More sets Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....add a comment
A quick glimpse of more of the models for episode 3:
L-R: Aileen, Watson and Lyn in a taxi, Otto Dafé, another taxi, and Kyle at Cedar Rapids airport – in jeans and a t-shirt rather than uniform.
There’s a lot to be done to these models before we can produce the final animated footage: the characters have to be brought to life and the models need textures and lighting. We’ll keep you posted on how we’re getting on and what we’re doing…
Cupcake competition closes today! Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Cupcake competition.add a comment
Today’s your last chance to enter our cupcake competition. Get your cupcake photos uploaded to our Flickr group in time for the judges at Crumbs and Doilies to review them tomorrow.
The Sign of Four Monday, 30 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.2 comments
We’ve a quick question for you – answer using the poll to the right.
Our café in episode 1 was called “4 Coffee”. The railings outside Copper Beeches Café have a design based on traditional printers’ marks featuring an orb and the number four.
All these fours have crept in as an Arthur Conan Doyle reference – one of the Sherlock Holmes books is called The Sign of Four. But, are they significant? Is there any clue to be found in the number four?
It’s up to you – vote now and let us know whether these signs of four will be important in Aileen and Watson’s story.
Basement café set Monday, 30 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....add a comment
We’ve been making models: we need new sets, new props and a new character (Otto the assassin) for episode 3. Oh, and Kyle needs a set of casual clothes now that he’s no longer a uniformed police officer.
These screen shots show the first set, Copper Beeches Café, with the character models posed roughly in place. It’s a basement cafe – there’s a flight of steps outside running up to street level. The tables and chairs are minimalist. From dog eye level they all look identical, so when Watson is sniffing around the café he has the impression of being in a maze.
Cupcake competition – magic bones Sunday, 29 March 2009
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Aren’t these cupcakes amazing?! The latest entries in our cupcake competition come from Little Miss Cupcake Paris. A lot of thought has gone into them, as well as a lot of creativity and skill.
The bone cupcake is for Watson, “to give him energy to track those bad guys like Otto, the KBE Agent”. The flower cupcake symbolises Aileen’s next destination, Christchurch, NZ, which is known as the garden city. And, the amazing wizard hat cupcake refers to the Christchurch wizard – a local celebrity (and perhaps someone who could help Aileen?!). Even its sprinkles are significant – they represent the flags of the UK and New Zealand.
Do you think you can do better? (Quite a challenge!) If so, enter our competition! Upload a photo of your Lost Book inspired cupcake to our Flickr group. The closing date is this Tuesday, 31 March 2009. The winning cupcake will be included in the animation.
The Lost Book Cupcakes Trio | Originally uploaded by LittleMissCupcakeParis
(Added 30 March: find out more about Little Miss Cupcake Paris’s entries at her blog post Let’s get ready to rumble – ou en Francais, Cupcakes de la Semaine – 23 mars.)
Episode 3: storyboards Sunday, 29 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.add a comment
The storyboards for episode 3 are finished. Leave a message if you have any thoughts. You might want to continue the thread Snaknap’s started about what happens next: Snaknap suggests that Otto Dafé will, unwittingly, lead Aileen to the KBE leadership.
Storyboards tell the story in a series of pictures: they help us to work out what to show in each shot. They’re a really useful way of thinking visually and planning visuals. They’re not just used in animation: a lot of live-action directors use them too.
If you’d like to know how everyone worked together to write the story for episode 3, take a look at Plotting Episode 3. And if you’d like to join the storywriting team, we’re looking for book suggestions (fictional or real) at the moment…
What book would a book assassin read? Saturday, 28 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.13 comments
I know it’s an odd question (and sounds a little like a tongue-twister), but we really do need to know what a book assassin might read.
Otto Dafé, KBE agent and book assassin, is hiding behind his book in the corner of Copper Beeches Café. What should that book be? Book Burning for Dummies? The Blind Assassin? The Library at Night? Let us have your suggestions – real books or fictional titles. The winning title will become Otto’s current read.
Boarding Pass Saturday, 28 March 2009
Posted by Adam in Making of....add a comment
Just a wee snippet from me, ‘cos we’re madly busy just now. Here’s a shot of the episode 3 storyboards as they were produced. Not as pretty as last time? Well, that’s because we’ve taken a slightly different approach. We’ve said it before, you don’t have to be an expert drawer to make a successful storyboard – the idea is to communicate the STORY! So, we’ve taken a little more time over our thumbnail planning sketches this time and we reckon these tell the story pretty well so we’ve stopped right there. We’ll be blowing them up and posting them panel by panel so you can take a closer look soon.
Cupcake competition – unrequited love Saturday, 28 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Cupcake competition.add a comment
Little Miss Cupcake Paris has entered a couple of sweetly romantic cupcakes into our competition – she says, “since I know Aileen will be speaking to her unrequited love, Kyle, while in the Cafe where she is to be eating a cupcake in Episode 3, I thought they were fitting.”
She’s also planning to make some cupcakes specifically inspired by The Lost Book this weekend. If you’d like to do the same, enter our competition! Upload a photo of your Lost Book inspired cupcake to our Flickr group. The closing date is next Tuesday, 31 March 2009.
The winning cupcake will be included in the animation.
Something Pretty Cupcakes | Originally uploaded by LittleMissCupcakeParis
Microstory winner: mysterious footprints Saturday, 28 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Microstory competition.add a comment
Congratulations to pondweed, whose microstory is this week’s winner. Following the violent death of Carstairs, Sally Challenger has found some surprisingly large footprints. Never one to be daunted, she’s following the trail – despite her companions’ misgivings.
What will Sally find? Did these footprints result in the radio transmission which “experts are still puzzling over“? Does this have anything to do with the other camp and the Grazp Pharmaceuticals expedition? You tell us! If you’ve got a great idea about what happens next, write a 100-word microstory and enter our competition. *
* For more information: read the newspaper articles, look at the story so far, and see Jasper Fforde‘s cast of characters.
Episode 3: script Friday, 27 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.2 comments
We have a script for episode 3 (just in time to go into the recording studio this morning!). If you’ve got any thoughts or comments, particularly about what might happen next, let us know. To find out about how the story was written, see Plotting Episode 3.
There’s no poll up at the moment – the last one decided that our KBE book assassin would be called Otto Dafé. But, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for you to do…
It’s Friday, which means it’s microstory day. We’re writing the stolen book 100 words at a time. It’s an expedition journal. Why not read the story so far and tell us what happens next? We do know that the expedition had their second, and final, radio contact with the outside world about now – see Jasper Fforde’s articles for more background information. And, get your entry in by 4pm GMT today.
Plus, if you’re in a creative mood, why not come up with an idea for our cupcake competition? The closing date is Tuesday, 31 March 2009 so you’ll need to get baking!
Cupcake competition – graven image Friday, 27 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Cupcake competition.3 comments
Here’s the latest entry to The Lost Book’s cupcake competition. acupcakery was aiming for intrigue and has certainly succeeded. Does it show Carstairs rising from the grave? Is it the ghost of books assassinated by the KBE? Who knows?! I’m sure Aileen would enjoy eating it!
If you’d like to enter the competition, bake a cupcake inspired by The Lost Book and upload a photo of it to our Flickr group. The closing date is next Tuesday, 31 March 2009.
The winning cupcake will be included in the animation.
Contest Entry The Lost Book | Originally uploaded by acupcakery
Otto Dafé: KBE agent Thursday, 26 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.add a comment
We have a name for our bad guy – thanks for all your votes! The winning suggestion is Otto Dafé, with 35% of the vote, dreamed up by anaonthenet.
Tomorrow is a big day – we have a recording session with our voice actors Cora Bissett and Sean Biggerstaff. We should have a script to show you now… but I’m afraid we’re still tweaking it.
Once we have the script finished and the voice track recorded tomorrow, we’ll get some new story discussions and a poll going – we’ll need to work out what happens in episode 4!
Being Emily Thursday, 26 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Found books.add a comment
Being Emily by Anne Donovan is one of the books that sponsors Canongate donated for The Lost Book to BookCross in March. We’ve been scattering copies all around Edinburgh, and some are travelling further afield. I’ve just finished reading a copy, which I’ll be releasing into the wild later.
We had a great catch this week. Dilks says:
I was leaving the Barony Bar in Edinburgh when I spotted the book on a table next to the door. Having heard of book crossing I was excited to at last see one. The book was one that I was thinking of buying anyway so I enjoyed reading it very much. As I live in Spain I am not sure where to leave the book for someone else to read, but will give it some thought.
FutureCat in Christchurch, New Zealand, also loved the book. The Lost Book has sent various books and goodies to the BookCrossing convention in Christchurch, which takes place on 17-19 April 2009. FutureCat’s been collecting them, but…
On its way to the box of books for the convention, this book “accidentally” slipped into my TBR pile :-) And I’m so glad it did – not only was it a wonderful story, but the language adds so much to it. I can’t imagine a story about the Glasgow tenements being nearly as effective if it was written in standard English. And as well as my inner linguist being pleased to see a book written in Scots (it is a very distinct language from English, and as such deserves to have its own literature), there was a personal pleasure in seeing written down the language I grew up listening to my Granny and Granda speak (although Granny would deny they spoke anything like a Glaswegian – they were from Greenock, and proudly proclaimed the superiority of that city over Glasgow, which was “auffie rough”).
And, blue-fiddle from Roslin says that Being Emily is “A good read” – it’s been passed on to blue-fiddle’s Mum before it continues its journey.
If you’d like to see Anne Donovan reading from Being Emily, there’s an author talk at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinbugh on Wednesday 01 April 2009 at 6:30pm (free but ticketed) – more details from the City of Literature website.
Added 28 March: if you’d like to read Being Emily, we’re collecting names for a BookCrossing bookray at the moment. More information.
Lost books and a book assassin Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.1 comment so far
We can’t quite believe our luck. We’ve managed to get one of the world’s top experts on lost books as a guest judge to select a shortlist of names for the book assassin from the KBE! Stuart Kelly is author of The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You’ll Never Read. He’s also the literary editor of Scotland on Sunday.
We asked Stuart if he’d take a look at all the names suggested for our bad guy and select a shortlist. Here are his choices – vote for your favourite now in the sidebar poll to the right:
• Garotte Le Tome (ta Guinevere)
• Noah Reed (ta time-traveler)
• Otto Dafé (ta anaonthenet)
• Theo Savannah Hwong (ta AliMcJ).
We also asked Stuart to tell us about a few books that KBE might have removed over the centuries. Stuart proposes these, real, lost books:
• Homer’s Margites – his comedy epic
• Aeschylus’s Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Firebringer – the two plays that completed the trilogy
• Sappho – the Poems, especially Book VI of which nothing remains
• The Book of Jasher – mentioned in the Bible OR The “Zero” Letter to the Corinthians (Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians that he had already written to them)
• Confucius’s The Classic of Music (the Yueh Ching) – one of the six great texts of Confucius
• Shakespeare’s Cardenio – based on an incident in Don Quixote
• Gogol’s Dead Souls Parts II and III – his versions of Purgatory and Paradise, burned at the instigation of his confessor
Thanks, Stuart, for being our judge and for the erudite suggestions. Watch out for them in the next episode of The Lost Book!
Fugee Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Events.1 comment so far
Cora Bissett (Aileen Adler) is currently directing Fugee for Dramaworks at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Performances will be on 26-28 March at The Chandler Studio Theatre, tickets £7/£5, box office 0141 332 5057.
Plotting episode 3 Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.add a comment
We’ve posted an outline of the plot for episode 3. This is the story behind the story: the tale of how the plot developed and who was involved…
Aileen was invited to Copper Beeches Café at the end of episode 2, which was posted just over two weeks ago (watch the story so far before reading any further!).
Lots of comments (especially from mIsS rEaDaLoT, Qwuno, LaLaLaLara, Robota and Miss amazing!) and a vote decided that Aileen would go to the café. Angus, Nadia and Tom all felt that she would meet Lyn there (although there were a few dissenting suggestions, mainly involving father figures, from Ellen and LaLaLaLara/Miss amazing!). We also decided that Lyn is a goodie not a baddie.
We decided that the café wouldn’t be linked to Sally Challenger, although this suggestion from Snaknap was very nearly popular enough to be included.
There were quite a few suggestions about what Lyn could tell Aileen. Firstly, KBE stands for Keep Books Extinct, suggested by Bibliomane. The KBE is only after the Challenger journal at the moment – they are hired to assassinate particular books. Nadia and Tom suggested that Lyn might tell Aileen what books they have removed in the past.
So, we’ve created a dossier that holds all Invisible Inc.’s information about KBE. It will include some books that KBE has removed over the centuries – we’ll be talking to an expert on lost books to get some titles to include.
It was decided Kyle would get suspended after episode 1, but Aileen didn’t find out about this in episode 2. This means poor Kyle has had to admit to it this time around.
There were some great ideas about what would happen at Copper Beeches Café (particularly from Headlong, Bibliomane and Snaknap) and after much discussion and a close vote Tom’s suggestion that Watson would sniff out the bad guy who’d destroyed Doc Rebus’s book won. Robota had also had the idea of there being a scary man at the café.
Watson had a good sniff at the book in Doc Rebus’s and it’s great to see his tracking skills being put to good use here – although, he’s a little slow and misses catching the bad guy. It was decided that Aileen would follow the baddie (it was close, with 46% voting for a chase but 44% thinking she might find a clue instead). This is brilliant because we can include the line “follow that cab” which Aileen has always wanted to say!
The bad guy is, as yet, unnamed – we should have a shortlist for you to vote on later today (thanks to Headlong, Impish, Tracy, Carolina, marco167, mojosmom, Nu-Knees, anaonthenet, time-traveler, katiesmama, keitje, Guinevere, AliMcJ, Snaknap, Katie, Ellen, HINERANGI and Dee Fanego for suggestions).
We decided that Lyn would go with Aileen. Their next destination is Christchurch, New Zealand, suggested by Erik the Read so the episode ends with the two of them, plus Watson, heading towards the airport in hot pursuit.
Thanks also to: everyone who’s voted in our polls, The critics of a lifetime!!!, Whos out there, Matthew, Blue, Chekhov, Erica the Red, terriertim, Troy and ResQGeek.
And, last but not least, the writers of The Lost Book: Matthias, Bookaddictus, Norvaljoe, Rocketboy, Mary, QueenofSheeba and BananaGirl. If you’d like to help write the Lost Book, Sally Challenger’s expedition journal, read the story so far and then tell us what happens next!
Episode 3: outline Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.4 comments
We’ll soon be posting a shortlist of book assassin names selected by our guest judge – and we’ll put a poll up for you to choose your favourite.
Now that we have all your thoughts and ideas about episode 3 we’re working to pull them together into a single story. Here’s a draft outline: we’ll post the storyboards late this week or early next when they’re finished. To find out where all the ideas came from, take a look at Plotting episode 3. And, please leave us a message if you have any thoughts or comments.
FADE IN:
Lyn and Aileen meet in Copper Beeches Café, where they enjoy a cupcake and share information. Lyn shows Aileen the dossier Invisible Inc. has compiled on “KBE” – an organisation called Keep Books Extinct who are book assassins for hire. They have removed various books over the centuries, and the dossier records some of them.
The dossier also includes a photo of a man believed to be a KBE operative. Aileen phones Kyle to see if he can access any information about the man.
Meanwhile, Watson’s nose is twitching. He can smell something familiar in the café.
Kyle, on the phone to Aileen, has to admit that he has been suspended, so can’t help.
A man walks past Aileen and Lyn’s table and out of the door.
Watson follows the scent trail to the recently-vacated table. The man who just left is the person who destroyed the book at Doc Rebus’s!
A taxi drives away.
Aileen, Lyn and Watson rush out of the café.
Kyle, at the other end of the phone with no idea what’s going on, is baffled.
Aileen hails a cab. As they drive off, she and Lyn have the chance to say “Follow that cab!” – to Watson’s disgust. The cab speeds off, chasing the bad guy, in the general direction of Cedar Rapids and the airport.
THE END
The next stage is to finalise the script, record the voice actors (we’ve got a recording session with Cora Bissett and Sean Biggerstaff on Friday) and start animation. We’ll keep you posted about how we’re getting on. We’ll also start talking about the story for episode 4 next week once you’ve had a chance to let us have your thoughts on episode 3.
Cupcake competition Monday, 23 March 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Cupcake competition.add a comment
A quick reminder – there’s only just over a week to go until the closing date for our cupcake competition. We can’t wait to see your entries!
The challenge is to bake the perfect cupcake for Aileen when she visits Copper Beeches Cafe. To enter: take a photo of your cupcake and upload it to our Flickr group.
The winner will be chosen by our expert judges, Crumbs and Doilies. And, the winning cupcake will be featured in the animation! We’ll make a computer model of your cake for Aileen and include it in episode 3 of The Lost Book.
So, get baking now! Closing date: Tuesday 31 March 2009.
Microstory winner: death in Venezuela Saturday, 21 March 2009
Posted by Helen in Microstory competition.add a comment
Many congratulations to BananaGirl, the winner of this week’s microstory competition. BananaGirl’s story tells us of a shocking discovery made on Saturday, 08 May 2004. Things are getting dangerous for Sally Challenger and her team.
We know that the expedition had their second, and final, radio contact with the outside world about now – Jasper Fforde’s article, dated 07 June 2004, says:
There was still no news last night of the British-led expedition lost in Southern Venezuela for over a month, and fears for their safety are growing. The expedition, led by twenty-eight year old Scottish explorer Sally Challenger, departed Santa Elena in an eight-seater Otter amphibious aircraft to fly into the Gran Sabana, and only two radio messages have been heard since. The first to say that they were all well and everything was ‘more or less’ to plan, and the second transmission, a week later, which experts are still puzzling over.
Can you write a story that explains the mysterious second transmission and tells us what happens next? And, can you do it in exactly 100 words?! If you’d like to take on the challenge, enter our microstory competition.*
* For more information: read the newspaper articles, look at the story so far, and see Jasper Fforde‘s cast of characters.
The Lost Book is an animated web series where you wrote the plot.
