I once found a particularly large one in the front yard. He had a mottled pattern of blue and orange and black, a white stripe extending all the way down his back, and tufts of soft rust-colored fur that poked out every which way. He was mine.
I had one of those clear plastic terrariums with a carrying handle. About the size of a lunch-box, it featured a purple lid with a little door that hinged open like a tiny sunroof. There were slits in the plastic for ventilation. Too many kids unknowingly fashioned suffocation chambers for their firefly pets when they forgot to punch holes in the lids of the glass jars. I was no rookie, though, and my caterpillar was going to live in style.
I lined the bottom of the terrarium with mulch and leaves and twigs. I brought him new leaves every day or two, taking notice of the kinds he liked to eat. After about a week I noticed a few silk threads entangling my little buddy, so I helped him out by brushing away the cobwebs.
A few days later, more invasive threads appeared. I turned over every leaf to look for the pesky spider that was trying to entangle my friend, but I couldn’t find anything in the plastic box except my chubby caterpillar and leaves pocked with round, chewed holes.
I had begun to pay less attention to the whole situation, as I was a busy kid, and my failure to find the offending spider was making me feel like a bad caretaker. The next time I looked in the box, maybe a few days later, my caterpillar was gone. In his place was a neat little caterpillar-sized package wrapped in layers of fine threads, adhered to the face of a leaf, inert. I was a failure. A spider must have snuck into the cage. Afraid to touch the mass attached to the leaf, I left the whole box outside with the roof hinged open. I hoped the situation would just resolve itself as nature tends to do.
After recounting the sad tale to my parents a few weeks later, I finally realized what had happened. I slid open the screen door to the porch and raced over to the box. It held only the discarded remains of the cocoon; the butterfly was nowhere to be found.
I had known that caterpillars turned into butterflies. I had learned it in school. But somehow, in real life, I wasn’t able to reconcile the two distinct images of the insects as being one and the same, two parts in a progression. A transformation so complete—from a fuzzy, clumsy, lumbering little worm to a graceful winged flier—was pure magic.
Almost twenty years later, I am pursuing an MFA in Graphic Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
When choosing a topic for my thesis project, I thought about my childhood experience with the caterpillar. I decided to design an app that would teach children about processes in nature while preserving the wonder I had felt about nature as a kid. For my thesis project, I created The Little Bug, a children’s book app that tells the story of the transformation of a little caterpillar.
The Little Bug, developed for the iPad, combines an original narrative with lots of interactivity to let the user play out the story as it is read. In the story, a little caterpillar sets off on a journey through his garden when he hears a mysterious sound. The caterpillar meets the other insects that live in the garden and realizes that they all have special talents that make them unique. The grasshopper makes music by rubbing its wings; the ant digs tunnels; the bee makes honey; the katydid hides. But the little caterpillar struggles to find something he is good at doing. He can’t see a path he can take to get there. The caterpillar finally realizes that his special talent is spinning thread, and he is so excited by the discovery that he tangles himself up into a cocoon, leading to his physical transformation into a butterfly.
I initially struggled with the characterization of the little bug. Does he try to be like the other bugs, becoming more and more desperate with each mounting failure? Is he jealous and lazy or curious and persistent? I thought the latter set a better example for little ones, so I tried to present the story in an optimistic way, where the caterpillar is eager to explore the world around him and to try new things.
I thought it would be easy to write a kids’ book. The reality was much more complex. How can you tell a story rooted in science and nature in the simplest words with the shortest sentences and still retain the right mood and message? With concepts like “metamorphosis,” “bioluminescence” and “camouflage,” the odds were stacked against me. Fortunately, I had the support of talented writers (thanks David Barringer, Ellen Lupton, Cindy Kane and Robyn Littman) to help me craft a simplified manuscript that retained a positive message.
By presenting the factual information about bugs through the format of a narrative, I dramatized the science behind insects and nature.
The dramatization of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis will fill in the blanks that kids like me had when connecting textbook facts to
real-life processes. My illustrations support the scientific foundations of the story as well. I watched footage of each moving insect to make the animations as true to nature as possible. The structure and shape of the bug and plant illustrations are based on photos, with elements of whimsy injected into the textures and patterns.
In addition to teaching through narrative, I hope to evoke a sense of childlike wonder and exploration by allowing readers of all ages to play out the story as it happens. The iPad is a perfect platform for this type of highly interactive storytelling. The reader can make things happen by touching images with a finger, wielding the power to move the story along or to stop and explore.
I surveyed existing children’s apps and researched interaction design for children while planning the project. I used the research to establish a list of best practices for children’s interface design, including:
- The smaller the kid, the bigger the button should be.
- Kids often tap the bottom area of the screen by accident. Controls and navigation should be placed at the top of the screen.
- The most intuitive gestures are tap, draw or move finger, swipe, drag, and slide.
- Interactive elements should be visually distinct and can be differentiated through line weight, color, illustration style and animations.
- Freeze animations until after the story has been read on the page.
- Kids usually use landscape view.
- Children expect immediate feedback from their touch, either visual or auditory.
- Input registration should occur on touch rather than on lift.
- Require confirmation when a major program consequence will result, like returning to the beginning or shutting off audio.
I made careful decisions about each interactive moment in the app to ensure that the interaction helps enforce the information introduced in the text.
The idea for the interaction on the katydid page came easily. In the story, the katydid can camouflage himself because of the leaf-like appearance of his wings. So, for the katydid activity, the user searches for the hidden katydid in a page full of flowers and leaves.
One of the more challenging activities was the snail activity. The text originally described the snail’s ability to stick to any surface with his slime. I was finding it difficult to animate and code this concept. I thought about making a maze in which the child could guide the snail or allowing the user to draw slimy trails by dragging the snail, but both were beyond my coding capability. I watched some videos of snails for inspiration, and I was amused by their ability to retract their entire bodies into their shells. So I animated the snail slowly climbing upside-down on the branch and programmed the page so that the reader could poke at the snail with a finger. This caused the snail to stop momentarily and retract into his shell, all the while sticking to
the branch with his slime. I adjusted the text to reflect the snail’s ability to climb upside-down.
An amazing luxury of this project was that I could work on all pieces of the app-making process simultaneously and make changes at any point if something wasn’t working harmoniously.
I was initially drawn to the idea of writing and designing a storybook app because it would allow me to craft all parts of the experience to take full advantage of the tablet. I chose characters that would animate well and that had distinct abilities rooted in nature. This was why I cut the ladybug from the cast of main characters. Looking cute and wearing polka dots were passive qualities that did not relate to the activities of the other insects in the story.
After surveying current children’s apps, I chose to create a custom typeface to complement the illustrations. I also chose the technologies to code the app based on the types of interactive moments I wanted to create. I had originally planned to develop the app using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, but I quickly realized that it was too limited to handle the amount of rich animations and diversity of interactions I was designing. I landed on using Adobe Flash Pro to animate and code the app. Flash was a great option for front-end app coding; the interface was similar to other graphic-design software, and the coding language, Actionscript, was similar to coding for the web in Javascript. Sound design was also a key component of the app experience, from sound effects to background music to voiceover narration. I commissioned the sound design from a childhood friend, Joshua Cipolla, who created multiple background music tracks that follow the arc of the story. Together, all of these deliberate decisions made my story into a more seamless and immersive experience.
In many ways, the story of the little bug reflects my own experiences these past two years in graduate school. Upon entering the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA with a background in theatre and little coursework in graphic design, I was overwhelmed by the skill and experience of my peers. I’ve met so many talented designers, screenprinters, letterpressers, coders and illustrators. I spent plenty of time thinking that my work wasn’t interesting enough, academic enough, or beautiful enough. Graduate school helped me focus on my personal growth as a designer while challenging and inspiring me to learn more. I hope my app inspires kids to stay curious about their environment and look forward to a lifetime of learning and growing.
