Saint-Saen’s Carnival of the Animals is an evergreen favourite with children (in spite of some hard to decipher animals… like Pianists and People with Long Ears!). But here’s a version unlike any other – a new interactive app from Naxos, which I’ve illustrated. This is the first time I’ve worked digitally, and the illustrations are something of a departure. I had great fun experimenting, although it was a huge challenge to create images out of many hundreds of components that could be animated and re-configured for different platforms.You can read a little about the start of the process here: http://james-mayhew-author-illustrator.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/starting-saint-saens.html
Phone and tablet screens are different proportions and everything had to be movable, a bizarre and complex situation for a traditional illustrator like myself. I was also mindful that my spindly pen and ink work wouldn’t register on phones in particular. This is aimed at very young children, so bold shapes and colours were the answer. I hope the result is new and fresh and fun, like the verses written specially for this release by Genevieve and Rebecca Helsby. The music is performed by the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Ondrej Lenárd.
The app is great fun, superb value and top quality. I hope it gets ever more children interested in classical music!
Here’s a YouTube advert for it, so you can see how it all works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwE53p8C3hQ
It’s available now for just £2.99
Look out for other Naxos CDs and apps!
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