Posts Tagged ‘flash’
Silverlight, oh Silverlight . . .
Posted by Administrator | Filed under General
Last year we started work on our first (web based) Microsoft Silverlight project, with our client Imagine Education, design partner Resolution Creative and .NET developer Sami Sinervä. Called the Innovative Schools Toolkit, development started in May last year and the site took on a number of iterations before going live just before the Christmas break. It very different to working in (our usual) Flash, we are happy with end result and see great potential for using Silverlight going forward, the way it draws animation seems to be quite slick.
The Innovative Schools Toolkit is an accessible and practical guide for you and your school community to begin the journey of innovation. It’s intended to be a starting point rather than a complete solution and it offers a process that can be customized based on your unique needs.
The online toolkit is part of Microsoft’s Partners In Learning initiative and the application allows schools to asses their positioning using the multiple choice tool which displays online graphs. The toolkit also plays out video and allows schools access to download documents.
Calling All Toy Testers! Its the Argos Toy Tester Online Game…
Posted by Administrator | Filed under Animation, Games, Sliced Bread, Social Media
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!
Preloaded 1066 The Game
Posted by Administrator | Filed under Animation, Games
Things have been pretty busy here over Sliced Bread recently, and we are please to announce one of a favourites projects 1066 The Game has now launched. In partnership with Preloaded we created 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.
Preloaded have created the web-based 1066 The Game to coincide with Channel 4’s 1066 documentaries. 1066 The Game puts the player into the muddy boots of the English, the Vikings and the Normans, to play through the actual battle situations of Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.
Using historically accurate troop formations, battle styles, troop makeup and featuring a voice-over by Sir Ian Holm, 1066 The Game is educational and battle strategy gaming at its very best.
To give the user a full game ’simulation’ experience it needed a sufficient library of character sequences to make it work. Preloaded pre-planned them and we considered the best approach in getting them delivered in the timeframe. We did this by creating a generic character, then modelling and animating bespoke assets for each character trait, there was also a requirement to create a horse for the Norman soldiers. We devised a working pipeline that allowed us to manage all the game requirements from build to animation, and then finally to render. We also needed to consider the correct historically accurate shields, weapons, helmets the soldiers used. Using the render layers in Maya, we were able to turn on/ off the required elements after the animation move had been completed. All the sequences were rendered as vector for Flash.
Pre-planning pipelines and considering the best approach is integral within any animated production. This is because once you are committed to production it is very difficult to go back and re-think the approach, timeframes for online projects seem to be a lot tighter than TV or film. We were very fortunate in this particular production that the ‘nice-to-haves’ (i.e. different ways of the soldiers being killed) were also able to be delivered.
One Eskimo – Hometime video
Posted by Administrator | Filed under General
Its quite an old one by all accounts but One EskimO (check site here) are having a bit of an upsurge at the moment so we thought it appropriate. They have a new single out called Kandi, but we are loving this one more . . .
The project was produced by Rollo (Faithless), and the music is complimented by a series of gorgeous animations – which have already bagged One eskimO a British Animation Award.
They will be playing on Thursday 12th March, at Hoxton Bar and Grill. If you’d like to be added to the guestlist, please email us and we’ll point you in the right direction. There will also be an interview with them that night and animations accompanying the performance.
