Power Of Innovation On Full Display At SXSW

Monday March 12^th Search Insider http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/169893/power-of-innovation-on-full-display-at-sxsw.html

Power Of Innovation On Full Display At SXSW by Derek Gordon, Monday, March 12, 2012

I was at SXSW in Austin this last week — and like anyone who’s ever attended this festival of tech glitterati, one can’t help feel a rejuvenation of hope for a better future. The sheer invention and ingenuity on display literally at every turn is truly something to behold.

Take Daniel Burwen of Cognito Comics. Colleagues of mine from Pathbrite and I were sitting at a table in the lobby of the Austin Convention Center on Thursday, when Burwen wandered up to tell us about the graphic novel he’d created for the iPad. When we expressed some interest, he showed us what he’d created. I was blown away — I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Burwen’s
come up with a brilliant way to partially animate static comic book art, augmenting it with real-world archival artifacts such as video of old newsreels. His particular creation is the story of how the CIA toppled the monarchy of Iran in the middle of the last century, which led to the theocracy that’s in power today. (As it turns out, the same process he spent four years developing to create his novel is available for any business or creative endeavor to use, by contracting with Burwen.)