Animation draws out storytellers

Published on Monday 5 January 2009 08:47

AN interactive animation where viewers get to write the story as it goes along is to be created as part of Edinburgh's 2009 City Read campaign.

Award-winning Edinburgh animation studio Binary Fable has been commissioned to create the short online animations.

And the ever-changing story-line will even have its own unique soundtrack produced by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

The animations are the latest addition to the annual reading campaign, which this year will see thousands of free copies of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World distributed around the city.

The company are already putting the finishing touches to the two-minute pilot episode, which will introduce viewers to the main character, investigative journalist Aileen, and set up the story, based around the theft of a book.

Viewers will then be asked to e-mail their own suggestions for where the story goes next, with the company given five weeks to take the best ideas and turn them into a one-minute episode.

Helen Jackson, who runs the Leith-based Binary Fable, admitted it would be a challenge, but said she was hoping it would attract a huge audience.