Story Time for Portal by Facebook / Dr. Seuss!

Posted October 17, 2020 / Story Time for Portal by Facebook / Dr. Seuss!

As the father of three little girls (who are, sadly, no longer little enough for reading picture books) this project was extremely special.

This was my third time working as part of the AR/VR experiences team at Facebook on the Story Time platform for their Portal video calling device. This time, we would be partnering with our friends at Nexus Studios in London, adapting four early reading titles from the beloved Dr. Seuss catalog into augmented reality.

Working on this project through the Covid-19 crisis imbued the assignment with even more meaning. Story Time was designed to bring children face-to-face with family members so that they can share meaningful experiences that physical distance might prevent. Suddenly, here we are in 2020, and physical distance is a bigger barrier than ever. This somehow felt like we were giving people a magical, Seussical tool to overcome it.

Special thanks to Ian McCamey, who was not only our intrepid creative producer, but also serves as the talent on these delightful gifs!

Story Time for Portal by Facebook

In 2019, I was fortunate to be part of a team at Facebook adapting licensed children’s book titles to AR for their Portal device. The Portal is a very special piece of video calling hardware, and Story Time is a feature that allows loved ones to share engaging stories with children no matter how far from one another they might be. The video above features Todd Parr, author of countless children’s titles, including the “Otto” series, demonstrating the Story Time of his own book, “Otto Goes to the Beach.”

We also adapted “Llama Llama Red Pajama” by the late, Anna Dewdney and several “Pete the Cat” titles by James Dean. It was an unforgettable project involving some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.