Thursday, May 30, 2013

Disney Digital Explains Development Cycle and eBook Creation

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Disney Digital is responsible for all of the apps, games, and ebooks that you consume on your tablet and PC. The company is heavily invested in what the company is calling StoryTelling 2.0, but it might as well be called transmedia storytelling 2.0. This is a new breed of content the company is pushing to build synergy between tangible and digital products. Disney is in the perfect position to go this route, without devaluing the other products.

The new Monsters U movie and game for iOS came out at around the same time. When you purchase the app and select merchandise, you will unlock new costumes and levels in the game. Lyle Underkoffler, the VP of digital media said that it is working on new forms of digital content, where if you buy the physical book, you will unlock the digital ebook or unlock other characters in other Disney properties. This encourages you to become invested in either a specific IP or encourage kids to check out totally new characters that are only available in the form of apps.

StoryTelling 2.0 also comprises of a similar technology that Barnes and Noble employs on its children’s titles. There is a read aloud feature, read by yourself, and even narrate your own story. Disney is also pushing out more apps that will allow kids to assemble their own movies, featuring characters and environmental art from Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Marvel, and other properties to create their own movies. You can simply drop in the characters you want, pick the environment, props, and rotate everything around on the fly. In various test groups, parents and kids both responded positively on movies produced by children and and even narrated by the young whippersnappers, too.

Disney Digital has a 50 person team and a 3-6 month development cycle on their apps and games. The time it takes to produce new IP’s or established franchises takes a lot less time than other companies, because Disney as an entity shares art assets. The digital division can get 3D character models from Pixar and give it to their own in-house animator to customize. Like any studios, it is often the big movie tie-ins that get the priority treatment, while sometimes the smaller homegrown stuff gets put on the back-burner. Finally, we were also told that we can expect a bunch of new Star Wars games to come out later this year, alongside some really hot new things.

Disney Digital Explains Development Cycle and eBook Creation is a post from: E-Reader News

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