generation of the iPad. This poses a problem to potential author/videographers, as Flash is the most popular format for videos embedded into ePub files. Unless the iPad offers Flash in a later generation, it may be only another baby step toward fully-integrated collaborations between authors and other artists.
What if a device launches that does support embedded Flash video? Would you, as an author, be interested in inserting video into your novel? On one hand, the concept is compelling because video could add intense visuals to help establish and maintain a novel’s mood. Add too many videos, however, and they could smother well-crafted description and take away the reader’s opportunity to imagine the story in their own way. As we wait for new generations of the iPad and its competitors to provide a video option, it is worth examining the potential new art of mixing novels and videos, and how it would affect creativity and quality.
18
Mar 2010
In my last post, I mentioned the emerging possibilities of authors and artists working together to create a new kind of enriched e-book. Scott Westerfield seems to have taken a step in that direction with the release of his young adult novel “Leviathan.” Westerfield worked with Keith Thompson, an artist who produced fifty black and white illustrations (most full-page) to visually represent the world of Leviathan. Combined with a gorgeous cover rich with colorful steampunk art, Thompson’s illustrations made it impossible for me to resist picking up the book as I passed it in the store. The e-book also contains the illustrations, though the cover would not be displayed in color on the e-readers of today. Perhaps this is where the iPad will start establishing its dominance before moving into the interactive possibilities of e-books.
Westerfield was interviewed about collaboration, and Thompson added his own experiences with the year-long illustration process. This time period, which seems to be a typical length (according to other illustrators), means that any author/artist partnership needs to be a serious consideration early in the writing process. But when an author is not sure that his or her novel will even get published, or that a publishing house would agree to print the art with the book, why even consider this option? I’m sure many speculative fiction writers would jump at the chance to illustrate their creations, if these problems could be overcome; I certainly would. Though an untested model (as far as I know), e-books may step in to bypass this stopgap.