With this idea of cajoling someone to make a prototype animation in mind, I immediately went back to my new colleagues in IT. Cole Camplese kindly introduced me to a design expert, Dave Stong. Dave generously made a virtual movable mock-up of the 1814 Metamorphosis using Flash and housed his experiment on his blog site http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/projects/flapbook/blog/
The blog consists of several pages, where he records the process of his thinking as he worked with the book, poses questions and works through problems. One of the pages, the March 2010 Archives, even lets a viewer print out and make a facsimile on paper. Achieving the correct order is a bit of a puzzle and afterwards you can play with your own miniature copy. (Unfortunately since I inadvertently did not include two panels, the little booklet is incomplete).
Throughout his blog Dave asks questions about the nature of the object, how to use a digital surrogate, and about the printing process used to make the book.
For example on April 24, 2009 he observes,
“On a side note, a colleague pointed out a photo on Penn State Live that shows the high quality document camera used by the Digitization and Preservation Department of the Pattee and Paterno Libraries. I wondered what the flapbooks would look like if prepared with images from this device. How much resolution is needed to demonstrate the media engagement? Would two versions make sense- one for the interaction and one to allow close inspection?”
http://news.psu.edu/photo/258668/2013/02/11/just-one-minute-11
Since Dave is a designer I asked him a question that had been bothering me for some time. Are the turn-up books deliberately designed so the flaps, particularly the top ones, fall back down? This has intrigued me because when this happens in the religious flap books the morals and the images contradict one another. For example, in the first sequence there is Adam with a flap resting on his midsection. When the reader-viewer turns ups the top flap as instructed in the verse, the figure turns into Eve. When the reader-viewer turns down the lower flap as again instructed, the figure turns into a mermaid. At this point women and mermaids are denigrated. But if the top flap falls down, which it always does, Adam is transformed into a merman! The effect is comical, especially so when reading the original text. Was this intentional? Dave looked at me and said, of course it is intentional, and showed me how the top flap is slightly longer than the bottom, so the weight makes it fall down.
This is absolutely intriguing to me. Since the first version of this book was composed in 1650 during the Puritan period, does this imply they had a robust sense of humour? Was this a literal (and metaphorical) application of what John Bunyan proposed, whereby in writing for children it was necessary to compose at their level and to do so in terms relatable to them? But what about the result of the flaps falling down, producing what we now would consider a subversive reading? How do we think about that?