Archives
« February 2006
April 2006 »
March 30, 2006: March 30, 2006
Off to Europe
I'm off to Europ for 4 weeks! So updates to here will be more sparce than usual if at all.
Ive got 2 days of work for D&AD and then 26 days of doing nothing!
But i should have a shit load of photos and stories when I get back.
March 29, 2006: March 29, 2006
Flying Cat is Live!!
3 years and 3 weeks ago we started a site for Flying Cat toys. They make Nathan J's Scarygirl toys. But due to the owner being so busy with running the company there wasn’t time to get any content.
So the project sat dormant for all those years. Suddenly Jon Burgerman emails and wants to get it live. And within 2 weeks of collecting content the site we all thought no one would ever see is live.
This is the only site I have "designed" for Soap. Rob usually handles that but back in 2003 when we were a small team there was room for me to step into the designer shoes. Although Rob did guide me along the way and finish off most of the sections.
Flying Cat has a pretty good roster of designers. Nathan J being their star designer but Tokyo Plastic is a pretty big name around the web and TADO has a big fan base, Jon Burgerman is new to the toy scene but has a big following with his artworks and people like Ghostbot and Curtis Jobling have some great artwork to work from. These are just ones I know off. Koji and PUSH seem to have been around for a long time aswell so Flying Cat is poised to release soem really cool stuff.
And speaking of Curtis I liked his stuff so much I bought two artworks from him this week. The guys worked with Tim Burton and his style is great.
Here they are below. This will be my second originals after the Nathan J ones we got for the office last year.
March 28, 2006: March 28, 2006
The Hills have Eyes Game
We (Soap Creative) have just finished a game for Fox's horror remake The Hills Have Eyes. You'll need headphones or speakers to enjoy this one though.
Check out Mutant Hunt game here.
This was the game I had to create that montage for. Check out the before and after here.
March 26, 2006: March 26, 2006
Mattress De Milo
Street Mattress is now has over 12,000 photos!
This photo is a classic examples of what Street mattress is all about. I love this shot from Smart Set.
You can check my Street Mattress submissions here, I should be third for Australia in a week or so!
March 24, 2006: March 24, 2006
The Hills have Ipods
We needed this deep etched for a game and I couldn't resist doing an Ipod remix.
If ever there was a time I needed a lightbulb above my head it when when this came to me.
March 21, 2006: March 21, 2006
4 Years Old
Today marks the 4 year anniversery of starting Soap Creative.
We registered as a PTY LTD company on march 21st, 2002. It feels like alot longer actually but 4 years is a long time in run your own business world and alot has happened both good and bad. But luckily for us, mostly good.
Brown X-Wing
Ok it's very hard to see but I had to run to catch up with it but this was a long shot on my phone of a brown x-wing they were pushing through the Fox Studios backlot when I was there. 5 minutes earlier and I would have been jumping all over it.
50 Cent Game Packaging
If you pre-order the game the case gets this wicked Bulletproof jacket!!! Great idea, it have velcro so you can take it on and off.
Don't forget you can still play the 50 Cent video editing game we made for Vivendi here
March 19, 2006: March 19, 2006
March 17, 2006: March 17, 2006
BU Day
The hard drive on my lappy shat itself last night and I've sent it to a data recovery company today to get fixed. They said they normally have a 70% success rate for drives like mine where the head breaks.
This is an important lesson to all you MOFO's to back yo shit up. Lucily I will have only lost a month of photos and a small amount of work as I keep most stuff on the server and I just backed up 2 DVD's of photos last week.
But HD fuck ups like mine can strike at any time and it's like a punch in the nuts.
Ash in Apple's Photobooth
Apple's Photobooth is so much fun. I suggest everyone have a go it's hard not to stop. Check out experiments here and we'll hopefully get all our staff on Monday to have a go.
Why not join my Flickr group Photobooth Mutants, you know you want to.
The Hills Have Eyes Montage After
We had to add elements to the environment that we could hide "mutants" in. This is a game for Fox for the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" coming to cinemas in April.
Check the original photo here
March 14, 2006: March 14, 2006
X-Arcade
We got one of these heavy MOFO's for the office and it's great. MacMAME is so much better and we'll get it hooked up to the PS2 later.
Definetly worth having if you want to really play the MAME games properly
March 13, 2006: March 13, 2006
Swarovski Crystal Expressions
I got to go to my first fashion show. I decided to take the little digi cam and now I wish I had of taken the DSLR.
The only bad part is Bessie Bordot's husband's head in all my photos. I don't even want to imagine what that dirty ol' bean was thinking.
March 12, 2006: March 12, 2006
Spiderman Japan
I cant get the theme song for this Japanese Spiderman video out of my head. "Yeah yeah yeah..... woah"
If thats not freaky enough for you then try this video. WTF
Truffle Maps Desktop 1920
I made this desktop from Google maps. See location here maps.google.com/?ll=25.580847,43.885574&spn=0.611283,... I think it's in Turkey but not 100% sure.
That's a city just up and to the right of the center. You can spend hours in google maps looking around.
March 11, 2006: March 11, 2006
Boring Blog
I know this blog is pretty shit but not as bad as this was http://candycult.blogspot.com/ it also seems someone else has registred Candycult.com the bastards.
March 10, 2006: March 10, 2006
The Real Australia games
The games we built for The Real Australia are now live and "bloody" free.
Check out Tan Command and help those poms get a tan.
Reel Fishing for a relaxing time behind the reel. And the tried and tested Real Surf
A big thanks to Limmy for his work on the Tan and Fishing game. They turned out great and no you didn't have BO.
Some Insight:The reason behind re-skinning Bogan Surf which we build way back in 2001 was due to budget and also it's suitability. We also had other concepts which did not suit a conservative tourism client. We had to even remove the comment "WTF!" from the surf game due to it being offensive.
Initial client request were for something "viral" but as much as that word gets thrown around these days unless it was going to be a killer viral we didn’t want to bother. We felt fun games would work better than a conservative "viral" idea. It's like porn.
No one wants to watch that shit you see in Blockbuster when the hardcore stuff is so much better. The same goes for viral. Sure it's “he he" funny or cheeky but it's not going to "viral" unless you let us go nuts.
The fishing game for me is the most fun as I haven’t seen many good fishing games as it’s quite relaxing. The use of the mouse wheel (on PC) is great fun as is the cut the line feature Limmy added.
This is the final piece of work for the The Real Australia campaign which ended up looking nice. Nothing too amazing but suits the needs of the client and the site should live on after the promotional period rather than disappear into nothingness. They are planning on using this for training and informational purposes.
Again the most fun on this project was the concept stage although this was a hard nut to crack. It’s funny we won this pitch against Tequila and a few other agencies when we weren’t confident, while we lost to Tequila on another job we though we’d cracked and were a shoe in.
In our initial concepts we proposed covers 30-40 destinations. Some with a minor amount of information others like you see on The real Australia site with a full blown montage. Time and content permitting we settled on just 14. In hindsight 40 would have been too many and the minor destinations a waste of time. Just like choosing yogurt at the supermarket has become a chore, due to choice, so would have navigating the site.
Gullible
I posted my own message on Craig's List above the "official" one to try and fool people playing the Mission Impossible 3 Hunt game. Mine looks more offical as I posted the image in the message.
It seems to have worked as I have received around 12 emails so far. hehe it was too easy to resist.
March 06, 2006: March 6, 2006
Happy Mardi Gras.
That's his belt people not his man sausage.
I love Mardi Gras time as you can practically take a photo of anyone no matter how fucked up they are and just say "Happy Mardi Gras" and they don't care. Here is a few of the photos I took on the night.