Category Archives: ecodazoo

virtual pop-up book in papervision


Ecodazoo is a beautifully-animated if slightly inscrutable site created in Papervision, a real-time 3D engine for Flash. Scrolling around the page takes you to a series of animated ‘pop-up books’ that tell vaguely eco-educational stories.
It’s pretty, even if it’s unclear who it’s aimed at. The heavy ‘book’ styling made me think though. Will the children of the future only experience pop-up books in animated form, onscreen? Or would the pop-up book conceit only have resonance for those raised on the paper versions?
To put it another way, would an animated ‘book’ enchant or simply baffle an adult raised since infancy on screen-based reading? If so, the many well-meaning attempts to transpose codex-like qualities into the digital realm ultimately serve only to comfort those dwindling generations (of which, at 29, I’m probably the last) for whom in early years print took precedence over digital text.