MURALS at two Forest pubs will tell more of a story thanks to a new smartphone app.

The app brings to life the story told by the murals, painted by local artist Tom Cousins,at the Fountain Inn at Parkend and the Dog House in Coleford.

When the app – which was developed by Tom’s son Jasper – is pointed at the murals, it triggers new content.

At the Dog House, woodcut figures appear seated in front of a mural by 18th century artist Tom Cousins and discuss customers – noisy angels then appear and are dispersed by a protective dog.

At the Fountain, the mural of local hero Warren James – who was transported to Australia for leading a campaign against the enclosure of the Forest – comes to life reciting a modern Forest anthem.

Warren speaks the words of a 2011 Hands Off Our Forest anthem by local poet Max Jonathan Freedman as 3D models roam the bar.

Jasper, who is known as Jazz, developed the app after returning to the Forest after being laid off by the London model-making company where he worked.

He is hoping to replace work that has dried up in making physical models for events and film with a new career in augmented and virtual reality.

As well as the Forest murals app he has also made a video climbing game with New Zealanders and a virtual reality pop video for a Norwegian.

Tom said: ““This app was an experiment for Jazz and me, trying a little bit of everything to see how it all worked.

“I think it allows the possibility to introduce a story into the mural – normally a mural is like a poster or a Facebook meme, it just makes a point as excitingly as possible.

“Quite often there is a story behind my murals so it’s going to be easy to add more content, for instance for the Reading the Forest murals (featuring local authors) it would have been fantastic to have recordings of the authors reading their work so you could listen to the poems in front of the mural in the voice of the giant faces.”

The app is available for Android phones and can be downloaded free of charge from the Google store by searching for Jasper Cousins.

The app will also work by pointing a phone at pictures of the murals on Tom’s website at www.tomcousins.co.uk