HTML5 animations of Joyce's Ulysses

This project is an unexpected spinoff of a collection of platform-ideas for simulating Ulysses: http://simulatingulysses.blogspot.com/2016/04/sidescroller.html

HTML5 has some commands that allow animated figures to move around background graphics, so it seems pretty simple to animate the basic paths of the main figures in Ulysses. Without using any javascript code, we should be able to evolve shared and/or customised animated illustrations.

I've created very rough firstdrafts of all pages, with individual lists of challenges to be handled. Volunteers are welcome, especially if you want to learn animation.

• The backgrounds are mostly maps, but for interiors they'll try to offer accurate proportions, hopefully all about 600px wide. (Is this too narrow?)
• Characters and objects believed to be within the background can be included, even if the text hasn't mentioned them yet.
• Character-animation should eventually be via 'sprite sheets'. (Bloom looks a lot like Mario, conveniently.) Early drafts may cheat and slide around still figures.
• Figure one html page per 'scene': transitions between indoors and outdoors require moving to a new page. Each page needs 'play/pause?/start-over' buttons that start the (non-interactive) 'movie'.
• I'm expecting to figure out how to assign multiple characters multiple overlapping starting and finishing places and times. (If there are technical limits, we'll have to retreat to next-best workarounds.) 'Animation-delay' sets a starting time and 'animation-duration' calculates an ending time...? But every spritesheet has to be treated as completely separate/independent? And kept invisible before and after its bit?
• (The 'alternate' modifier is useless because whenever our characters reverse direction they have to switch to a different spritesheet...)
• So each scene has to be broken down into a set of 'independent' subpaths for each character, which then run 'simultaneously'
• Emojis may supplement character-animations, eg in the super-complex ch10.
• Boring chapters like ch3 and ch9 will need creative tricks. I'm thinking of embedding characters' thoughts as emoji pre-fixed to the background maps near where they'll be thought.
• Maybe speeches and thoughts can be 'summarised' in emoji? (requiring lots of new animations) we needn't try to make them full translations, just suggestive hits wherever possible

chapters and scenes:

1 2 3 4a 4b 5a 5b 6a 6b 7 8a 8b 8c 9 10 11 12 13 14 15a 15b 16a 16b 17a 17b 18

1: tower cross section and cliff path
2: school cross-section
3: strand path? sidescroller???
4: eccles cutaway plus walk to butcher
5: map-path plus church, swenys??
6: very tall map-path w/tiny carriage, cemetery choreography??
7: newspaper cutaway cross section
8: map-path, byrne's, map-path
9: inactive library, comings and goings
10: giant simultaneous map?
11: ormond interior
12: kiernan's interior
13: girls on beach
14: hospital cutaway
15: map-path then bella's
16: map-path then shelter
17: map-path then eccles again
18

the jamesjoyce.slack is available for discussions

download the latest versions from github as a zipped folder