I’m Going To Venture a Prediction – Virtual Coloring Books!
December 3, 2010 by rtwsenior · Leave a Comment
As far as I know, this doesn’t exist…but I’ll bet it will in the near future and I’m going to prepare for the bandwagon.
Since this is the time period that most people make New Year’s Prophecies and Predictions, I shall go on record with one which I’m sure will become a part of our lives within a year or two. It concerns the use of the electronic reader, such as Kindle, Nook, the Sony Reader, etc., which will soon be as indispensable as our cell phone. Every backpack, briefcase and purse will include a reader with limitless books and reading material already downloaded or easy to acquire. That technology will continue to add more features and go through its acquisition curve. I don’t have one yet, but am watching the price drop and the value to my life rise. Of course, I already know that I must have one. I’m just biding my time.
But all of my books will also be ebooks and will be on sale for electronic reader download and that is such a blessing for authors. Pretty soon, there will be very little distance between us and our readers…a few buttons to push and a rather small amount of money (compared to a physical book)… and instant gratification. Your reading can begin almost as soon as your interest is tweaked by the content description. Plus, there’s nothing to store and no wear and tear on the book. We are in the opening throes of a true revolution here, in the way we read and handle books!
Okay, so that’s not news. That’s so last year and the year before. But, here’s what I expect that we will be able to have on those little electronic screen readers:
COLORING BOOKS! Sophisticated, black and white illustrations embedded within the pages of the book, and built-in color graphics, so that we can sit on the airplane during a long and dull flight, and play with our virtual “color crayons” to make instant art. We can delete what we have done and start over, or save the versions we like, and have as much fun as the children do….to say nothing of entertaining the children with their own portable and recyclable coloring books.
I had this idea in the shower yesterday, because I have been diligently teaching myself to draw lately, in preparation for the children’s book I am currently preparing for publication. It’s called The Candlewick Question. It’s a very visual story and I suddenly got the idea to illustrate it with black and white line drawings so that children could color them, throughout. I don’t know how many 6×9 paperback story books are coloring books, as well, but it will fit my format perfectly and so now I am devoting days and weeks to these illustrations. They are looking pretty good.
I’ve been concentrating on art these days, trying to define my characters visually and to create attractive, easy-to-color scenes, which would be inserted as extra pages throughout the story. Naturally, in the paper version of the book, the coloration opportunity would be a one-time shot. Once done, it’s done forever. Of course, these will be attractive enough as illustrations to simply leave them in black and white. The classic edition of Alice In Wonderland is a good example of beautiful line drawings that I never heard of anyone coloring.
Anyway, in this shower, I was thinking ahead to the ebook version of my children’s book, The Candlewick Question, and that naturally led to thinking about the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader and all of the portable ereaders on the market. Ahhhh, the kids can’t color on that now, can they? Hmmmm? Maybe they can in a few years. And if it would work for kids in the future, why not add illustrations to my fiction books for adults, too and get ahead of the curve!
I haven’t heard that color graphics are a feature on those ebooks yet, but that is a truly inevitable step and probably won’t take very long for some company to grab hold of and speed their version along in the competition.
Once they add that technology, there could be a real demand for ebooks with black and white illustrations intended to be colored because it would just be so much fun. It could even be serious fun….if you added them to home decorating books or fashion design or hair color or makeup illustrations, architecture, landscaping and all manner of graphics and design applications.
And then, they could add a stylus and let us draw on the blank ereader surface and we’d have a high-tech, expensive version of the old Etch-a-Sketch, where we could delete, or save, our trial and start all over again.
These good ideas just keep on recycling themselves, don’t they? And don’t let the grown-ups kid you. They will glom onto this just as fast as the kids will.
So, that’s my New Years Prediction #1 for 2011! What’s yours?
