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I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about seeing Brave when it opens this weekend, and I've really enjoyed seeing Jim MacQuarrie's series of posts about the making of the movie. I've always loved animation and I'm a huge fan of Pixar — that, combined with my ongoing quest for strong female protagonists makes Brave a great fit. I got a book and a few apps related to the movie and I just couldn't wait, so I've already started delving into them. Here's a quick look at a few more ways for you and your kids to immerse yourself in the world of Brave, though I recommend waiting until you've seen the movie. There is one significant plot point which, contrary to common Hollywood practice, is not revealed in the movie trailer but will be seen in the book and the storybook apps. (Note: my reviews here will be spoiler-free.)
First up: The Art of Brave is a lovely coffee-table book (do they still call them that?) full of concept art and interviews with the various artists and filmmakers involved in the project. For anyone who still thinks that computers do all the work in a Pixar film, this book will set you straight. The amount of effort (and number of people involved) in creating a character, a story, the setting, and all the fine details that make up an animated movie — that's what is showcased in this book. It's great to read about the process, too, and how all of the art that the Pixar team does is focused on one thing: serving the story.
The book is written by Jenny Lerew, an animation story artist and author of The Blackwing Diaries blog. Although she did not work on Brave, her background in film animation serves her well in knowing how to talk about the creation of a film. There's also a preface by John Lasseter, and a foreword by co-directors Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews. A lot of other familiar names appear throughout the book like producer Katherine Safarian and co-director (and originally story supervisor) Steve Purcell. (It wasn't until I was reading this that I made the connection — this is the same Purcell behind Sam & Max.) It was also fun to see concept artwork by other names I recognized, like Mike Mignola and Tony Fucile.
The best part of the book, of course, is the artwork itself. There are photographs taken by the team on their research trip to Scotland, pencil sketches, digital color tests, acrylic paintings, sculpted models, and more. The book is well-organized, showcasing various artwork from things like character development, the scenery (including the wild weather, which is almost its own character in the movie), and storyboarding. Reading through the book, you really get an appreciation of how far the technology has come since Toy Story. As Lasseter says in the preface, "Medieval Scotland is as far from an environment that is natural for computer animation as you can possibly get." Things are rough and mossy and uneven; even the man-made objects are irregular, worn, dented. And then, of course, there's Merida's hair, which is was a challenge unto itself.
It's a stunning book which I'll enjoy sharing with my wife and my kids — after they seen the film. The Art of Brave can be purchased from Amazon, or you can check out the Chronicle Books website for more info.
Next up, the apps: a comic book with a fun bonus, an interactive storybook, and Temple Run: Brave.
Now to the apps. There are two apps which are basically story books — one is more of a picture book and one is a comic book — but each has its own extras to go with it. The Brave Interactive Comic ($1.99 for iPhone or iPad) is a comic book version of the story. It's only vaguely interactive — you tap to reveal each successive frame — but there are little icons (the blue circle with a gold pot) which appear from time to time. Tap these, and you're treated to some concept art.
These are some of the same images as in The Art of Brave book — so if you didn't want to buy the book you could spend two bucks on the app and see a lot of the same images. The downside, of course, is that you can't zoom in and see them in such detail, and you don't get all of the stories about the artwork. (That, and you have to go through the comic to find them.) The comic itself follows the plot of the movie and is pretty much a novelization of it. The one other thing the app adds is the "how to draw" section:
The app gives you some step-by-step blue lines to draw a few of the characters using colored pencils. As you progress each step, the previous blue lines vanish, leaving only your marks, and more blue lines are shown. The difficulty with this is that (as you can see from the images above) some of the steps are incredibly detailed, and it also doesn't tell you which lines to erase. So you start with the basic oval and gestural lines, but you're never instructed on when to erase those and which final lines to leave. And some steps (like the last step for Mor'du the bear) add a whole lot of new lines. While this may be a good way to learn to draw on paper, it doesn't really work on a simple app like this which won't let you selectively erase pencil lines while leaving the inks.
Overall: the comic is fine and the concept art is a good bonus, but the "how to draw" is pretty weak.
Next: the storybook.
The Brave Storybook Deluxe app ($6.99 on iTunes) is a sort of picture book and activity book with multimedia bits. Now, I'll admit that I'm starting to get tired of interactive story books — I'd rather just have a nice picture book to read to my kids — so I haven't been paying as much attention lately to this sort of app. It has two expected modes: Follow Along, which reads the story and moves through the book for you, so you just watch it more like a movie; and Read and Explore, which allows you to advance yourself forward and backward, plus tap the little interactive elements to activate animations and mini-games. The "Play" mode just skips ahead to the activities: an arrow-shooting game, six coloring pages, and six jigsaw puzzles.
The picture book has a side-scrolling interface that has finally (at least somewhat) been freed from the idea of "turning pages." Instead, you get a panel of text on the left with an image on the right — as you swipe across the screen and the text moves off the left side of the screen, the image on the right expands. It's hard to explain without seeing it in action, but it's not simply scrolling left. If you have the narration on, you can pull ahead to the picture and continue to hear the narration reading until you move right to the next section of text. In some cases, the picture (once fully expanded) plays a clip from the movie; in others you get some bits of interactivity (tap here and something happens). Some of the pictures have a hidden arrow which is related to the Merida's Challenge archery game. Also, on some pages at the bottom of the text there's an icon which will send you to one of the activities — a coloring page, or a puzzle, or the archery game.
The archery game is actually kind of fun, though simple. Merida rides her horse through the forest, and various targets appear on the trees or swinging from ropes. You have a limited number of arrows, and fire by tapping on the targets. It's a little tricky, though, as it requires some compensating for her movement and the angle of approach. Hit a bull's eye or a moving target and you get more arrows. The arrows you collect from the picture book also show up here as special arrows that can be fired. The coloring pages are fairly straightforward. The puzzles aren't great — you can only pick from the five pieces currently showing, and they have to be dragged directly from the sidebar onto the correct spot: no moving them around on the screen to see where they go. (But also there's a faded image of the picture on the background so you just match them up anyway.)
Overall: If you like interactive picture books, this has some fun activities included and I do like the page-swiping interface. The narration by Nolan North and voices from the movie are well-done; but if you don't like those you can also record your own voice reading the story and play that back instead. The puzzles are pretty lame. It's cheap for a picture book, but still seems a bit pricey as an app.
Last, but not least: Temple Run!
I wrote about an addictive run-as-far-as-you-can game called Temple Run back in December, and now it's back with a Brave-themed version. Temple Run: Brave ($.99 for iOS or Android) is still basically the same game: you run along a path, swiping to turn left or right or to jump over or slide under obstacles. You tilt left and right to grab the coins, and basically try to last as long as possible without dying. In this case, though, instead of being a treasure hunter chased by creepy ape-creatures, you play as Merida being chased by Mor'du the bear. The landscape is made to look a little more like the medieval Scotland of the movie instead of the tropical jungle-ish look of the original game, and every so often Merida will spout off a little quip (I'm guessing these are sound clips from the movie, but I haven't seen it yet to know for sure).
The one difference in gameplay is the addition of a target-shooting segment. In some parts of the forest, an arrow icon will appear, signalling that there will be targets to shoot. A number of dots at the top shows how many targets there will be in this batch, and you tap on the left or right side of the screen to fire an arrow when you see them appear. (You don't actually have to tap the targets themselves, just the correct side of the screen.) You get bonus coins and points for hitting the targets, and during the target practice you won't run into further obstacles or turns.
The store, where you can spend coins to purchase powerups, is basically the same, although instead of purchasing different characters you get some different costumes for Merida and the unlockable backgrounds feature characters from the movie. The Objectives screen has a fun touch, though: they're arranged in groups of five objectives, and when you complete each one, you get part of an image that forms some iconic scene from the movie. Complete all five in a group and you'll have the entire picture.
Overall: Does the new theme really change the game much? No, not really, and it doesn't make sense that Merida will stop and shoot some arrows for practice while running from a giant bear. But it's still fun in an endless, repetitive sort of way. I've found myself playing it a lot to unlock the objectives, but ultimately it's not a huge change from the original. The good news is, it doesn't turn Merida into some traditional princess figure, but that's mostly because she's just running and running and not doing much else.
Disclosure: GeekDad received review copies of the book and apps in this post.
