Anatomy of a Story Elves Book for iPad (Part 2): Exporting the Last Character animation from Flash Professional

Following the previous post in which I discussed the parallax menu screens, I wanted to turn now to an area of the app in which video is used.

The Last Character animation is a hugely important part of the book and was created in Flash by the animator (Javier) working closely with the Waking Prince illustrator (Scott). This collaboration resulted in a stunning piece of work and it was up to the programming team to integrate this into the app.

The iPad, as many will be aware, does not support Flash and so the challenge here was to use Adobe's Flash Professional CS6 to export to a file format that could be displayed within the app, and find the settings that would give us the correct balance between file size and quality.

The audio within Flash Professional was set to Event (to prevent the automatic compression that Stream imposed) and we exported with uncompressed stereo audio to the .mov QuickTime format using the H.264 codec. In this way we kept the audio at the highest possible quality and made sure that we kept everything in sync and sounding great. 

It was then down to Joseph to replace the video controls with bespoke elvish ones. This was key to make sure that the illusion of being inside the app wasn't broken by video pausing and playback.

The results are outstanding and the way the video begins by following the moth up to the forest canopy draws the reader in immediately. It is really something that needs to held in your hands and experienced. Young readers will love the engaging narration and parents will be amazed at the quality of the animation.

The Waking Prince app is newly released for iPad and available to download from the App Store now.

Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4