CodyMind

Storytelling Exploration Lab

Exploring how stories travel across books, images, voice, and media environments.

Discover

Stories in Changing Media Environments

Children today increasingly grow up surrounded by digital media where much of what they encounter takes the form of short digital experiences.

At the same time, children's books remain one of the richest forms of cultural storytelling, supporting imagination, language development, and emotional understanding.

CodyMind explores how stories might exist within contemporary media through calm audiovisual storytelling that preserves the literary and visual qualities of children's books.

First Exploration

When Books Come Alive

The first exploration developed within CodyMind examines how illustrated children's books might be experienced through calm audiovisual storytelling.

The original text is narrated while the illustrations remain visually central. Gentle motion, sound design, and pacing support the unfolding of the story.

Story Frames

Illustrated story frames from early narrative explorations developed within CodyMind.

Illustrated story frames exploring narrative pacing, emotion, and visual storytelling.

Second Exploration

Draw Your Movie — Children as Filmmakers

Dream it. Draw it. Watch it.

This exploration examines how children's drawings might become the starting point for animated storytelling.

Children naturally draw scenes from stories they imagine — characters, places, and moments from their own narratives. Draw Your Movie explores how these drawings can be interpreted and gently transformed into animated films while preserving the visual language of the drawings themselves.

Rather than treating drawing as preparation for animation, the exploration asks whether drawing itself can become a storytelling interface through which children create their own cinematic narratives.

Draw Your Movie — Children as Filmmakers

A Calm Storytelling Environment

Storytelling experiences for young audiences benefit from clear narrative structure, moderate visual stimulation, and attentive pacing.

Story parameters such as narration speed, visual motion, sound intensity, and scene duration are adapted for different age groups.

Stories Across Languages

Switzerland's multilingual cultural landscape offers a unique context for storytelling exploration.

The same illustrated narrative can be experienced through different narrations while preserving the visual identity and narrative structure of the original book.

The CodyMind Lab

CodyMind is developed by an interdisciplinary team trained at EPFL and the University of Lausanne and currently based in Zurich.

The initiative brings together perspectives from science, storytelling, and media design.

Learn more →

Collaborations

CodyMind is an open exploration and welcomes dialogue with people working in children's literature, education, research, and cultural initiatives.

Get in touch →

Interdisciplinary books — research, education, storytelling

Illustrated children's books are among the richest forms of storytelling for young audiences. Carefully written narratives and thoughtfully designed illustrations support imagination, language development, and emotional understanding.

When Books Come Alive explores how illustrated stories might be experienced through calm audiovisual storytelling while preserving the central role of the original text and illustrations.

The exploration investigates how narration, subtle motion, and sound design may support the story while maintaining the rhythm and atmosphere of children's literature.

Exploration Questions

How can illustrated books be experienced in audiovisual environments without losing their literary character?
How can narration, motion, and sound support the story while keeping illustrations visually central?
How can storytelling parameters be adapted to the developmental stage of different age groups?
How might such storytelling formats support attentive listening and engagement with stories?

Story Frames

Illustrated story frames from early narrative explorations.

Illustrated story frames exploring narrative pacing, emotion, and visual storytelling.

Story Explorations

Several illustrated stories have been created as exploratory material to study how narrative, illustration, narration, and audiovisual storytelling interact. These stories represent early storytelling experiments across different age groups.

Age group: 6-8 years

Grow, Little Seed

A quiet story about patience and growth. Lena plants a seed and waits for it to grow while other children's plants sprout first. Through care and persistence, she discovers that some things take time.

Age group: 3-6 years

The Little Cloud's Hug!

An exploratory illustrated narrative created to study narrative pacing, atmosphere, and visual storytelling within audiovisual story scenes.

Age group: 2-3 years

The Star is There

A gentle story about reassurance and emotional connection. A child discovers that even when someone leaves for a while, the star in the sky remains — offering a quiet sense of continuity and comfort.

Designing Calm Storytelling Environments

The storytelling exploration draws on insights from research in child development and children's media environments.

Parameters such as narration speed, motion intensity, sound levels, and scene duration are designed to remain appropriate for different developmental stages.

Younger children benefit from slower pacing, simpler visual environments, and limited simultaneous stimuli, while older children can engage with slightly richer narrative dynamics.

These parameters continue to evolve through dialogue with teachers, educators, child-development specialists, and researchers studying children's media environments.

Audio and Audiovisual Storytelling

The exploration also reflects on how narrated audio storytelling may complement audiovisual experiences.

Many children encounter stories through listening at home, in classrooms, or during shared reading moments. Approaches developed within this exploration may therefore also support calm narrated story experiences where voice, pacing, and sound design remain attentive to children's developmental needs.

An Ongoing Exploration

When Books Come Alive is currently in an exploratory phase.

Through conversations with children's book publishers, teachers, educators, literacy organizations, and researchers working on child development and children's media environments, the project seeks to reflect on how storytelling formats may evolve while remaining connected to the traditions of children's literature.

Additional narrative explorations for other age groups are currently being developed.

Exploring Drawing-Based Storytelling for Children

Children often invent stories through drawing long before they learn formal storytelling techniques. A single drawing may contain characters, emotions, environments, and fragments of narrative imagination.

Draw Your Movie explores how these drawings might become the starting point for animated storytelling.

In this exploration, children write a short story and draw a small number of scenes from their narrative. These drawings are then interpreted and gently transformed into animated storytelling sequences while preserving the visual qualities of the original drawings.

From drawing to film — clapperboard with crayon

From Drawing to Story

Children begin with familiar materials — paper, pencils, crayons, or colored markers.

Instead of animating drawings frame by frame, the exploration investigates whether a small sequence of drawings representing moments in a story can become the foundation of an animated narrative.

An experimental storytelling system interprets the drawings and organizes them into a cinematic sequence, allowing the story to unfold across multiple scenes.

Preserving the Drawing

A central principle of the exploration is that the animation does not replace the drawing.

The visual language of the drawing remains present:

uneven outlines
crayon textures
expressive colors
imaginative proportions

Because the drawings themselves guide the animation, characters and environments remain visually consistent throughout the story.

Each animated film therefore retains the distinctive visual identity of the child who created it.

Drawing as a Storytelling Interface

When children draw scenes from their imagination, they already make decisions about perspective, relationships between characters, and emotional moments in the story.

The exploration investigates how drawing itself may function as a narrative interface through which children construct animated stories.

Through this process, children gradually encounter simple ideas of cinematic storytelling such as scene progression, perspective, and narrative pacing.

A Storytelling Exploration

Draw Your Movie is currently in an experimental prototype phase.

Early demonstrations explore how children's drawings and short stories may be interpreted and connected into animated storytelling sequences.

The exploration reflects on how physical drawing and digital media might come together in new forms of participatory storytelling where children actively create animated films rather than passively consume digital content.

A Storytelling Exploration Lab

CodyMind is an interdisciplinary storytelling exploration lab that studies how stories may exist within contemporary media environments while remaining connected to the traditions of children's literature.

The initiative explores how narrative, illustration, sound, and motion can interact to create calm storytelling experiences for young audiences.

Rather than replacing books, CodyMind reflects on how literature might remain meaningful in media environments where children increasingly encounter stories through audiovisual experiences.

Interdisciplinary Exploration

CodyMind brings together perspectives from science, storytelling, and media design.

The initiative was developed by researchers trained at EPFL and the University of Lausanne and is currently based in Zurich.

These interdisciplinary backgrounds offer complementary perspectives on perception, attention, sound environments, visual storytelling, and the relationship between media and human experience.

The Team

Mahya Eslami

Project coordination and concept development

Mahya explores how storytelling environments may influence children's attention, imagination, and early cognitive development, and connects the project with publishers and research partners.

Hadis Abbaspour

Narrative development and visual storytelling design

Hadis contributes to the development of narrative structure and helps translate interdisciplinary ideas into accessible storytelling formats.

Looking Ahead

CodyMind is currently in an exploratory phase.

Through dialogue with children's publishers, teachers, educators, literacy organizations, and researchers working on child development and children's media environments, the initiative seeks to reflect on how storytelling formats may evolve while remaining connected to the traditions of children's literature.

Future explorations may extend beyond illustrated books to other narrative forms and storytelling experiences.

An Open Exploration

CodyMind is an open storytelling exploration that welcomes dialogue with people working in children's literature, education, research, and cultural initiatives.

Conversations with professionals from different fields help shape how storytelling formats may evolve while remaining connected to the traditions and values of children's literature.

Who We Would Like to Connect With

Children's book publishers
Teachers, educators, and literacy organizations
Researchers in child development and children's media
Cultural institutions and storytelling initiatives
Animation, sound, and creative studios interested in narrative storytelling

These conversations help inform the ongoing exploration of how stories may exist within contemporary media environments.

Get in Touch

If you are interested in the project or would like to exchange ideas, we would be glad to hear from you.

Email [email protected]

Location Zurich, Switzerland

If you would like to learn more about CodyMind, discuss the storytelling exploration, or explore possible collaborations, we would be glad to hear from you.

Email [email protected]

Location Zurich, Switzerland

You can also reach out if you would like to learn more about the exploration, discuss potential collaborations, or share perspectives related to children's storytelling and media environments.

CodyMind

Stories in Changing Media Environments

When Books Come Alive

Story Frames

Draw Your Movie — Children as Filmmakers

A Calm Storytelling Environment

Stories Across Languages

The CodyMind Lab

Collaborations

When Books Come Alive

Exploration Questions

Story Frames