So do you render still images or animations for the touchscreens?

Definitely animation! In a TTP3D (Touching The Page 3D), the whole book moves. Take a book off the shelf, and flip through it - watch how the spine's shape changes throughout. Now try it again with a big, thick book with a firm spine like a dictionary. When I'm animating these tomes, the whole volume shifts and deforms depending on how many pages are going over at once, as quite often we'll skip 30 pages in a bunch - times like that, there's a really noticeable slab of spine in motion, the front cover, and all the pages before and after the chunk one's turning, in continuous motion. Given the nature of these things, there's no way to parameterise the animation, so it's hand-keying all the way through. The end result does make me feel very, very proud. People keep noticing little things about these re-creations for ages.

How many books have you worked on so far then?

For the British Library, I've visualised the Sherborne Missal, Sultan Baybars' Qu'Ran, and the Golf Book. For the National Library of Ireland, I've visualised #1 of the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, and the Paris Pola notebook that went into it. Finally for the Wellcome Library I've done the Wellcome Apocalypse, Stars of Science and a tome on Cutaneous Diseases. I'm currently recreating a Blake notebook, and there's another religious-type book coming up soon. It seems that the team I work with have become the world authority on photorealistic book recreations, which is quite weird but also very cool.

What resolution are the photographs taken at for you?

This one here's 5040x5306. Call it 25 Megapixels.

How much data is there for an average book (if there's such a thing)?

This current one is... *taps w* 405,000 polygons. It's a simple book, so only 94 image maps - just colour, diffuse and transparency for each page. Something with lots of gilding and different pigments would have maps averaging 1000x1400 for seven channels (Color, Diffuse, Specularity, Gloss, Reflectivity, Bump and Transparency).
One book had extremely ripply pages - it looked like it had been dropped in the bath, so that one had each page rumpled with a weight-controlled displacement map. The final output is then reviewed frame-by-frame with bits of retouching done in Photoshop and After Effects, which then yields a sequence of still image files to be integrated into the application.

Which is the favourite book you've worked on so far?

That's a tough one - the Sherborne Missal is definitely the most spectacular one, but each one has its own charms - the Golf Book's cover had worn velvet, inlaid gems and metalwork, the Qur'An has these fantastic geometric patterns that hint of mathematics beyond what you'd expect from so long ago. I think of them all, the Sherborne Missal is my favourite though. It's incredibly rich visually, and the final installation is great fun - run your finger over illustrations of birds, and the right birdsong floats from the console. Touch a bit of musical score on the page, and you get monks chanting. They've all been great fun to do, though.

Is there any particular book that you'd love to do?

I really don't get much say in which books we get to do - that's pretty much down to the library curators. The Book of Kells would be great to do, though.

What are you working on now?

I've just finished animating some MRSA bacteria for a program going out on BBC 3. So, digital micrography, some cartoon vans driving around the country, and a bacterium with great, sharp, pointy teeth.

Thanks Mark! For more information, visit Turning the Page: www.turningthepage.org or the British Library. To find more info on Mark, visit his site at www.imaginetix.co.uk