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A Clockwork Orange book without the sleeve showing an illustration of Alex's spliced face

Interactive Book Cover

Reimagining Anthony Burgess' novel as an interactive experience using a removable book sleeve and lenticular animation

Role

Solo Project
Physical Product

Tools

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator

Duration

5 weeks
Sept 2019

Challenge

Redesign a interactive physical book cover  while incorporating visual rhetorical tropes

Final product

Slowly slide your mouse sideways over the image ⤵

A mockup of the front, back, and spine of the book

Initial Sketches

I started out by sketching quick ideas based around the themes and imagery from the novel. I used the movie as additional inspirational and wanted to make it "trippy." I originally thought to use a record since music played a big role in the story so people could spin it to match up to show an image. I later thought to use two different images of Alex to represent the different acts of the book.

While looking for inspiration and ideas, I came across lenticular animation which alternates between two images and thought that that would be perfect for this project.

Messy pen sketches and notes on white paper ideating an interactive cover for Clockwork OrangeAn example of lenticular animation using two frames to simulate a pair of scissors cutting

Illustrations

Using frames from the film as reference, I made two faces that showed the two acts or faces of Alex throughout the book. I spliced them together in strips to switch between the two faces.

A frame from Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Clockwork Orange showing a close up of Alex's face looking up menacinglyA frame from Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Clockwork Orange showing Alex with his eyes being forced open, looking horrified
One of the faces used in the final spliced book coverThe final image of Alex's two faces spliced togetherOne of the faces used in the final spliced book cover

Construction

I glued on the spliced image onto an old book and created a book sleeve to test out how the effect would translate to a physical product.

A cut book sleeve laid out flat on a tableEuni using a metal ruler to flatten and glue the printed illustration to a book coverA front shot of the Clockwork Orange prototype with the sleeve on

Outcomes

When presenting the project to the class, people did a double take and loved the effect. Some people held it and just slid the cover on and off, which was exactly was what I was hoping for. I was worried the animation effect wouldn't work as well in a physical product as it did digitally, especially since the bars of the book cover weren't cut exactly but it worked better than I had thought it would.
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I later went back and made the background black instead of orange to really make the faces pop and it added a lot of contrast, which really improved the animation effect but I would love to experiment more with a physical prototype to really maximize the effect. I would laser cut (or something similar) to make sure all the measurements and cutouts are exact to help with the effect as well.