Flederhund: The Domestically Gory World of Interactive Books

I'm bracing for a spat with my husband. 

The package of perks for our crowd-funding supporters is still sitting on the kitchen table, a week after they were supposed to have gone out. So who's going to do it?  (It's the same debate as who's going to vacuum, or who's going to pick up Quinn after school.)

But this time our domestic tensions revolve around a self-published children's book Flederhund, existing (seemingly wildly) in three different media: a softcover book, a PDF, and an interactive app for iPhone/iPad and Android mobile devices. (Maybe that's four different media?)

Flederhund was crowd funded through USA Projects (now Hatchfund) back in February 2013, and was just recently completed.  My husband, fellow artist Jeff Murphy and I wrote the story together and created the graphics collaboratively, although they're mostly his gorgeous photographs.  And while Jeff laid out the InDesign document for self-publishing through Lulu.com, I reconfigured the monstrous 52-page illustrated book for interactivity in Unity 3D.

You have to understand. We had grand, epic plans.  

There would be 3D animated dogs in Vienna, videos playing inside thought bubbles in Berlin, links to educational information about historic sites in Krakow.  The ghosts of Gustav Klimt and W. A. Mozart would sing Edelweiss in habits in Füssen.  Sharks would embrace lasers. World peace would ensue.

Instead, we just barely got the thing done.  

First Jeff was devastated by the quality of Lulu printed images (granted, he'd been doing proof prints on sensuous MOAB paper all summer).  Then I was crushed under the weight of two other giant projects, including another interactive artist's book, Denisovan. But mostly we were the victims of our own ambition.  The German word for ambition is ehrgeiz, which translates literally to "greed for honor".

Two people, new to publishing, to children's literature and to interactive design for two different mobile platforms, single-handedly creating a 52-page children's book in 8 months, with other jobs at the same time?  Crazy.  Ludicrous.

But the power of a mountain to make you want to climb it can be pretty intense. We buckled, and climbed.

Because, let's face it, it's a whole lot easier for two dumb artists to take on a project like this now-a-days that just five years ago (when our son was born, and we first started thinking, "Wow, it could be cool to make a children's book!")

Five years ago, Lulu existed, and self-publishing was becoming increasingly common (and accepted by broader markets), but crowd funding was still getting off the ground. And perhaps it's coming in for a harsh landing as some donors are starting to feel crowd-funding fatigue.)  Five years ago, Unity for iPhone was just being launched and I was still plodding away in ActionScript 3.0 in Flash, utterly in the world of 2D (ironically, Flederhund is mostly 2D).  Unity and its Asset Store are more "every man" friendly than ever, and just as more and more artists (and art students) are grasping the importance of being at least a bit familiar with scripting, the tools for interactivity are becoming increasingly transparent for the novice.  And I confess: it in the interest of getting the damn thing done, I ended up using PlayMaker.  I feel embarrassed about this, and a little stupid that I feel embarrassed. Progress is progress, after all.

But we had to re-invent all those production/collaboration squabbles:

Jeff: What do you mean, we can't put a video in the bubble?  Isn't it just a mask or something? Like After Effects? 

Me: No, it's not at all like After Effects. I mean, we can do it, but it's not like you can just drop it in.   It's not supported in iOS, and, I dunno, baby, I really don't want to spend the next month beating my head against this particular wall. We've gotta get this thing done.  

Jeff:  Well, fine.  I'll just use iAuthor and put the videos in the EPUB myself. 

Me:  Sure, cool. But then you'll have to do separate EPUBS for Kindle, Nook, and blah, blah. iAuthor only works with iBooks, dude.  And, seriously, we've gotta get this thing done.

(Huffing and snippiness continue through the end of October as I cram to finish the apps and Jeff crams to finish the EPUB, only to throw in the towel for a PDF after he realizes what a royal pain in the ass the fixed-width issue was going to be.)

So, did we bite off more than we could chew?  Absolutely.  We should have settled for the softcover and called it a day.  But would it have been crowd funded without the mobile versions?  No idea, but it was definitely a hot selling point.  (And Jeff's a really charming, sexy guy.  Hard not to give him money when he asks for it, especially since he seldom asks.)

Was it worth it?  I guess so.  We both learned a ton. We're smarter, wiser developers, artists and designers for it, and as teachers, this is a brilliant experience to share with our students.  

But I'll feel a lot better when those packages of perks are safely in the hands of the USPS and Jeff and I can share a chummy beer or two, and cuddle romantically by a fire after our son is off to bed, and whisper sweet nothings about how we will never collaborate on something like this ever again.