We have released our newest iPad app, a collaboratively animated spoken word poem by Shane Koyczan. The To This Day App is based on a viral video of the same name, that has had over nine million views.

Get it on the App Store.

The To This Day iPad App is based on a powerful anti-bullying themed spoken word poem, written and performed by Shane Koyczan, and animated by dozens of different animators. Every viewing and experience of the poem in this free app is unique thanks to randomly selected animated clip variations for most of the poem’s stanzas. Other features include the option to record your own version of the poem to be played with the animation, share your favorite stanzas with your friends via Facebook, Twitter and Email, enjoy the text in English, Spanish and French, link directly to the ToThisDay project web site from within the app, and much more. … Read More »

Moving Tales Were Inspired by the iPad

When we started making digital content for mobile devices, we were inspired by the innovative iPad in particular. This was and remains a fantastic device – for me it crystallized many of the promises of the earlier technology of CD-ROM multi-media into a device that, crucially, actually worked! Like something from the future, this was the first digital device anybody could use – including my ancient mum – and in my opinion was the introduction of a new digital paradigm.

One of the reasons that the iOS devices are so successful is that Apple controls the complete user experience – hardware, iOS and the distribution mechanism of iTunes/App store/iBookstore. For the kind of rich media content we produce – with cutting edge interactivity, animation, soundscapes, multi-lingual narration and text – Apple remain ahead of their competitors (Amazon/Kindle and Google/Android) in the implementation of such capabilities in this crucial mobile space.
… Read More »

We can easily misconstrue that technology is synonymous with machinery or automation. Of course, technology is not just machinery. One might say more accurately, that technology is the application of knowledge to solve a problem or improve a pre-existing condition.  In this sense, wheels, forks and books are not just technologies, but each are fantastic technologies. … Read More »

‘To This Day’ Video has Gone Viral

Wow. Have a look at this

Many many animators donated their time and worked in collaboration with the volunteer efforts of Vancouver design group Giant Ant over a mere 20 days to create an impressive variety of multiple animation segments which were strung together to produce the incredibly successful and poignant To This Day video. The animation went viral and is now approaching 5 million views in barely a week. … Read More »

VANCOUVER – (April 30, 2012) – Innovative iOS content creators Moving Tales’ release three Ebooks available through Apple’s iBookstore, “The Classic World Tales Trilogy”, “The Unwanted Guest” and “This Too Shall Pass”.  A collection based on Moving Tales’ three animated storytelling apps, “The Classic World Tales Trilogy” Ebook is packed with digital innovations including reformatted wide screen images, user enabled Read Aloud functionality with high-lighted text, auto page turning, built-in dictionary, word search, index, bookmark, as well as a user enabled soundtrack.

“We are excited to release the Enhanced Ebook Trilogy collection of the three tales from our beloved storytelling apps of the same names”, said Moving Tales’ Matthew Talbot-Kelly. “We brought ‘The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross’, ‘The Unwanted Guest’ and ‘This Too Shall Pass’ together in one amazing feature rich Ebook volume.

In addition to the completely reformatted wide screen … Read More »

Last week we had a very rare critically misrepresentative review of our “Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross” app. In the article “How Interactive Ebooks Engage Readers and Enhance Learning”, the writer attempts to characterize “The Pedlar Lady” as not offering “any real value through interactivity”. Not only does this statement ignore the substantive interactivity in our apps, the authour chooses to ignore any educational merits in the app. (Just one example: as in all of our apps, with “The Pedlar Lady” app, a user can record their own voice to be heard alongside the provided music, sound effects and animation.) Needless to say, I find this kind of unsubstantiated journalistic “criticism” frustrating. But we can’t win – if we let the misrepresentation slip by unchallenged, it may compromise our critical presence in the digi-sphere. Yet if we respond to point out the error, we can come across as defensive and thin skinned.

With so many of the available “interactive ebooks”, the interactivity jarringly interrupts the user’s immersion in the story. Sometimes less is more. Just because one can add a gratuitous interactive moment in an app, doesn’t mean one should. We are not interested in prioritizing mindless interactive stimuli over the potential immersive qualities of the exciting new kind of storytelling experience offered by devices like the iPad. From our point of view, it’s about intention, about having the technology serve the narrative opportunity, not overwhelm it. It’s about balance, selection, editing. It’s about substance and presence. It’s about presenting a rich and resonant experience for those who give it time. … Read More »

VANCOUVER – (March 26, 2012) – Innovative iOS content creators Moving Tales’ have released free learning resources based on their world-wide bestselling ‘Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross’ tale. Moving Tales has implemented a “Sharing” section in their recent web site relaunch, whereby the text, images and an innovative lesson plan based on ‘Pedlar Lady’ are released under Creative Commons License. This CC license agreement allows teachers, librarians, parents and creatives from any discipline to legally download, copy, manipulate and ‘share-alike’ the material without fear of copyright infringement.

“Its a lovely idea to ‘return’ the Pedlar Lady story into ‘the commons’.” says Moving Tales’ founder Matthew Talbot-Kelly. “The seeds of the Pedlar Lady tale are found in the oral storytelling traditions and are part of our common cultural legacy. In this digital age, the Creative Commons License makes sense. We are saying, … Read More »

We hope you will explore with us a fun and slightly paradoxical new experimental project – what we are calling “The Slow Twitter Project”.

We love words, traditional & slow culture. We like to play. We asked ourselves how should we engage with Twitter which, given its impulse-driven fast moving nature, seemingly stands in contrast to much of what we aspire to. We started to think about how we might subvert this instantaneity. We wanted to reconsider Twitter as a playful and poetic medium in its own right. We also decided to try and play out the concept of slowness into the Twittersphere. Maybe we can reclaim a fragment of the impulse-driven site as a place for slowly revealed well thought-out and playful one-liners, two-liners and four-liners.

Further, as we just came through a municipal election where there were a few “Burma-Shave” style signs deployed, we started to think that one way to look at the postings to the Twitterverse might be to frame them as being analogous to the handmade Burma-Shave billboards by the sides of the road throughout rural American in the middle of the last century. Putting these intentions together, we came up with “Slow Tweeting” – where witty rhymes are revealed incrementally and slowly through the immediacy of Twitter.

The Rules

This is an experiment, so its form and specifics may change. Here are the “rules” to Moving Tales ‘Burma Shave’ inspired Slow Tweeting so far – reveal the rhymes, one line (“billboard”) at a time, in reverse order, over a set increment of time.

Moving Tales’ wordsmith Jacqueline O Rogers, has written a few Slow Tweets for us that praise the virtues of going slow. We will be sharing them over the next weeks with you. Look in the sidebar to the right to see them come together.

Follow us!

We will post our Slow Tweets from @tweet_slow.

As lovers and advocates of well considered words, traditional culture, and playful slow media, we asked ourselves how should we engage with Twitter which, on the face of it, given its impulse-driven fast moving nature, seemingly stands in contrast to much of what we aspire to. At the same time as these ruminations, we rediscovered this wise twitter guide initially published in an edition of Tricycle last year by @TinyBuddha.

Give it a read, it is a gem.