Wii

I had just about given up on finding a Wii when on a whim I stopped at a ShopKo (I never go there) and they actually had some. My kids spent the first evening making Mii's. I was amazed at sense of realism in driving a golf ball, hitting a baseball, and bowling. Nintendo did a great job. My 4-year-old found it totally intuitive. It is a fine piece of language agnostic user interface design.

Captain Sticky

Our Richter7 Halloween party was fun again this year. I decided to put a costume together 2 hours before. The costume? - at Richter7 we get a pink stickynote on our door every day that we dont fill out our timesheet on time. Captain sticky is an homage to all those who are slackers.

Halo 3 Awesome

The good: Just like the old Halos but high resolution and noticeably smarter and more numerous enemies. Really really awesome. Not that violent - should be T rated - my kids play it with me.

The bad: The menus are poorly designed - almost like they user tested the game really well, but nobody bothered to test the menus. Its pretty hard to figure out how to set up a local multiplayer game.

Flash Forward - Day 3

The first session by Seb Lee-Delisle was "particular"ly good. He showed some amazingly simple AS3 particle classes. He had the audience submit particle effects and he showed one of mine and had me come to the microphone and explain how I did it. This session was very valuable.

Next I attended the Papervision3d session. It was presented by Carlos Ulloa who was the creator of the engine. I met him the night before after he beat me in the awards competition and he was very gracious. His presentation was rather disappointing. Instead of showing how to get started with his engine, he instead gave a sales pitch on how great it was.

The next session was SEO for Flash which was pretty lame - he actually had the nerve to bash Flash in front of the all-Flash participants. Some of the info was ok, but mostly extremely biased against Flash. His name doesnt even merit mention.

The last session was given by Eric Natzke who loves to do art with Flash. His work is amazing, but I wish he would have showed less of it and more practical stuff. He did show us a little of his process which includes a few Flash physics prototypes which gradually become a working banner ad. One thing that was interesting was that his banners are designed in such a way that one Flash file can be used for any banner size no matter how it is scaled. He also had built-in hidden scrubbers to scrub through the animations.

All in all, a great conference. I had a number of meals with Curtis Morley, who is a collegue of mine. He taught me a lot about AS3. Thanks again Curtis. He blogged a lot about the conference here.

Flash Forward - Day 2 - Afternoon

Craig Swann gave a very interesting presentation where he hooked up a Wii controller to Flash. He also used a Momome and a homemade electronic pallette via USB to connect to Flash.

The next speaker was Samuel Rivello who spoke a lot about optimization in Flash. He showed how to get TONS of performance out of Flash using a technique called "Blitting" of "double buffering" which essentially paints stuff into a bitmap off stage then shows the bitmap. It was amazing and will help a lot with game performance. He will be doing an online seminar on Adobe.com on Nov. 6th.

In the evening we took the subway to Hard Rock Cafe. It was a lot of fun.

Flash Forward - Day 2 - Multi-user Multi-touch TableTop

Michelle Yaiser from MERL gave a visionary presentation using DiamondTouch which is a multi user, multifinger table and chairs that is multitouch. Sitting on special seats, your fingers complete the circuit. It comes with a Flash API that is very robust. I got to see into the future here.

Flash Forward - Day 2 - Morning Presentations

Still bummed about last night - lost to Papervision3D. But they treated all the Flash Film Festival finalists like rock stars. Afterwards I spoke to the guy in charge and he said that my Nitro Circus was chosen among 2000 applicants just in that category. I went to dinner with the guys at Red Interactive then came back to my room and watched Wild Hogs that I rented at Red Box - good movie. Also ate too many Blue Diamond almonds.

This morning I got some great Flash game optimization tips from Jay Laird. He had a lot of really clever techniques to really optimize Flash performance. His new site will be http://www.flashhatesyou.com/ (soon to launch). The site will be all about Flash optimization.

The next session was Mike Summers from http://www.kickapps.com/ . He spoke about the many dimensions of social media. His platform seems very useful. It is a way to add common widgets to a site (upload photo, video thumbnails, etc.). Looks very useful. He highly recommended watching the first Internet conference. He mentioned a very interesting concept called hyper-local which means neighborhood level web apps.

I ran into Curtis Morley and we are going to go to lunch. It was good to see him again.

Flash Forward - Day 1 - Afternoon Presentations

I attend three sessions this afternoon. The first was a bunch of lame Flash production magic tricks. I learned a few things, but it wasn't really the best session.

The next two sessions dealt with a new world that I never knew about -- hand-drawn animation in Flash. The first guy was a Disney Online animator named Sandro Corsaro. He presented a number of great animation principles: Persistence of vision (the human eye fills in the tweens), anticipation (which means you squat before a jump so the viewer knows it is about to happen), exaggeration is everywhere in animation, Dont overtween - very few flash tweens are used - its all about keyframing and onionskinning, and a lot more. It was fascinating to see him use his Wacom tablet to draw and clean up right in Flash - sort of takes the mystery out of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. He described drawing in Flash like pulling lines with clay. He dragged beziers around to shape them how he wanted them to look. He mentioned that the eyes are the most important element in a characters personality.

The next guy named Aaron Simpson gave a very similar presentation that was equally inspiring. Some key notes: "write what you know", "the web can waste a lot of time if you let it - be careful not to waste your time away in front of the web." He profiled a number of successful Flash animators. It makes me want to start drawing again. I am for sure going out to buy a Wacom.

Flash Forward - Day 1 - Intro to AS3

This is a day long to be remembered. I am no longer afraid of AS3 (okay, maybe still a little). Rich Shupe gave an EXCELLENT introduction to AS3. He went over all the fear points one at a time - sort of like a therapy session. AS3, while more verbose in almost every case, is a much better way to program. Now I just need some small projects to practice on. The Display List is still confusing to me. What really blew me away was the new Sound capabilities. He created an iTunes style visualizer with a very small amount of code. So I'm going to dive in. Boing, boing, boing, splash!

Flash Forward - Day 1 - Keynote

There are a ton of people here. The conference is sold out. Kevin Lynch from Adobe just gave the keynote. There was a free copy of Essentials of ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock on every chair plus a cd containing Adobe Air beta. Kevin covered: New features in Adobe Flash player (E4X was interesting), HBO Voyeur, a number of Adobe AIR apps, announced that the video codec H.264 will soon be in the Flash player, and showed how Adobe keeps making their player faster. A guy next to me from San Diego showed me how to take a picture with my iphone and send it to Flickr.

Boston Flash Forward Conference

I'm here. This is the view from my room and thats the Atlantic in the distance. I am right downtown at the Marriott Copley Place. Just found out that WolfPeak.net will be site of the week on Communication Arts home page. Wow - I was shocked. I'm starving - gonna go get food and get my registration packet.

Pixel Awards Nominee!

Nitro Circus has just won an nomination for the Pixel Awards! The competition is stiff but it is great to be in such good company.

iPhone from the Future

I know I just swore off Apple a few posts below, but I am cheating on my Vista PC with my new iPhone. I have been sneaking around surfing the web with real handheld browser, checking my email and taking great pictures. I can't believe that some people are out there bashing this device. It is truly amazing. Ra ra ra! Go Apple! I think my PC is suspecting something - gotta go.

The Von Maxwell Family Singers

I went way out of my comfort zone on this one. I have been taking Speech Level Singing lessons for a few months and a few nights ago was my first recital. I sang Round Here by the Counting Crows in an ampitheater at Wheeler Farm. It was a rush - I did pretty well considering I have never been a singer. My relatives (also shown but smaller because this blog is about ME) also did well - much better than me by a mile.

Afternoon with Travis Pastrana

Working on nitrocircus.com has been a blast. They are the best clients ever and there are a few perks. The most recent one was spending the afternoon with the Nitro Circus crew and Travis Pastrana. I was a little freaked out first meeting him, but after a few minutes I felt more comfortable because he is such a nice guy. We were doing a green screen shoot for his upcoming biographical film. I got to watch him for about 4 hours as they shot different green screen scenes and angles. He is a very good ad libber. I told him I thought he was good at it and I think he thought I was just kissing up. He sat by me for a while and I showed him my designs for a new site I am doing for them and he was very complimentary and genuinely interested. Also, a funny thing happened during the shoot. A cricket kept chirping on the soundstage that we were shooting in. I became the "cricket wrangler", walking around between takes clapping my hands trying to spook the cricket into submission. The reason I was there was to have Travis do a favor for me - I asked him to shoot soundbite for my upcoming Flashforward Film Festival Trailer. He did a great job heckling the other nominees - Travis style. The guy has class.

New Blog for My 3D Engine

Have you seen http://www.nitrocircus.com and wondered how I did the 3D effects? Well, have I got a blog for you! http://mattmaxwell3dengine.blogspot.com. I will be adding to it as time progresses. Check it out!

Flash Forward Nominee: NitroCircus.com!

The good news: My nitrocircus.com site and 3D engine is one of four finalists at FlashForward Boston! The bad news: I am up against Papervision3D. Papervision3D is an opensource 3D engine for Flash that is very powerful, has lots of support, and is very popular. I wish they would have put Papervision in the Technical Merit category, but that's life. And I still haven't seen too many implementations of PaperVision. Just a shark that swims around with nothing to click on. Still, it's an honor to go up against it. Please vote for NitroCircus (even though Papervision probably deserves it more - sort of David and Goliath here)

Richter7 Rumble Hardware

I designed the website component for a campaign (Richter7 Rumble) that won a national Gold Addy award. The inscription says:

2007 Gold Addy Award
Presented to Richter7
Self Promotion National Campaign
For Richter7, Richter7 Rumble Campaign

Nitro Circus Awards

Nitro Circus has far exceeded my expectations. So far it has been featured on 9 Flash award site home pages and was actually #16 last week on DesignCharts.com. What really makes this nice is that I just got an email from Adobe telling me that they have awarded it Site of the Day! This will appear on Adobe.com's home page and will then live in their archives forever. Thanks to Hugh and Jeremy for letting me work on this awesome project.

nitrocircus.com launches

I just launched something that I have been living and breathing for the last 2 months. This revolutionary Flash 3D engine and web site (www.nitrocircus.com) allows Flash elements to move naturally for the first time in 3D space. It uses a true 3D calculation engine for positioning and sizing of elements and it even includes distance-based illumination which adds to the illusion of depth. Every corner of this site is handcrafted to capture the quirky reckless rawness of the Nitro Circus brand and its unusual, colorful personalities (you have to see their DVDs to understand this site). The center of attention is Travis Pastrana, a superstar in the motocross and extreme sports world. He's the only guy in history to ever land a double back flip on a motorcycle. I went way over budget on this and enjoyed every minute of it.

Break Free Vocal Studio

My wife has been taking Speech Level Singing for over a year and has decided to start training to be certified SLS instructor. She has just christened a new studio complete with an amp, guitars, microphone, and keyboard. She will also be attending a 10 day SLS workshop in Los Angeles where she will rub shoulders with Seth Riggs (the inventor of this method) and other music industry greats. She has been asking me to prepare a logo for her venture for some time and I finally completed it. I am also her first student. I have been studying for a few months now and it is amazing how my voice has improved. I have never been a good singer, but lately I am starting to think I could be.

Father 15

Just completed 15 years of being a father. This lovely noggin ornamentational embellishment was expertly crafted by one of my beloved offspring. Being a father is awesome. Very satisfying. My kids are growing up fast and I am getting more clueless as I get older, but they tell me that's normal.

Darth Hybrid

Well, I get 51 mpg now - and get to use the HOV lane. I got a 2007 Toyota Prius. Feels good to be environmentally responsible.

“Today will be a day long remembered. It has seen the death of Corolla, and will soon see the end of the Chevron.”

National 2007 Gold Addy Award

I was honored with a gold Addy at the national level! Jeremy Oviatt and I collaborated on this campaign which included posters and an online Flash invitation. As an agency we did really well:


Gina Bachauer newspaper campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Lehi Roller Mills Syrup Label Series Silver ADDY® Award
SonicScrubber Street Cleaner poster Silver ADDY® Award
Richter7 Rumble mixed media campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Gina Bachauer poster campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Hogle Zoo ''Kitty Litter'' Poster Silver ADDY® Award

To give a little perspective, there were only four other awards given to Utah agencies, and they were all silvers. Also, agencies in our district won a total of 16 awards (5 gold and 11 silvers). In addition (okay, now it sounds like we're just bragging), we beat out several nationally recognized agencies like Carmichael Lynch, DeVito/Verdi, Team One, Ogilvy & Mather, DDB, etc. And we also came dangerously close to giant creative powerhouses like BBDO, Arnold, Saatchi & Saatchi NY and Leo Burnett. So congratulations to all.

No Longer an Apple Disciple

Well, this may come to you all (the three or so people that read my blog) as a shock, but I sold all of my Macs and bought a PC. I have been a Mac follower 1983 when my dad bought an Apple Lisa. I got my first job using Mac SE-30s, and I have been a Mac faithful ever since - until recently. Here are my top ten reasons why I went to Windows:

1. I was needing a new computer recently and the new Mac I wanted was $2500. A PC notebook at Costco with the same specs was $950 - and included a free carrying case, an extra power supply, an extra cordless mouse and a two year warranty!

2. I realized that Steve Jobs is just a good salesman. I was under his spell. Things that he has claimed to be Mac firsts over the years were exaggerations.

3. PCs are faster. Flash is dog slow on Macs. The software that I use works better on PC.

4. I refuse to pay $130 for a Mac power supply and $50 for a Mighty Mouse that is beautiful but very hard to use.

5. All of the new features on OSX of late are just bells and whistles that I will never use (Time Machine, Widgets, etc.)

6. I AM TIRED OF BEING DIFFERENT! No matter how much Apple claims, Macs are NOT compatible with PCs. If you don't believe me, just try and format an external drive to work with both a Mac and a PC. Microsoft Office files, fonts, and a lot of other stuff open inaccurately on a Mac.

7. Vista is awesome! Everything works and it is much more user friendly that OSX. When you plug a monitor in for example, a nice screen comes up and visually shows you what you can do with that monitor - and it remembers the next time you connect it. No fiddling with the fuction key to get the monitor to work.

8. It links to my XBOX 360 - seamlessly - I immediately knew what to to and now I can see pictures and videos from my PC on my HDTV wirelessly.

9. I get to watch designers who are still under the Mac spell squirm and look down their noses at me like, "you poor apostate, how could you have forsaken Steve - you are no longer a real designer. Only real designers use Macs."

10. I can use all of the software and games that were not available for the Mac. The selection is enourmous.

My Claim to Fame

I made it into Time Magazine - sort of. My bald spot made it. My dad was lucky enough to turn his head when the picture was taken. Thanks, Mitt for this moment in the spotlight.

Adobe CS3

Just got CS3 in the mail and installed it in Vista and it is awesome. They have really improved the user interface of Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator. They are all very alike now and easier to use.

Flash CS3 is worth the upgrade cost alone. The palettes can be turned into a osX style dock of icons that collapse on the edge of the screen when not being used. The tools pallette can now be shown in one column instead of two. These two things recover about 40% of the screen real estate on my laptop. There is now a lot more room on the screen for the stage and timeline and I open the spring loaded pallettes as I need them then they spring back into icon form when I am done. There are tons of other enhancements that make using Flash 8 here at work excruciating.

The only thing that concerns me is that ActionScript 3.0 is very geeky now an a lot less intuitive for regular people. I understand why they did it, but I am afrait that they have geeked it so much that it will turn off designers. I personally am freaking out that it is now too elaborate and tedious for my brain power to handle - and I am a really proficiant ActionScripter.

Overall, CS3 is a very cohesive-feeling package. Adobe did a great job on this one.

Newpark Resort

We just launched our latest web site. This site was designed to promote Newpark Resort, which is a condo rental community and modern town center near Kimball Junction in Park City. The home page is an interactive introduction to the resort and there are some nice picture flipper flash modules in the Virtual Tour section.

Richter7 Medal Count

Saturday night's ADDY Awards went very well for Richter7. We won awards for 13 clients (the next nearest agencies tied with 5 each). We won 12 golds (the next nearest agencies tied with 8 each). We won 40 silvers (the next nearest agency received 21). And we received a total of 52 awards (the next nearest received 24 total). We also got a special judges award for the Gina Bachauer campaign.

We have a lot to be proud of--especially the fact that so many of our clients were represented in the show. Specific awards (golds and silvers) are subjective, but winning that many awards is a very good indication of overall quality and a great effort. So congratulations to everyone.

Four Silver Interactive Addys this Year

Richter7 did very well last night at the annual Utah Advertising Federation Addy awards. We out-medaled every other agency in town and scored four interactive silvers this year. I was involved in some way on all of these. I designed and programmed the Rumble invitation.

Polynesian Cultural Center Banner Campaign
Richter7 Rumble Invitation
BSD Flowers for Hope
Polynesian Cultural Center Web Site

George Orwell Writing Tips

George Orwell has earned the right to be called one of the finer writers in the English language through such novels as 1984 and Animal Farm, such essays as “Shooting an Elephant,” and his memoir Down and Out in Paris.

George expressed a strong dislike of totalitarian governments in his work, but he was also passionate defender of good writing. Thus, you may want to hear some of George’s writing tips.*

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

* From “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.

On TV with Big Budha

Got up early and went to the fairgrounds to participate in the Utah Advertising Federation Addys Peoples Choice event. We were put into groups with members of other ad agencies and Big Budha gave us an idea for an ad campaign. Our assignment was to invent a Big Budha diet program. After brainstorming and drawing for a few hours, we ended up with the Budha Blender. At the last minute I got roped into presenting our concept on live TV. I didn't screw up, but I looked like a nerd. It was kind of weird to see myself on TV.

Gears of War Rocks

I got Gears of War for XBox 360 and it is awesome. The character design, level design, and lighting effects are amazing. The controls are very intuitive. I'm about half way through it so far and it's getting really tough - but so am I - heh, heh.

Zions Bank resolutionstracker.com Launches

We launched ResolutionsTracker.com at the beginning of the year for Zions Bank. On the site you see the most common resolutions and you can drag them to create your own list. If you submit your list, you get an email that gives you links to your printable list of resolutions. You also get entered into a prize drawing.

Radio Star

I had an awkward moment in the spotlight last Monday. A guy from KSL Radio came to Richter7 and interviewed Tim Brown and I for a story on Advertising in video games. It was kind of creepy to hear myself on the radio. Here is the link. Click here

Old School

I decided to chuck my PDA "smartphone" and go back to a Franklin planner. I also chucked my Treo 650 and got a cheap flipphone off of eBay for $40. It's nice to sit in front of my planner and not have to type a password to open it - or worry if it will run out of batteries. I just pull the pen out of the slot and remind myself what it is like to lay ink down on paper. I take all my meeting notes - not worrying how to type an asterisk or a period. My cheap flip phone is also cool. Just flip it open and say the name of the person I want to talk to. No camera, no web browser, no silly rings, no crappy tiny keyboard, no crappy spread sheet and word processor. Ahhhhh - good times, good times. and I don't care much for the new iPhone.