Trafalgar Origins – Channel 4 from Preloaded on Vimeo.

We have just completed a 2nd Flash game installment for the Fire & Rescue Service (client: Meteorite) called ‘Hotel Havoc‘, the game comprises of 3 games in 1 and includes a PaperVision (3D) element.

Usually a haven, this hotel is now reeking havoc upon its guests. A fire is raging. The building unstable. And five people’s lives hang by a cable, in a broken lift. It’s up to you to save the day. But you’ll have to be quick, think on your feet, and smart to get the job done. The call is in…

Game 1 – The fire is spreading fast. You’ve got 60 seconds to get it under control and extinguish the flames. But be careful not to run out of water, and watch out for the wind!

Game 2 – You’re about to see how to support a building by using wooden poles. Memorize the picture. You’re going to have to replicate the structure in 2-minutes. Good luck!

Game 3 – There are five people trapped in the lift. You need to navigate the corridors and get to them ASAP. The only problem is, the lights are broken and the hallways are clog with smoke. So mind your step.

Here’s an animation we have just completed for Twestival Global (2010)... see twestival.com for more details. There’s a blog post coming up shortly, which details more about the collaboration process (which was a fantastic experience), but for now we wanted to get it out there and promote the cause.

Creative: Crystal English, Leynete Cariapa, Animation: Sliced Bread, Music: EliasArts, Audio: Green-Shoot, Recorded at Dammit Ltd., Voice: Lawrence Sheldon, Twestival Bird: 383 Project, Video Footage: charity: water, Thanks to What Talent Ltd., Produced by Connect the Dots Foundation, Photography Courtesy of National Geographic (c) James P. Blair/ National Geographic, Gabriele Gaspardis, Justin Sangani, Brooks Walker/ National Geographic, Johannes Ehrhardt, James P. Blair/ National Geographic images

What is Twestival™?

On Thursday 25 March 2010, people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness.  Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good.  All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.  If you would like to get involved, please Register your City, Register your School, or Volunteer and we will get in touch.  Organizers will be given a handbook and invitation to our collaboration workspace.  Follow @twestival for updates.

The online game 1066 won a BIMA last Thursday (19th Nov 2009) for Best Online Game, The BIMA awards  ‘celebrate the work of the UK digital creative industry’. As previously blogged we were responsible for creating over 270 animated assets in just over 2-weeks. Preloaded did all the creative and site development, and we created the Norman, Viking, Saxon and Villager character animation elements. We are very proud to be part of its success, the quality of the game speaks for itself in terms of the gaming results:

Since launching in May 2009, the game has received an overwhelmingly positive response from both the gaming community and online press.

The project has received no marketing budget, simply relying on the audience and community to seed and share between themselves. The traffic to date is testament to the quality of the game and the compelling nature of the content.

The Multi-player mode plays a large part in the distribution mechanic of the game and this is reflected in the continued and sustained and growth in traffic and game-play duration.

Effectiveness

> Number 1 search result in google for ’1066′
> Current total game-plays standing at over 5 million
> Average game duration over 25 minutes

And the reviews:

“If half the Proper Wargames released each year showed as much imagination, style and spirit as 1066 the genre would be in a far healthier state”

Tim Stone – rockpapershotgun.com

“Pleasing to play and pleasing to the eye. Check it out.”

Brian Ashcroft – kotaku.com

We recently compiled a DVD for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission using supplied assets and some good ‘ole Boyce Dungood animation (by us). Sponsored by The Mirror and Mirror Football it has been sent out to over 28,000 schools over the past week to coincide with Remembrance Day.

Glory Days – Football in Times of War is a short film aimed at engaging teachers, students and football fans of all ages with the website of the same name at cwgc.org/glorydays

Introduced by David Beckham and enthusiastic football manager Boyce Dungood, Glory Days tells the stories of some of the footballers who gave their lives for their countries and how they are remembered. It explores how the two world wars affected football teams and how football played a part in times of war as entertainment, for boosting morale and for propaganda.

Argos have recently launched this Sliced Bread created game (client: Meteorite) to coincide with their ‘Toy Tester for Year‘ competition and ‘Big Play’ Roadshows. The game has 3 competency zones, each with 4 playable levels. Players can also invite their friends to join them in mini high scoreboards. You can play the game here.

I’m Angus and this is my awesome Toy Testing factory. It’s my job to make sure all the toys are off the Fun-o-meter scale! But there are so many great toys here, I need another Toy Tester to help me. So let’s see if you’re up to the job. Collect as many toys as possible from the Big Play Area zones – the clock is ticking!

Good day today plenty of progress made, Z800 machine running well couple of issues with encoding audio via Premiere CS4, seems to be a software issue though not the machine. Most of the shots are now planned through, story just needs a little tightening against the new voice-over.

As some of you know we are involved in a competition for HP called the ‘Mr Z Designer Challenge‘ (more info here). Yesterday the machine arrived just before lunch, and we busied ourselves loading the software in and adding plug-ins ensuring that we could comfortably start production.

From an initial observation the HP Dream Colour monitor is amazing, the colours are showing very vibrant and rich against our normal monitors and it doesn’t seem to reflect the outside light so much either. The Z800 machine itself is quite compact for sooo much power, its also very quiet! Working in Maya we haven’t noticed a massive change in speeding up the workflow (yet) compared to our normal machines, but we ran a few test on the rendering last night and it is comparably faster.

From a production perspective, it has been agreed with all studios, that all sequences will be kept closely under wraps until all they are all put together. A couple of frames from our storyboard are shown below but that doesn’t really give away much! Last week we worked on some preparation including the story and also rigging the character, so that we can get the animation we require during our week.

Caroline Hampstead – Copywriter (www.carolinehampstead.com) has kindly written a voice-over for us and Green-Shoot (www.green-shoot.com) has provided the voice recording (more on the voice-over artist and sound FX later). We will try and blog progress on a daily basis, so check back back here for regular updates . . .

We recently completed an animated informercial for Avanti Communications PLC (one of our neighbours here in Rivington Street!) Business Internet Continuity (BIC) product. The sequence is 1 and a half minutes in length and explains how the product works and its benefits to the business user/ ISP. You can view the video here on Avanti’s website.

Avanti’s Business Internet Continuity (BIC) product provides an automatic alternative route to the Internet for a business customer over a satellite link. The service is triggered when a customer’s fixed–line connection to the Internet fails and automatically maintains the IP addresses used in the customer’s network.

Sliced Bread Animation are pleased to announce their involvement in the HP Mr. Z Designer Challenge. Our ‘week’ comes in a couple of weeks and we are busy thinking through ideas. We will blog regular updates on both the machine’s performance and the animation developments. More info here

HP has given the UK’s leading digital content creation (DCC) agencies a tough, yet exciting task: capturing ‘a day in the life’ of Mr. Z, a superhero designer with SFX superpowers.

Using HP’s recently–launched Z–800 workstation and Adobe’s Creative Suite software, each DCC agency selected by HP accepted the challenge to develop a 30–second animation or film clip about Mr. Z and his powers. Once all the clips are produced, they will all be joined together, to create a ‘A day in the life’ of Mr. Z.

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