This was a great little project that came our way. Myself and Ian were tasked with producing a fun and interactive challenge for Rate my Placement. The end product was a game called “Rate my Throw” in which the player is confronted with a member from the team and a barrage of snowballs. The player must use their skill to dodge and throw snowballs until they meet the next challenger, hopefully gaining a good enough score to get to the top of the scoreboard. The game was designed, illustrated and built using Flash and some very slick As3 from my esteemed colleague.

Play the Game ]]> http://www.invasiondodd.com/rate-my-throw/feed/ http://www.invasiondodd.com/skysprout-coming-soon/ http://www.invasiondodd.com/skysprout-coming-soon/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:57:49 +0000 Craig http://www.invasiondodd.com/?p=357

I have been involved in this exciting new project for a children’s clothing brand “Skysprout”, mainly creating xhtml and css for the theming. I am working alongside one other Developer and an Art Director to produce an eCommerce experience which we hope will grow Skysprout’s online presence. For this project we decided to use Magento (an open source eCommerce solution) to power the store and integrate Wordpress to handle the front-end.

Within the project I got to use a wide range of skills from Css to Flash As3. I started by setting up the wordpress environment and getting it ready for development. Once the site was in place it was required to produce a mini interactive tour of the bank. For this I decided to use flash As3 to keep in congress with the flash produced to handle the video content. As well as the code development of the site I was also able to get involved in creating the video content using Cs3 After Effects.

The design of this careers/recruitment website for the Bank of England had to be modern, but also had to be safe and conservative. We used design elements from banknotes, in-keeping with the bank theme. The site is content managed using Wordpress and also features some nicely presented video interviews (shot by Simon Drew of Kaspar Films).

This website promoting poet Caroline Bird  required us to put ourselves into the mindset of creating something for an individual, rather than a brand/company. Our approach was to provide a blank page so that the poetry would be the focus.

This was a technically interesting project… I chose Steven Sacks’ Gaia Flash Framework as a basis for the Flash build and built 3d assets in Swift. We used ActionScript 3 and PHP to code a Flash/Wordpress integration so that the site could be managed easily by Caroline.

The objective for this expandable sensors ad banner for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) was to recreate the suspense and threat that would come from being in an unfamiliar situation. DSTL has the technology and experience to assist in counter-measurement of threats. I came up with the concept with an AD and did the build in Flash/AS2

One of the challenges we had was that we were not allowed to disclose any technology in place due to confidentiality, so the design/concept had to be relatively broad and illustrative!

I conceived, designed and built this playable banner for Southern Trains. ‘Not for Lightweights’ is our approach to advertising an apprentice scheme for railway engineers. Targeted at 16 year olds, the apprenticeship programme is intensive and not for the those who want an easy option.

To engage the teenage audience we created online banners containing a playable game and a fun, playful website. We felt the target audience would find it hard to resist the challenge presented by the ‘Are you a lightweight?’ message and after engaging with the advertising, would be encouraged to find out more by exploring the site.

According to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), there is only 0.03 seconds to react in locking a target and firing a missile. The Sensors & Countermeasures department in DSTL is there to study, implement and prepare those on the field on how to react, with the help of technology. This skyscraper is aimed at potential graduate recruits… I opted for a playable ad using arcade style pixelated graphics to attract the audience and get the message across in a powerful, engaging way.

I decided to use JavaScript/Ajax to build this microsite, which employs an accordian-style navigation. The content of the site is light, so rather than creating a traditional navigation, we created this alternative stylistic navigating experience.

Inside & Out is a networking event designed to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) undergraduates find out about careers in investment banking. We were asked to redesign their website and lift the brand up without changing the black and pink (magenta) logo. The curly and swirly elements were used to reflect the nature of the forum…the slang of “not straight” inspires the visual identity.

I worked on the concept, built a WordPress installation, used xhtml/css to build the theme and shot and edited an introductory video for this blog. Stafford Long wanted to promote their graduate recruitment marketing services - we identified the agency’s unique selling point in this area as having a dedicated resource (a Campus Analyst) who travels the country researching and gathering information on university campuses.

We decided to introduce and brand the agency’s as a character as ‘Campus Ali’, who write a travel blog to keep in touch with the target audience and providing insights into campus life. The blog was built using Wordpress, Twitter (which Ali uses to text amusing updates that appear in the site header) and a mailing list signup to capture details of interested parties. There was great feedback on the website, and the approach has contributed to generating new business leads for the agency. We also had fun spray-painting a grunged-out Stafford Long logo onto a tent, doing a photo shoot with Ali over the road around SOAS/Russel Square and shooting a slightly silly video introduction to the character (see first post).

Various media were used to promote the campaign, from targeted HTML emails to a mass postcard mailout. This soft-sell approach has been a great success in generating buzz and some great new business leads. It has also been praised as a valuable resource by existing clients alike who read it to keep up to date with the latest campus marketing thinking.

This was a little game that I conceived, designed and built after my agency said we need something for the festive season. I put the game was put together in a short time using Flash/AS2 and incorporating a crazy story and a few funny little characters.