We turned over a quick project early last week for TG Woodware.

Following on from the demonstration videos and Kitchen Factory video, we produced a Christmas Message on their behalf, with some animated tea cosies.

The back story, incidentally, is that T&G have a range of Farmyard Animal tea cosies.  The Cow tea cosy is being discontinued and redesigned as people think it’s actually a monkey…

We recorded this “Creature Comforts” style.  A few of the lines were scripted, the rest of them were made by basically having ordinary people talking in their normal voices answering questions that I asked them about their lives.  The result is quite funny, and I’m hoping we can make some more next year.

It’s a nice little Christmas message!  And a quick, fun project.

Labels: Blog, News, Video Production

3:29 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Chaos Created is pleased to announce the roll-out of a YouTube video channel for Portishead-based company, T&G Woodware.

T&G Woodware, a specialist in the housewares industry, recently relaunched its web site at http://www.tg-woodware.com and asked Chaos Created to develop content for a video channel.

The channel, which is now live on YouTube, features mostly product demonstration videos for T&G’s range of products, including chopping boards, cork, CrushGrind Mills and more.   We filmed these last month and featured Patrick Gardner, founder of T&G Woodware, and Jenny Handley, head of marketing.

We’re hoping to bring more videos to the channel next year.

T&G also asked us to produce a couple of “fun” videos too.  We’ll be launching the second of these next week, but the first one is live today.

We asked chef, Grendel Bessell, to knock up a three course meal, to rhythm in a video called Kitchen Factory.  We filmed this down at Rookery Manor last month.

The video is embedded below.

We hope you enjoy.

The rest of the videos can be found on T&G’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TGWOODWARE or through the links on their web site at http://www.tg-woodware.com.

About T&G Woodware

T&G Woodware was formed in 1975 by Patrick Gardner as a means to provide cash while operating as a Sales Agent in the Housewares Industry, this was to pay day to day expenses as some of the companies represented could take 4 months credit on the due commission.

Patrick spotted a big gap in the market for quality woodware products which we were able to fill. Reliability and imagination paid dividends with many firsts in the industry including care and protection for chopping boards, lifetime guarantee for pepper and salt mills. T&G were also responsible for renaming “rubberwood”, the popular wood for furniture and kitchenware as “Hevea” a shortened version of the latin name hevea braziliensis.

T&G prides itself on well designed, quality products that will stand the test of time. How about a chopping board as an heirloom or a T&G CrushGrind® peppermill.

T&G offers over 650 products within its portfolio with a variety of materials FSC beech, hevea, acacia, ceramic, marble, cork, bamboo and of course the successful CrushGrind® Salt and Pepper Mills.

Labels: Blog, News, Video Production

12:34 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Our first mobile app has been released.

The Death Clock for Windows Phones is a fun new application.  Simply answer a series of questions and discover how you can cheat death.   It’s a great app for passing around to your friends.

The app is available on the Windows Phone Marketplace on all Windows Mobile 6.5 devices (and coming soon for 6.0 and 6.1 phones) for the price of £1.69 ($1.99).

For more details, check out the Death Clock product page.

Labels: Blog, Mobile Apps, News, Software, Windows Phone

10:10 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

We’re in the middle of a bit of a redesign here at Chaos Created.

We’ve been super-busy over the past few months, as we’ve finished work on two feature films (due for release in early 2010), and we’ve been focussing on app development for mobile devices, as well as working on some fantastic new web-based projects.

So we’ve given the site a fresh lick of paint and we’re in the middle of reorganising our content too.  Apologies if there’s a bit of broken content, that should be sorted within the next few days.

We’re focussing on making the site a lot cleaner and making the content far easier to find.  We’re also adding a focus on our app development…  We’ve unveiled out first Windows Phone application this week, the Death Clock, and we’ll have more to announce shortly!

Labels: Blog, News

9:52 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Reviews are like busses.

There’s a second review up now on At The Movies with Lim Chang Moh - the online version of movie reviews formerly published in The Malay Mail, arguably the longest running weekly column in Malaysia. The writer was Production Editor of The Malay Mail before retiring in 2006. He now contributes articles to magazines and does free-lance projects.

Have a read as to what he thinks about 5:13…

One thing we can all appreciate about Abraham's direction is that he does not rely on cheap thrills like sudden loud noises or creaking doors to jolt us. Instead, he carefully shapes the mood and atmosphere so that we can scare ourselves. The whole movie is shot (by Luke Yerbury) in minimal lighting, heightening our sense of dread and foreboding. As we accompany Viv and Ash at the semi-furnished house, we keep expecting demons and other untold evil to break through the door and wreak havoc.

Read the whole review here.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, News

7:38 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

The first review is now in for 5:13, the horror film that we edited on earlier this year, which is due for release in early 2010.

Abraham’s sophomore feature is a curious blend of politically-minded domestic drama and paranoid invasion flick. It’s not an overtly obvious coupling, but at times it works surprisingly well.

The review has appeared on IndieFlicks and is largely positive.

Have a read here.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, News

10:57 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Microsoft Tag’s Blog has mentioned our forthcoming horror film, 5:13.

5:13 a thriller movie slated to release in 2010 just implemented Microsoft Tag in their movie poster. Highlighted in yellow bellow, the Microsoft Tag can be snapped allowing the public at large to gain access to mobile content, including mobile trailers and downloads.

Using Microsoft Tag on printed materials creates the opportunity for indie and corporate movie companies to increase the ROI on their print marketing efforts. With Microsoft Tag print advertising can now serve as a real life portal to the online world. Keep an eye out for Microsoft Tag on other print material in your area and for the release of 5:13.

Read the whole article here.

You can read about our experience with using Microsoft Tag here.  We believe it’s going to be a fantastic way to deliver our mobile content to nearly all internet capable mobile phones.

And, whilst we have your attention, feel free to “give the tag a go” – just download the app from http://gettag.mobi and point your phone at our tag (above)!

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, News

9:08 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

It’s been a very busy few months here at Chaos Created.  Most of our work has been focussed on a couple of unannounced projects (more on that soon) and finishing up editing on horror thriller movie, 5:13, and the other movie, The Joshua Tapes.

Both films are slated for release early 2010, and Chaos Created has been responsible for post production (editing and sound design).

Yesterday, work was finished on the official film poster.  The film is slated for release in Malaysia first, but it’s also been submitted for London Fright Fest and will be submitted for London Film Festival soon, so we hope that you’ll get a chance to see it!

Here’s the official poster, designed by Luke Yerbury, with photography from Matthew Ong

The official web site will be launching soon.  We’re just waiting on approval of the trailer, and we’ll be good to go.

We’re also using Microsoft Tag to distribute out mobile content, including mobile trailers and downloads.  It’s a fantastic bit of technology that allows users to ‘snap’ the tag using their mobile phone (actually, on most devices, you don’t even need to snap, the moment the application sees a tag, it’ll send users on their way to the content), and automatically be redirected to our mobile content (dynamically).  Not only does it work on most phones (pretty much any phone that can accept applications and has a browser – i.e. nearly all new phones) but the responsiveness is amazing…  Out of focus, no problem…  Too close/too far? No problem.

Tags can tie into mapping services, video, web sites, or simply pop up a message.

We’re even now beginning to think of ways we could use tags…  Take a look at one of our past projects, Gridsearch.  This is an area in which Tags would be very useful.

Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/tag for more information on the technology.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, News

3:22 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

Ok, the title of the post sounds a little daunting, but after a long slog of several months of late nights and work-filled-weekends, The Joshua Tapes is nearly done.

Last year, Perantauan Pictures, with Befour, filmed two feature-length movies back-to-back.  The first, 5:13, is a horror film and the second film, The Joshua Tapes is a drama/comedy/road trip film (I find it hard to describe it more concisely than that).

Due to the scheduling, The Joshua Tapes needed to be the first completed so, I ditched (for now) the editing on 5:13 in order to complete TJT.

The movie, shot in HD, was edited entirely in Sony Vegas Pro which has been a joy to work with.  I say that having had so many issues with other editing suites when I started on 5:13, also an HD film (Heck, Premiere lost me three weeks of work…).  Vegas has literally let me edit in HD, in full resolution or close to it, with real time previews.  It’s been great.  No rendering of clips in between previews, and no reduced-resolution clips on my timeline and output monitor.  I’m also running Windows 7 (beta, of course) which literally flies on this system (which has a nice 4GB of RAM), and a dual monitor set-up too.

The only draw back (with Vegas) has been that the film has had to be split down into four chunks (as it seems to become a little wobbly when you get past the 1GB memory usage) but, to be honest, it’s made the whole project more manageable as we’ve been able to concentrate tasks on a specific quarter per day/weekend, deepening on the task in hand.

The edit itself has been fairly smooth.  There were a few issues with missing clips during the shoot, but the assembly cut, otherwise, was fairly straight forward.

I prefer, when the audio is recorded separately, as was the case here (as opposed to recording to the camera) to do the picture edit first, and then do a second run through syncing all the sound.  So my assembly cut used the camera sound.

My second loop around, assembling the sound, was where things got a little trickier.  A huge amount of the film was set in a car.  The problem is that the car chosen (A Pajero) is the nosiest beast you could imagine – and I mean, the living room, two floors beneath my office, literally shakes when the volumes turned up, and it couldn't be towed for a couple of reasons, mainly due to the costs incurred in Malaysia where the movie was shot.  The sound, in itself, isn’t a huge deal as you play through one take, and one angle, but it became suddenly very jarring as we cut between the actors in the same scene, as gears change and engine noises altered.

Anyway, it became a point of altering the audio in each shot, and we got around it the best we could by merging the audio into one file the best I could, using cross fades in the sound, and picking opportune moments to switch between tracks.  Then in was a case of externally filtering the audio to produce three tracks.  One, just base, to give a constant engine rumbling, the original file altered if necessary, and a track with as much bass as possible removed.  Then, it’s back to Vegas to play with the levels some more.

Am I happy with it?  I think that it’s something I’m pedantic about and still a bit shaky on, but it’s not as noticeable when played out on a TV in 5.1, and maybe I’m only noticing it because I’m aware of what the problems are…  I think it would have been easier if The Joshua Tapes was about three guys on a bicycle ride, but I’ll learn to live with it.

Being HD, it’s taken 2 days to render the whole film out, and it’s off to the director, Arivind Abraham, tonight for him to pick through and highlight any glaring errors or omissions.  I’m pretty confident in the cut we have as Arivind’s been here most weekends, overseeing the process, which has been useful, obviously to get his take on the film, but also to stop me from going crazy with cabin fever.  Which happened anyway.

Then, if we’re happy, the render’s on it’s way, later this week, to Luke Yerbury for colour treatment.

And the verdict on the film itself.  After, I suppose, 5 months worth of work, I can still sit back and enjoy the movie.  Sure, there’s scenes I’ve seen a thousand times, and there’s lines I can’t possibly stand to hear again because they’ve given me so much bother, but at the end of the day, it’s a great film.  Sweet, smart and well paced.

I’m looking forward to everyone being able to see it soon.

But, yeah, bike movie next time guys!

I’ll blog a little more about some specifics of the process once I’ve had a couple of days to recover.

Labels: Blog, Films, The Joshua Tapes

8:06 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

We went live last week with a whole bunch of new Geography games for i-board.  These activities are designed for use in Year 1, but are useful for Reception and Year 2 as well.

View Full Album

Activity Pictogram
Follow up a survey by recording favourite leisure activities as a pictogram.

Activity Survey
Make a printable survey. Type a title and choose icons, or type a title, for each choice.

Fix Up The Park
Be kind to the environment...what changes can you make to improve this place? How can you stop your local place getting nasty!

Going To School, I See…
On your way to school, what do you see? Tell a simple tale of a journey by using the items in the menu at the bottom of the screen to make a rolling scene.

Shopkeepers
Who works near where you live? Dress the workers outside their place of work or shop.

What Is Nice
What do you think of this place? Drag the happy or sad faces to label the scene.

To check them out, take a look at http://www.iboard.co.uk and sign up.  Or, take a look at http://sample.iboard.co.uk/ for a sample selection of i-board resources.

Labels: Blog, News, Software

12:45 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Another of our web projects went live over the weekend.

ArivindAbraham.com is the home to, funnily enough, Arivind Abraham – a writer and director, based in London.  He’s actually the writer/director for the two film projects I’m currently editing on though Chaos Created/Befour, 5:13 and The Joshua Tapes.

The web site, itself, was a bit of a challenge and we’ve incorporated Flash and Silverlight (tied together with a bit of JavaScript) to deliver trailers and film content in high definition.  And we’ve made the most of social networking, bringing together a blog, Twitter, Linked In, Flickr, Windows Live, Friendfeed and 12 Seconds to make the most of social networking. We’ll be adding to these in the coming months, to build a bit of a community, and we’ll pick up some traction as we go into marketing the forthcoming movies too.

Anyway, be sure to check it out.  There’s also a lot of content on there, particularly on the Blog, as to the work that’s progressing on both 5:13 and The Joshua Tapes.

Visit the site

Labels: Blog, News, Web Design

12:15 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Today, i-board is launching a new “player” for its online educational content.

The new player replaces the old web-page based system with a new Flash interface that allows easy browsing (and searching) of all the interactive content we’ve produced over the last few years, including the Numeracy project which I’ve been working on over the last year or so.

The player allows iTunes-like purchasing and Zune-like subscriptions to individual activities, packs of activities, or entire subject areas.

The player is being revealed today at BETT (I’m hoping to get along later in the week) and can be previewed live today at http://player.iboard.co.uk/player/

Whilst you’re there, highlights of work that I’ve been producing for iBoard, through Chaos Created, over the last few years include Chicken Catapult, the NGFL Cymru sectionand the majority of the Numeracy area.  Have fun!

The content, although designed with interactive whiteboards in mind, works just as well with a PC and mouse.

Labels: Blog, News, Numeracy by i-board, Software

1:59 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

The second of our recent “Online Store” projects has just gone live (the first being iCandy Gifts, which we’ve just spruced up for Valentines Day), redeveloping Stoned Boutique’s web site.

We were brought it to redevelop Stoned Boutique’s online store to make it searchable, introduce categories, and make the whole site user friendly – for example, making new items easier to find, and highlighting promotions and sale items.  Their old online store was maintained by their designer, which meant they had to pay their previous company for each update (including the addition or modification of new items of clothing).

Our new online store for Stoned Boutique allows them to update the site themselves, as their stock changes and they bring in new designs, and they’re using the system as a reliable way to maintain stock levels too for when they sell offline.

Style wise, we wanted something eye catching and recognisable, and also something which we can develop into a brand that we can incorporate into their Flash portfolio site which should be launching in February.

The web site can be found at http://www.stonedboutique.com – take a look!

Labels: Blog, News, Web Design

4:16 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

We ended up with an interesting little side project last weekend whilst cutting together a feature film we’re currently editing. 

Coldplay have launched a competition, inviting individuals and amateur film makers to create a music video for the acoustic version of “Lost?” from their latest album.

Rather ironically, it was the song that Arivind Abraham, the director, wanted to use over the final sequence of the film.  Whilst looking up details regarding the rights to using the song, he came across the competition.  So, last weekend, as we laid down the final scenes in the rough cut of the film, we cut together a music video as our entry.  It works (scarily) well.  It’s basically the final scene from the movie, cut back by about a minute, and edited to fit the timing and pace of the track better and it’s beautiful.  Editing it together, it was near magical just how well the song fits the content and context of the sequence and it seems to work out of context just as well.

You can watch it below.  If you like it, please feel free to rate it, and add it to your favourites.  And hopefully, it’ll do well against the competition.  Incidentally, I get the feeling that maybe somebody is trying to rig the competition seeing as all the “finalists” appear to have one star but, apparently, it’s the band themselves that will have the final say.

Enjoy!

Rate the video here

Labels: Blog, Films

4:30 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

I’ve spent the last couple of days cutting the trailer for 5:13 with director, Arivind Abraham.

The one thing that actually really annoys me about trailers, in general, is how much they tend to give away.  It’s at the point now where I actually AVOID trailers as much as possible.  Especially when it comes down to scary films – I want to go and see a film and jump at the scary parts.  I want to be surprised.  I don’t want to sit there and know what’s coming up.  I want to experience the film with the characters.

Examples of decent marketing campaigns would be Taken and Cloverfield.  Taken’s trailers tended not to feature anything that happened outside the first 20 minutes of the film (for the most part, they featured just the phone conversation between Liam Neeson and the kidnappers).  Cloverfield was pretty much a teaser campaign – going into the cinema, I didn’t know what the ‘event’ was.

I think it’s been several years since anybody’s gone to see a film solely for the special effects.  That might have washed a few years ago with Jurassic Park, but I think the audiences are (more than) aware that great visuals don’t guarantee a knock out film.  That’s sort of why I don’t understand it when film makers fill trailers with all of the killer moments from the film.  I mean, sometimes trailers are treated like a “3 minute version” of a film.  And that’s bad.

So, going into the 5:13 trailer edit, the idea was to make the audience want to go see the movie.  We didn’t want to give away the story, we didn’t want to blow the “jumpy bits” in a trailer.  The goal was to present a minute-or-so teaser that leaves the audience wanting more.

Trailer to follow soon.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films

1:34 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

It’s been crazy busy on the Chaos Created front over the past few weeks, and there’s lots of exciting projects in the pipe line.

We’re cutting the trailer for 5:13 over the weekend.  I was hoping to have some video blogs for you on this one, but there’s been all sorts of issues with codecs, editing software and formats, that it’s been a little bit crazy.  I’ll blog on this at some point in the near future, but I guess the down side of using the latest technology is that you’re often in uncharted waters – that’s certainly been the case here, with all sorts of issues early on in the edit, typically regarding brand new camera, the format they output to, incompatibility between PCs and Macs, codecs, how editing software handles file formats…  You name it, we’ve come across it.  And of course, using the latest technology means that there’s very little documentation out there (even on the interweb).

The end result is that we’re using a Sony Vegas suite now, and the edit is running smoothly at long last.  In fact, we’re about two scenes away from having the first rough cut of the film (minus sound treatment), which is pretty exciting.

Sony Vegas itself is rather new (relatively speaking), and certainly not nearly as well known as, say, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere and Avid.  But, rather oddly, it’s the only suite that’s been capable of handling what we’re throwing at it.  It’s audio facilities, incidentally, outclass any editing suite I’ve come across, which – seeing as we’re working on a horror film, warrants its usage alone.  It’s also creeping its way up the Hollywood ladder at the moment.  For me, the way it has allowed me to cut in HD without the need for rendering, and to run with such a smooth frame rate on an external monitor, has been a treat.

The edit on the Joshua Tapes will be starting the week after next, so hopefully, now that we’ve ironed out the teething problems with 5:13, there should be a bit more time on The Joshua Tapes to write about the processes involved.

Anyway, expect the trailers on both films within the next few weeks.  The marketing is being discussed at the moment – I think the plan is to launch the viral sites very early next year.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, The Joshua Tapes

1:43 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

…We went live with some web sites over the weekend.

First up is iCandy, which was formerly Accent on Hair and Beauty.  iCandy is a beauty salon and spa in Bristol, UK.  iCandy is one of our longest-standing clients and wanted a revamp to reflect the new direction and rebranding of the salon, and also introduce an online store (which will be added to the site in October).

The biggest challenge was to present a whole bucket load of information (see the text only version for the sheer amount of text involved with such a site) without being overwhelming.  We achieved this by building the site in Flash and using pop-ups to present the information, with images.  Using Flash also allows us to build a site which looks “alive” and highlight some beautiful images.

The second site is the new web site for The Pineapple, a bar and entertainment venue in Bristol, England.  The site was interesting as we needed to build in the ability for the management to update the events diary, the news stream and also a photo gallery.  And, we needed to do this on a small budget.

We turned to a few open source options, and embedded them through RSS.  The photo galleries are built using Silverlight 2.0, and pulling in photos from an RSS feed. 

The end result is a constantly changing web site, highlighting the weekly events and, through the photo wall, highlight the fun atmosphere of The Pineapple.  And everything can be updated by the management.

Labels: Blog, Web Design

2:53 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

In the interests of finding bugs and gaining some feedback from those in the education sector, i-board Numeracy, a project I’ve been working on for the past 10 months or so, has entered public beta until October.

If you’re a teachers, teaching Reception, year one or year two in UK schools, you’ll find activities to match all of the objectives in the Maths curriculum.  Feel free to give it a go, and use the feedback to report any bugs, or to suggest new activities.

…And if you’re not a teacher and just fancy killing time, be sure to check out Chicken Catapult.

http://mathsdb.iboard.co.uk/

Labels: Blog, Numeracy by i-board, Software

3:17 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

We’ve gone live with a web site for nursing home, Annabel House, in Weston Super Mare.

The challenge here was to create a web site that was easy to use and clean, whilst presenting a nursing home, specialising in dementia, as desirable.

http://www.annabelhouse.co.uk

Labels: Blog, Web Design

3:12 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Finally, those chickens are getting some recognition!

I was playing on the iboard site tonight and came across this brilliant activity in the maths trial Pack. First of all the name appealed, but then came the visuals. Picture three chickens, a stack of weights and a catapult! What to do? What to do? A serious Homer Moment arose, but with an inevitable outcome. As I expect any self respecting student would do, I put as many weights as possible on the trap door, loosed these on the catapult and then sat back as each chicken was thrust skyward beyond their roosts before, slowly drifting back to mother earth assisted by a parachute.

Putting aside for a moment the humour and obvious fun I had, my initial free and semi structured play engaged me in a series of trial and refinement processes, as I visually evaluated the effect that the simulated masses had on the catapult and its ability to raise the chickens to their roosts. Further play and I found myself estimating what masses would be needed to lift each.

Perhaps I am only 7 at heart rather than a multiple of... but I loved it!

From ICT Inspirations Blog.

This is still one of my favourite i-board activities I've developed (not including the Big Day Out stuff I'm working on at the moment) - Sara and I had great fun with this one (and the Woodlands Disco and Dance Moves of course!).

Labels: Blog, Software

1:48 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Nothing Mika related here, just a cartoon which sums up my life at the minute...

(Click to enlarge)

Mega busy with work this week....  Days are being spent programming and project managing Big Day Out for the London Grid for Learning.  Evenings are being spent developing a web site for a nursing home and adding the final touches to a new web site and online store for a salon in Bristol, whilst getting ready to get stuck into editing 5:13 next week.

Somebody bring me coffee.  Please.

Labels: Blog, Random

1:18 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

5:13, the film that we are currently editing on, is now available in Teaser Trailer form.  The trailer doesn't give much away about the story, rather it demonstrates the style and the claustrophobia that the film conveys.  Having broken ground on the edit this week (video blogs coming soon), I'm looking forward to getting stuck in, as there's a really great script and some fantastic work behind it already and, obviously, I'm a big horror movie fan.

Embedded trailer below...

You can also view the video in magical Silverlight high(er) definition at:
http://befour.co.uk/513/

You can also catch the video in the following places, where video blogs, etc, will follow:
YouTube
MSN Video

Be sure to pass the link around, and if you fancy sharing the video on your own web sites, the embed code is included on both the MSN Video and YouTube versions.

Or, for Facebook fans, click below to share the trailer with your loved ones...

Share (the 5:13 Teaser Page)

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films, News

6:23 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Labels: Big Day Out by i-board, Blog, Climate Change Project, Numeracy by i-board, Software

12:21 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

More of a heads up than a grand announcement, but we're cracking on with two new products at the moment of our own.  The first is Melloweh which has been in stasis for a little while and in some form of development since 2004.

Melloweh actually won a runner up prize for multimedia, awarded by HP, back in 2005 for its demo.  The original demo was built using the Creatures Evolution Engine, developed by Creature Labs/Gameware and combined an artificial life game with a narrative and level based play.  I'll get around to posting the development diaries for the demo in good time, but one of the most interesting aspects was that we actually built the models for the world (constructed by Carla, who is now working as a set designer on film and television) in which the creatures, a  bug species, lived.  We then photographed them and combined them with some CG elements (including the creatures themselves).  The idea was interesting, and worked well.  Steve Grand and Ian Saunter did the same for the original Creatures game, for anybody here that played those games.

Since then, up until early 2008, the project was pretty much on hold (aside from the occasional dabble) as we've been busy working on other things, but we've got going again on the project recently (and made contact with those responsible for the original demo).

The second game (which may actually arrive slightly earlier than Melloweh, and is actually less of a game) will be a spin off, using the same technology, but aimed at a different audience and I'll post more on this soon.

We're using a different "engine" this time around (which is more flexible for us, and also extends the capabilities as to what we can do), so there's been a bit of a "from scratch" element to it, but it's coming along nicely, and we'll be ready for a release later this year on both products.

The idea being that the development for both products will be treated as one product for the next few months, and then they will spin off in different directions once the framework and AI is complete as both projects are very closely linked.

But for those that are interested, there is still an AL (artificial life) element to it.  In fact, the last few months have been spent working on the 'brain' and the results are pretty impressive so far.  And we've started knocking about some of the internet aspects of the game too.

The art will come later on.  At the minute, the graphics are all placeholders (in fact, for the most part, we're using the original model photographs and graphics from the demo as those placeholders).

Anyway, there will be more information to follow.  Obviously, there's not much to give away at the moment as most of the work, to date, has been on the back-end stuff, but I'll blog about the "brain" and the guts of the games shortly.

Labels: Blog, Claspet, Melloweh, Software

2:22 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Sam came down last week and dropped off a batch of her infamous brownies as a thank you for maintaining her web site.

A swear these are the best tasting brownies I have ever had.  The batch only lasted around 7 hours with my housemates around.

Further verification of their tastiness - the last time Sam made me some, I was in London cutting the 5:13 trailer.  Whilst we were editing, a squirrel came through the window and took one straight from the cooling tray.  Lucky thing.

Labels: Blog, Random

10:02 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

When working on i-board and Big Day Out activities, the process is that the programmer normally does most of the work before the activity goes across to the artist, and then it comes back for final tweaking.  So I normally mock up some 'cheap' graphics whilst I'm programming to work with until Stuart or Jack work their magic.  Sometimes, I'll grab some placeholders from Google, and sometimes I'll just draw some stick men...  Anything else just looks demented, as is the case of my mutant cows for a farm simulation I'm working on...

They're almost scary.  Thankfully, they look a whole heap better when they come back from the artists....

Labels: Big Day Out by i-board, Blog, Software

4:23 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

A few details have been released via a cast advert for the first of the two feature films that Chaos Created will be editing this year.

Perantauan Pictures and Befour Media UK, the team behind S'kali are now casting for their new feature-length horror/drama, written by Arivind Abraham and Keith Leong and to be directed by the former.

The film now has a name, 5:13, and I received an almost-final draft of the script last week and I think it's going to turn out to be a great film.  It has a far more universal appeal than S'kali and horror/thriller films from smaller film companies seem to be doing rather well as of late.

The film begins shooting on 5th May.

Labels: 5:13, Blog, Films

4:52 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Welcome to the new Chaos Created blog, with background information, development diaries and more.

The intention is to keep a running diary of some of our more interesting work, and gather opinions on some of our forthcoming projects.

We'll also, from time to time, no doubt get distracted by some of the things on the web.

For the daily kicks, check out our microblog over in our labs - that's the day to day thoughts and updates, powered by Twitter.  This blog will be for news announcements, and longer, more detailed posts about the projects we are working on.

Labels: Blog, Random

3:13 AM 0 Comments Links to this post