Evans began his career as a cartoonist and painter, eventually ending up in design. Now he’s part owner (along with Vince Peddle and Paul Gregritt) of EPG, an award-wining multimedia design company in Seattle, Washington. In the burgeoning world of multimedia design and production, Evans and EPG are renowned for their innovative use of still images to create entertaining and powerful stories. They created the opening sequence of the Corbis “Passion for Art” title, and are generally credited with creating the over-all “feel” of the disc. They were also involved with Graphix Zone's’ CD-ROM “Material World,” based on photojournalist Peter Menzel's book, as well as several corporate projects, some of which are included on the accompanying CD-ROM. EPG has also created one of the first serialized interactive stories--titled “The Cypher”--a still-image ladened murder mystery spanning one thousand years, and which is currently running in “Launch”, a CD-ROM-only magazine.

Evans:

Years ago I saw a multi-image slide show that used two slide projectors to project photographic slides on two screens with an accompanying sound track that played as the photographs were sequenced. It was a project for the American Cancer Society and it was the most moving piece I had ever seen. That’s how I learned a still image coupled with audio could be so powerful.

Here at EPG we believe that the “old” multi-image model can be applied to CD-ROM projects. In fact, using still images for CD-ROM is a natural because of the limited processing speed of the computer. Full-screen video, after all, looks terrible. Using still images is our way of doing things.

We use the multi-image approach to create introductions or modules on a CD-ROM that whets the viewer’s appetite for the rest of the title’s content. For “A Passion For Art” for example, we wanted the viewer to understand that this was a story about a collection of great art that, except for a small group of people, had never been seen before. It was a great story, not only about the art itself, but about the people and drama behind the art.

We did a similar thing for “Material World”. We used sequences of photographs to create a narrative about specific families from around the world. Through the images one sees different lifestyles and different ways of doing things. To accomplish this with film would have been very difficult and very expensive, and I don’t know if it would have been as effective.

How do we pace our images? How do we combine the images with the sounds? It all comes from the gut. We start out by defining what we want to say by asking: What is our message? What exactly are we trying to say? For “Material World” we looked through boxes and boxes of photographs and found the images that captured the right feeling. Then, using questionnaires and photographers’ journals, we crafted stories about the families. We then scanned the photos and put them in Macromedia Director along with a rough music track. I just let the photos sequence and watched and listened as the music played. Sometimes I would let an image that was particularly powerful sit longer on the screen. Other times I would do a quick cut between four different images just to give a quick overview or feeling. There are no hard and fast rules to follow. I just followed my instincts. We usually laid the voice-over narrative last. At times, I felt like a conductor conducing an orchestra--I controlled the tempo, depending on what I wanted to say.

We consider ourselves first of all story tellers, and we apply this to our corporate projects as well. Communication is communication and the best way to get a message across is with a clever, fun, and memorable story. The best ads are often the simplest, but they get to something at the core of our being.

We always try to generate our own content since we like to have a fresh look, and you can’t get that when you use the same sources as other people. We also try to keep a low overhead, which is possible when your core revolves around still images.

At EPG we’ve come up with lots of creative ways to sequence images. We go in and out of black a lot. We use audio to engage our viewer’s mind even when there isn’t an image on the screen. Then, when the image appears, it is quite startling. Of course the computer limits us, especially when compared with multi-image slide shows or television. It’s hard to do a lot of cross fading because few computers incorporate more than one screen. We use the normal pixel dissolves and pattern dithers, but they aren't enough. We have come up with some techniques that are fun, using several frame animations to create very effective transitions. The result feels like a transition but in reality is a 5-frame animation. We’ve created montages that change very subtly, all done with pattern dithers that create a strange transparency between images as they fade one into another. It seems like the whole thing is throbbing.

We are trying to force the computer, trying to bend the technology to our knees, instead of bending our knees to it.

The irony is that when people look at what we have done, they think it is something really new, but the techniques we use have been around a long time. In reality it is low tech, not high tech.