I had the incredible experience of going to see Daft Punk Live @ the LA sports arena. This was an amazing show where sound and visual stimulation far exceeded any other event I’ve been to. I endured holding my camera up during the entire show – and finally posted it on YouTube. Here is the footage. Enjoy.
The BLITZ team has been doing more R&D with PaperVision3D and Patrick figured out a way to map interactive textures to 3D Objects. This opens us Flash Interactivity to a whole new dimension:
With the event model, every 3D object dispatches MouseEvent3D events that includes the 2D coordinates of the mouse impact point on the texture map.
By moving the source MovieClip with the correct offset, every event (rollOvers, clicks, mouseWheel) is naturally triggered on the source MovieClip and automatically copied to the 3D object’s MovieMaterial.
The example above let’s you map a scrollable text field to a 3D cube.
See the blog post for more details. Source Code is also posted.
We’ve been doing quite a bit of R&D with PaperVision3D @ BLITZ, the latest post from Steven showcases iTunes UI concept re-done in 3D with Flash. Check it out.
Last year, GE sponsored the Wired NextFest event and approached BLITZ to create some cool, fun and engaging kiosk content for four of their divisions. We worked with GE’s Water, Energy, Aviation and Healthcare divisions to create interactive Flash games. Our challenge was in juggling four different projects on a short timeline, three of which would need to be completed for an Australian eco-event prior to NextFest, as well as making sure the games could be repurposed for online.
From beginning to end, BLITZ conceptualized, architected, designed, programmed, created original audio, and recorded voiceover for the games. We built the games to run on custom hardware at NextFest (players used trackballs at the kiosks to navigate through the games), and planned for the most efficient ways to optimize when the games migrated online. Since all games had to run continuously for several days straight, we put extra attention and care during memory optimizations to prevent memory leaks and system crashes.
Each game consisted of challenges and accompanying voiceover to educate people about GE’s innovative processes and research. At the end of gameplay, players could enter their names into a leaderboard that was displayed on a screen for all attendees to see at the event. One of the neat things about this project was seeing people interact with our work. Rarely in this business do you get to see people engaged in a project you’ve completed, or see and hear their reactions. Apparently, our games were big hits at NextFest!
In The World Tour Water Challenge, you are tasked with providing clean water to three international cities that suffer from water shortage.
The first game requires you to transport clean irrigation water to a local farm.
In the second game, you must assemble a desalination plant to bring clean water to the local town for drinking water.
In the final game, you must purify the water before it is transported to the city for use.
Cleaner Coal: The Journey To Power is played from first person perspective. The objective of the game is to generate enough energy to provide power for a town of 400,000 people. You travel through the game as a piece of coal as it goes through the GE IGCC plant.
In level one, your mission is to convert the coal into synthetic gas.
Level two requires you to clean the gas.
In the final level, your goal is to navigate the cleaned gas particle to the turbine, where the energy is created.
GE Flight School lets you see how a GEnx Engine is assembled, and lets you take a test flight to several international cities to see how planes that use GEnx Engines have less negative impacts on the environment.
GE Healthcare’s Virtual Voyage is a journey inside the body to see how GE technologies are helping medical facilities effectively treat two deadly diseases: heart disease and stroke.
The World Tour Water Challenge, Cleaner Coal and GE Flight School are available online at http://ge.ecomagination.com/site/index.html#news/more for anyone to explore and learn more.
I’ll be going to MIX 07 this year and look forward to attending many of the cool sessions. If you want to connect in person while in Vegas, drop me an email to my first name @blitzagency.com. BLITZ and Electric Rain are also showing a Starbuck presentation created in a StandOut on Wednesday May 2nd at 8:30am, which is pretty cool! We’ll post screenshots / video after MIX.
The Adobe Creative Suite 3 launch is the largest software release in Adobe’s 25 year history. It comprises of 13 individual product innovations resulting from the merger of Adobe and Macromedia. Upgrading to or choosing the product that best meets the needs of today’s cross-platform designers and developers would have been challenging. To remedy this, Adobe approached BLITZ to build a Flash Product Advisor Tool to simplify the shopping experience while bringing clarity and honesty to the process. The Adobe Product Advisor helps you find your match and learn about the Creative Suite 3 offering in a straightforward and engaging manner.
In step one, you tell Adobe what you require. Step two, Adobe makes its recommendations based on what you selected.
As an owner of Adobe or Macromedia products, you are advised for your best upgrade path.
From there, you can either learn more about the products suggested for you, or make your purchase.
Built using Flash and XML, the tool logic and content are easily configurable and localized, enabling its deployment in 11 languages. Additionally, the Product Selector was designed to run on the Web and local hard drives for the Adobe Sales team.
This fun and easy-to-use tool is currently housed on the new Adobe CS3 product pages, as well as the CS3 Experience mini-site. Since the launch, the Product Selector has received positive reviews, and has become the best lead-to-sale generator in Adobe’s history.
Honda created a new F1 racecar that communicated its Green efforts, and wanted to engage F1 race fans, as well as non-race fans to participate in its initiatives. To achieve this, Avenue A - Razorfish teamed up with BLITZ to create a micro-site that would showcase the race car, convey the message that we can all make a difference in saving the environment, and mobilize visitors to take action.
Our approach kept the design for Honda’s My Earth Dream site straightforward and to a minimum, with emphasis on Honda’s RA 107 racecar, the environmental message, and the call-to-actions. Race car enthusiasts can see the RA 107 up close by clicking and dragging the mouse to rotate the car.
To make a pledge, you can simply select a location on the car and walk through four simple steps. You can also view pledges made from around the world and see how your contributions add to making a difference. This is possible through a sophisticated backend running on SQL and AMF/PHP, which interfaces with Flash via Flash remoting. We developed the backend using a mature PHP/MySQL framework (CakePHP) connected to Flash via an open source remoting gateway (amfphp); it represents the fastest Flash remoting solution in use today. This architecture choice allowed us to create a site that will support the projected millions of pledges that will be made during the 2007 F1 Racing season, and accommodate new feature requests while maintaining the performance and usability of the live site. Some of the data is particularly noteworthy, specifically an ISO-correct list of countries and custom generated coordinate mappings to allow for the visual representations in the Flash application.
Our collaboration with Avenue A - Razorfish resulted in a timely delivery to the client, in spite of the aggressive project timeline. The site has raised pledges from over 60 countries since its launch, and is also being translated into a Japanese version. Stay tuned to BLITZ Labs for our upcoming Japanese language how-to, where we will shed some light on the black magic of font control in Flash. Here’s a sneak peek at the Japanese site in the meantime.
Last year Adobe tasked BLITZ with building the Flash 10 year Anniversary website with the goal to commemorate 10 years of Flash history. It was a “time capsule” of sorts, allowing people to submit ideas of what they felt should be included. Additionally the site gave users a sneak peak into the future of Adobe’s web platform products for the year ahead, Apollo and Blaze. This was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding projects we have worked on and wanted to share with you what went into making it happen.
We had to come up with a fresh approach to the traditional “Timeline” presentation while reinforcing the impact Flash had over the entire world. Given the project, we weren’t going to create the typical “click and slide timeline;” instead BLITZ decided to give control to the user, allowing them to drag the world forwards or backwards in time, instantly providing feedback of events and their locations that took place during that year. Locking down the concept cut deep into our production schedule, leaving the team only three weeks to complete the development, including the Jonathan Gay video shoot and post-production for the intro to the site.
The final content wasn’t going to be ready until a few days before launch, so we had to build a dynamic way of mapping events to their actual geographic locations for both world view (above) and close up view (below). The world view was especially problematic as the location points had to track with the Earth rotation and account for the Earth radius. To find each location we used Google Earth and Google Maps, which helped us populate the Timeline XML.
We re-built the Earth rotation widget three times in order to optimize it for best performance. We started out with displacement / convolution filter approach. Unfortunately we needed a high resolution rendering of the earth and the AS2 performance for pixel manipulation was just too slow. We then attempted image sequences, but for smooth rotation we needed about 300 JPGs, all of which had to be fairly good quality since the user could “stop rotation” on any frame. We also went the FLV route and got quickly reminded that video codecs are not built to play backwards smoothly. Regardless, FLV gave the best quality/compression combo, so we ended up using two FLVs - one rotating forward and the other pre-rendered going backwards. When the user switches direction, we’d swap the video streams jumping to the right frame of the new video. Both FLVs are always playing forward, the swap is transparent to the user and we effectively eliminated the chugging. Lastly we enhanced the “look” and applied dynamic lighting over the Earth by applying several layers of Flash 8 Filters and Transfer Control Layers.
One of the things we had to strip out were the celebration candles. With each Earth rotation, a candle was going to be added to the Earth. See the story board below (the remaining storyboards are in the production gallery below).
We also added a couple of several Easter Eggs. The Satellite takes you to the Animation Gallery, and the North Start takes you to the Flash Penetration Graph.
We also added the obligatory call to action - Become The Future by getting Flash:
And a section with Kevin Lynch and Jonathan talking about the Future of Flash.
Video Production
With the explosion of Flash Video and YouTube in 2006 we made a decision early on to do all section transitions in near HD video (1000×600). In addition, Jonathan Gay, aka the father of Flash, agreed to host the site. This meant we had to add an HD intro movie, which quickly doubled in length during the video shoot. The “cosmic zoom” concept was to take the audience from a satellite view of Adobe HQ to space and seamlessly transition from Video to Interactive UI.
The Video shoot took place outside San Francisco. Because the shot had to be 100% seamless, we ended up renting a Crane Mounted Camera, green screen studio and a bunch of crew members from near by Industrial Light and Magic (George Lucas’s VFX company). After we got the shot right, additional interviews with Jonathan and Mike Downey took place.
The intensive video post-production involved lots of tracking, virtual 3D sets and audio. Uploaded below are a ton of images from the video shoot, as well as screenshots of the post production process - a lot of work was poured in.
This was an incredible experience for us - from meeting Jonathan Gay, to the incredible video production and Flash development challenges and we are grateful BLITZ was given the opportunity to build the site.
On to the Video Production and Post Production Gallery:
If you are tired of buying new clothes and immediately seeing someone else wearing the same thing, or if you are tired of saying “that’s cool, but I wish I could just change that part of it,†then check out STAGR, a premiere apparel brand customization platform built by BLITZ, where you can enjoy making custom stuff. The experience turns a common response of “weak, that person is wearing the same shirt as me†into “cool, look at what he/she did to that shirt, but mine’s still better.â€
The STAGR platform ecosystem is about connecting target audiences with their brands, letting them personalize the brand and make it their own by:
Customization is the next phase of retail shopping. There is an infinite number of entities that have loyal followings, from ten fans to ten million. Whether it be artists, musicians, brands, athletes, etc., a portion of these loyal fans are looking to uniquely identify themselves with these entities, many of whom are not well represented at traditional retail, if at all. It is our goal to allow customers to make a personal connection with these entities by creating high quality customized fashion items using our online customization tools.
The platform creates value in graphics and encourages active participation from both customers and partners to insure their selection remains relevant and ahead of the curve.
How do you market an “analog board game” through digital means? You create a viral gaming experience where YouTube meets American Idol!
This was the question Cranium and BLITZ had to answer in one of the most innovative digital advertising campaigns, and we’re really proud BLITZ was the chosen agency to work on it. Pop 5 Live is the first online game to be fueled by user generated content. Using the platform we built, players can become performers in the game by creating and submitting new video content for other players to consume, all through the ecosystem of the campaign. The game experience remains fresh as more content makes its way in, so you won’t get the same game twice.
The Cranium board games are fun because they DON’T focus on “what you know,” but rather the creativity and silliness of “how you show it”. As a performer, you are challenged to communicate a clue to your teammates via Acting, Humming, Drawing, Sculpting or Letter-Line-Up activities. As a player, you have 60 seconds to guess the clue. The game recognizes several “big” answer variations and allows for 70% accuracy in typing to limit frustration to the players.
To “get in the game,†our application lets you draw a clue and submit your performance via a WebCam or digital video file upload. Much like YouTube, the uploaded video (cell phone 3gp, MPEG, Quick Time, AVI, WMV) is transcoded into Flash Video (FLVs), and then run through an internal approval tool prior to publishing it live. Several bad word filters are also implemented throughout the submission process.
As a performer, you are motivated to submit quality video because you are scored based on how many people guess your clue correctly, as well as how high your video is rated. Contests and sweepstakes are implemented as additional reward mechanisms.
We seeded the game with 100 videos to get things started, and this was a big deal - a month of pre-production and 3 days on set. Pictures are below :).
Credit and a big thank you is due to Grant and Lanny for their development support on the project. Thank you guys for excellent work on it.
First, this is one of the best Interactive / Creative / Flash conferences year round, which is why BLITZ is a frequent sponsor (GOLD sponsor last year and a Bronze Sponsor this year). The folks that put it together really care about quality and content and I personally was very inspired by many of the sessions I attended.
Second, I just ran into some old clips I captured of my cell phone from John Grden’s presentation last year, of him rigging up Red 5 with a MIDI drum set and recording / playing back the whole thing, while also controlling the “light ambiance”. Simply outstanding execution. John, if you need to borrow a drum kit piece again, or even an entire set let us know, you’ll always be part of the BLITZ family ;).
I’m looking forward to traveling to Toronto, I’ve never been to Canada before. I’ll be giving a presentation on Digital Advertising at FiTC called “Dimensions of Interactive Development“. The focus is on how interactive agencies today need to utilize a multi-disciplinary skill sets in order to deliver memorable experiences on -line.
If you are going and want to meet up in person please stop by and say hello. I’m always looking forward to meeting people from the industry and exchange views and ideas.
I’ve been a big fan of John Digweed since his Northern Exposure CDs back in the nineties. I recently had the chance to see his live performance at Giant LA @ Vanguard and took a ton of video footage. It was a phenomenal set. Video playlist below.
And here is me 
The BLITZ Flash team posted a new developer article on BLITZ Labs covering Polar Coordinates & Sound Spectrum experiments with AS3. Source code included.
The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Flash Microsite received the FWA Site of the Day Award for February 24, 2007. This marks BLITZ’s 20th FWA award! Congrats team!
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BLITZ Launches Garmin Man micro-site. The Challenge: Super tight deadline – with the TV commercial airing during the Super Bowl this was an absolutely no-miss deadline. Hosting via a Akamai CDN.
You can view the GarminMan site directly: champion.garmin.com
And to view the overlay video at www.garmin.com.
Virtual Tooluxe combines the interactiveness of the Subservient Chicken with the some of the boldness of Shai to bring us two playful clerks in a fashion boutique that the site apparently promotes. Brush up on your French, too, or use Babel Fish. To save you some time, the word for “undress” that works is deshabillez. Some of the sequences are up on YouTube. I like how you can subscribe to their list and receive secret codes for more action.
Communication Arts’ Designinteract.com, a respected source of information and inspiration for the field of interactive media, provides coverage on the industry’s influential people, projects and tools, including agency profiles and project overviews. This month’s agency profile features BLITZ and some of our most recently completed projects.
Read the complete feature at www.designinteract.com/features/blitz
The BLITZ Flash team posted a PaperVision3D tutorial on our company blog. This is part of a presentation for the LA’s Flash User Group, which will be webcasted on their website, so be sure to check it out.
The BLITZ Flash Team added a developer article + source code on The BLITZ Labs Blog of how the 3D Navigation for a recent CES Linksys Project was done. It steps through the 3D approach and ends with an impressive demonstration of how pre-rendered image sequence can be implemented with a 3D engine to make a believable 3D Spatial environment.
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