Review: Disney’s Brave Storybook Deluxe and Interactive Comic

Brave is a rather brave venture for Pixar. It’s the company’s first female lead, but more importantly, Pixar is coming off the lackluster Cars 2, a movie so bad I couldn’t finish watching it and my four-year old has never requested it again. So far the gamble seems to be paying off as audiences are embracing the firey-haired Merida and the story of her struggle for independence. If you’re one of the millions who have already seen the movie, you can relive the adventure at home as a Disney ebook, and also as a motion comic, both available for iOS.

If you’ve read my reviews of Disney ebooks before, you’ll know that Disney does a pretty decent job of getting and keeping kids’ interest through the use of quality artwork, good music and sound effects, and interesting animations. Brave is no exception. In fact, in a lot of ways, Brave exceeds any previous efforts I’ve seen from Disney’s ebooks.

First, the artwork is absolutely stunning throughout. I said before with The Jungle Book that many of the “pages” were screen-capture worthy. With Brave, nearly every page would make a great background for your iPad.

 Going hand-in-hand with the art is the animation, which is handled a little bit differently this time around. Before, the animation started whenever the page came up and the text would fade in over top the image. But with Brave, the screen is initially split in two with the text written out on a separate mock book page on the left side and a zoomed-in image of artwork on the right. The entire page is static, until you swipe to the left to turn the page. This moves the text out of the way and the full artwork is revealed without any text.

I’m not a big fan of this method of page-turning, to be honest. It felt almost like watching an old silent film, where you have to read the card in between scenes to know what’s going on. The method is a bit jarring and sometimes brings the storytelling to a grinding halt. Sitting with a static page with only half the scene visible, while waiting for the narrator to finish, is nowhere near as arresting as having the whole image to absorb and appreciate while you wait for the story to be read.

Once you get to the full image, there is very little movement on the page, if any at all. You might see Merida wave a sword with her wrist or one of the triplets might fidget a little bit, but it’s very minimal; it’s really just enough to indicate that you should tap on the item that’s moving to reveal more animation. For example, tapping one of the fidgeting boys might make him duck under the table and then pop back up. These little Easter Eggs are a welcome addition and serve to help remedy what I have previously said was a slight disappointment with the Disney ebooks that didn’t have these kinds of surprises. That being said, not all the Eggs are terrible exciting. Sometimes, tapping on the screen just adds a little sound effect to the scene, but doesn’t add any motion at all. But when there is motion, it’s usually really well done and sometimes permanently affects the artwork, which is a nice touch.

As if that wasn’t enough, there are a handful of pages that start as a static image, but then break into full-motion video, showing us a scene from the finished film. Having these little clips – most are only 3 or 4 seconds in length – is awesome and really adds some much-needed excitement to the book.

The visuals are beautiful, but so is the music. With musical cues lifted directly from the film and some really great sound effects – especially the roar of the bears – it really sucks you in.

As with Disney’s other ebooks, there are some little games for your kid to play. There are a few puzzles and coloring pages, which are pretty standard for ebooks nowadays. But where the Brave ebook really shines is Merida’s Challenge, an “on rails” target shooting game. You’re Merida as she rides her horse, Angus, through the forest, taking shots at targets with her bow and arrows.  To shoot, just tap on the screen and your arrow flies.  Sometimes the targets are static, sometimes they’re swinging from a branch, and some have been marked out so they don’t count if you hit them, but you’ll have wasted one of a limited number of arrows. When you reach a certain number of hits, you’ll advance to the next level, which ups the ante by requiring more hits on an ever-more difficult course. Plus, if you go through the book in Archer’s Quest mode, you’ll have the opportunity to find special arrows that you can use in the game to increase your score (the blue, orange, and green arrows in the screen shot below). The concept is simple enough that a toddler can pick up on it, but it definitely takes skill for even adults to master as the difficulty increases. It’s a solid game and is just about worth downloading the ebook for, even if you don’t care about the story itself.

Despite the page-turning method being less than ideal, the artwork, the animation, the video clips, the music, and, most of all, Merida’s Challenge, make this a great ebook for kids of all ages. If your little one came away from Brave wanting more, this is a wonderful way to keep them happy and engaged.

The Brave Storybook Deluxe is available on iTunes for $6.99

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For older kids, Disney has also released an interactive motion comic for Brave. Unlike the ebook, the comic doesn’t narrate the story for you, plus it’s a more complex, more complete retelling of the story. In order to keep little kids interested in the ebook, some scenes and dialog were cut, but the comic leaves them in, giving you a whopping 48 page graphic novel on your iPad.

Although it’s a very different style than the ebook – replacing the water color-esque artwork with more traditional comic book line drawings – the art is still really impressive. But what sets the comic apart from traditional comics is the motion. As the reader taps right or left on the screen to advance the story, every frame appears one at a time; sometimes it fades onto the page, sometimes it comes swooping in from the side. And in virtually every frame, there’s motion as it appears. Sometimes a foreground character will come sweeping in from the left side as the background sweeps in from the right. Sometimes only one part of a character – say their eyes, bulged in fright – will shake a little, giving you just a little bit more of an indication of how truly scared they are. These small animations make even the most mundane scenes exciting; it just takes that little touch to make it something special. As an added bonus, the way each frame appears independently is a great tutorial to help younger readers understand the language of reading comics.

With every comic book frame appearing independently, it allows for some really interesting uses of page layout. Perhaps one of my favorites is when Merida finds out she’s going to have to marry the clansman that wins the tournament. Merida’s shock is highlighted with a large image of her on the bottom of the page, but it is then nearly covered up by subsequent frames as the story continues. The ability to use an image in one form as a punctuation is very cinematic and is a perfect example of the kinds of things motion comics can do that few other mediums can.

Another nice feature of the comic is the ability to check out its own little Easter Eggs throughout the story. Anytime a caldron icon appears on the screen, you can tap it and see artwork from the production of the film. Some of this art is clearly from the concept stage, others are animation cues, and some appear to be more finalized artwork, perhaps used to help set a mood for a scene. As someone who loves concept art, this is probably one of my favorite features of the comic.

The comic also has it’s own special feature, which gives you instructions on how to draw some of the major characters from the film. Of course these are shown in that standard “How to Draw” book format, with the simple, abstract lines to start, then the drawing gets fleshed out for two or three steps before you suddenly arrive at the finished drawing that seems to have left out about 38 steps. It’s an interesting feature to include and at least gives young readers an inside glimpse of how these drawings really are created, even if there’s virtually no way they’ll be able to recreate the images based on these instructions.

At a whopping 48 pages of fully-illustrated, animated goodness, the Brave motion comic is a must-buy for older readers. It’s a great example of the right way to do electronic comics and should keep you entertained for more than one read-through.

The Brave Interactive Comic is available on iTunes for $1.99