Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Jackie recently earned her MFA in Graphic Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is also working on the development of her first app, an interactive storybook for the iPad, called The Little Bug. When not behind a computer screen, she enjoys experimenting with paper cutting and oil pastels, making egg sandwiches, and solving puzzles.

 

The Little Bug is an interactive storybook app for children 3 years and up, created as Littman’s graduate thesis project while attending MICA. Littman combined creative narrative with digital interactivity to create a more meaningful learning experience. Littman established and applied best practices for children’s app design throughout the entire process; during the creation of the story-line, along with an original typeface, animating hand-painted illustrations, designing the interface, and coding the app.

 

The Little Bug storybook app, developed for the iPad, tells the story of a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly. Hand-painted watercolor swatches were scanned and manipulated in Photoshop to create whimsical, layered illustrations. All interactive items were rendered in color against a neutral background. The rich visual distinction encourages children to explore and discover interactive features of the app, without explicit instructions. Littman made careful decisions about each interactive moment in the app, to ensure that the interaction would help to enforce the information introduced in text. Littman assembled, animated, and coded the app using Adobe Flash Pro. The illusion of depth was created by making the foreground, mid-ground, and background layers move at different speeds, when the iPad is tilted. Littman hopes to inspire curiosity and confidence by allowing readers to play out the story as it happens.

 

The illustrations were created in Adobe Photoshop by scanning and manipulating hand-painted textures and color swatches. The title lettering and icons were created as vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator. The app was assembled, animated, and coded then tested in Flash and outputted to devices using AIR.

 

AIR®
Creative Cloud
Creative Suite
Flash Player
Flash Professional CC
Illustrator CC
Photoshop CC