Trafalgar Origins – Channel 4 from Preloaded on Vimeo.

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.

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!

Sliced Bread Animation are looking for an experienced freelance Maya Modeller for a 2/ 3 week project. Must be London based, please contact us via our website.

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 . . .

It taken us a while, but we are all nice and settled now, so to celebrate we thought do a little animation sequence.

If you are in the animation industry and on Twitter, please add me (and I will auto follower). I am keen to get a group together where we can exchange industry news on jobs, films (features and shorts), games, literature, tutorials . .  essentially anything animation related. Twitter is an excellent way of ‘news feeding’ information.

Follow me at: http://twitter.com/3djamie

There is a Sliced Bread Animation Twitter account and this will become more active when the new site is up (http://twitter.com/slicedbreadanim).

There is also this animation group on TwitterGroups – http://twittgroups.com/group/animation

By far the highest hits to our site are those that relate our 3D anaglyph projects – the Sliced Bread Christmas game and a movie for a ‘well known cosmetic enhancement’ product. Rather than re-invent the wheel, here is a tutorial on how you can do a simple image in After Effects (its how we did it). Later this week I will post on the set-up in Maya in order to create a 3D animation movie sequence.

3D Anaglyph in After Effects – Pxlguy’s AE Tutorials

http://web.me.com/pxlguy/AEtutorials/tutorial-1.html

Hint: Use the ‘Balanced Red Blue LR’ for the best 3D effect.

Finally we can confirm that we are moving out of Covent Garden! After 6 years here it really is time for a refreshing change! We have found an amazing space in Shoreditch which (you’ll be pleased to know) includes a lift! Lots of people have questioned why, so i have written this post to answer just that.

One of the many questions we get asked is ‘is it cheaper’, the answer is not really, its a little more than we are paying now in Covent Garden but considering the rent in CG has gone up 120% (even in this climate), it made it impossible for us to stay without upping our fees . . . and our lease was up for renewal.

When we first opened in October 2002 some of you will remember that our office was in excellent condition, it was newly refurbished and excellent shopfront for any new business. Sure the stairs are a hassle, but the impressive entrance seemed to take away some of that burden. Many of our new clients liked to drop by as they ‘were in the area’.

Sadly much of that has now changed, the impressive entrance is really no more.. and not even a reflection of its former self, now a battered and bruised door that is urgently in need of some t.l.c.! Last year some new owners took over over property (Cap Co), they brought a number of them in the area and have ‘great’ plans for Covent Garden as a whole. Rumour has it they want to turn our office in residential, but that may just be a rumour! The way the office is managed has changed, where simple requests for improvements seem to go unnoticed but rent demands brink on harrasment from the managing agents (even though we have always paid on time).

The Covent Garden business space has changed too, no longer is it really a home for creatives, much more tourists and bigger corporate buinesses . . . the creative ‘hum’ has definately gone. Also, over the past 9 months we have had lots of new opportunities come our way from the Old Street/ Shoreditch area, indeed some of our existing clients are already there.

The new office is awesome, its a new building that was opened in May this year, the interior was designed by the same people that did the (now famous) Shoreditch House, on top of the Tea building. Its 5-10 minutes away from Liverpool Street/ Old Street, surrounded by excellent restaurants, bars and coffee shops. It has an impressive entrance with lots of comfortable meeting rooms, and even a stunning roof terrace!

Why not come over for a cup of tea (or coffee) so we can show you our new home, and some of our recent work while we’re at it? We could sit on a bean bag on the roof if it’s not too frosty, or pop out afterwards for a frothy beer or 2.

We move on the 1st November and look forward to seeing you there!

New address will be:

Sliced Bread Animation Limited, 81 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 3AY

New telephone numbers to follow! + Our new website will launch definately be in November too . . .