Siggraph - Monday Night

I stayed and watched a special session about video game controllers. I was introduced to the "DDR" (Dance, Dance, Revolution) phenomenon and a new version of the game that is called Karaoke Revolution. This game detects the pitch of your voice and you sing along as well as dance at the same time on a pad and the eye toy tracks you. It looks really fun and will be available for all consoles for Christmas.

DDR is helping kids (and adults) to get in shape and now is helping them to learn to sing. My kids will love this.

Sony demoed a new eye toy that detects depth of field and the guy demoed various environments. One that was very interesting was where he played raquetball with a beach ball using his arms. An onscreen skeletion tracked his movements. Motion capture is merging with video games!

Siggraph - Monday Afternoon

George Lucas gave the keynote address in the form of a causal interview Letterman style. He spoke about the importance of digital cinema and putting previsualization tools in the hands of technophobic "old school" film producers. He was refreshingly blunt about a number of things. I wasn't able to see him in person but I was in the next room watching him on closed circuit TV.

I also caught the end of the computer animation festival. There are some pretty bizzarre minds out there.

Siggraph - Monday Morning

We got registered and went up to the computer Animation Festival where we saw a variety of attendee-submitted animated shorts. They ranged from virtual heart operations to funny cartoons to dark, dreamlike metaphors. I watched Teach, Laugh, and Escape. Chris and I are going to lunch then we are going to head back for the keynote address by George Lucas.

Siggraph Los Angeles 2005

Well I'm here. Had a lovely flight with a sideways landing. I got to see an actual X-wing fighter in the convention center. It was autographed by the original Star Wars production staff. It is made out of plywood and is a genuine full size prop from the 1976 production!

Flash Experience Designs

Here are some sites that create rich experiences. I will continually update this entry as I find cool sites. (WARNING: The Saturn Sky site will start a midlife crisis if you watch the videos).
Saturn Relay
Saturn Sky
Saints and Soldiers
Volvo
Volvo Wherever
Volvo
IBM Help Desk
Ford Truck
Subaru R1
Heart of Volvo
BecomingHuman.org
Narnia

New Identity for GreetingCall

I just got this design approved for GreetingCall. This is a new company that allows you to purchase a gift then attach a phone recording to the gift.

Rembrandt Exhibit Launched

The Museum of Church History and Art has posted a new online version of its Rembrandt Biblical Etchings exhibit. This is a rare collection of more than 60 of Rembrandt's original etchings. The exhibit is designed in such a way that you can zoom in on each piece.

This uses our new dynamic exhibitor engine. This Flash engine is a skinnable, completely dynamic system that runs on a CSS and XML file. All of the elements and colors are interchangable.

New Joseph Smith Site Launched

This is the first web site out the chute that uses the new lds.org interface. The new site has a lot of media and information about the founder of the Mormon church. It can be found at www.josephsmith.net.

Flash Platformer Game Engine Underway

Here is the latest version of my new Flash game. I don't have a story for it yet, but the physics are getting worked out and they are getting pretty believable. NOTE: this is not a game yet-just a physics engine. Don't try to make sense of it.

Check out some of my other games here and here.

AIGA Portfolio Site

I have belonged to the American Institute of Graphic Arts since 1996 and I just posted my portfolio on the portfolio area of their web site. I also discovered that their trade journal VOICE is now an online journal. It has great articles on graphic design.

New Church History Library Building Announced

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has just announced a new church history library building.

LDS.org Retrospective

With the recently previewed LDS.org redesign nearing release, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane and attempt to assemble a history of LDS.org home page designs that I have collected over the years. This is not 100% accurate but gives a flavor of the evolution of LDS.org.

1994-1995
Here are some of the first designs that were approved and posted on the Internet:



1998
The site pictured above grew to the point where a redesign with categories was needed. Four new main categories were identified: Basic Beliefs, Family History, Member Resources, and Media Information. The hope at the time was that these four categories would serve the needs of the LDS.org for a long time.


1999
This design was introduced to add spirituality and warmth to the site. Upon entering LDS.org the user was presented with a "splash" screen that punctuated the centrality of the Savior in the church. Families were also highlighted. This was the last site that was created by hardcoding HTML pages. At this point we were accumulating a large amount of content that was quickly becoming unwieldy. This drove us to begin investigating the concepts of a dynamically built site and the need for a new concept called information architecture.




2000
The need for a dynamic site eventually caught on and a new team was brought in to the Church to lead us into this exciting new technology. The infusion of new information architects also influenced the need for a new redesign which would accomodate even more content that was pouring into the site.


2001
An emphasis to the living prophets was added to the home page by adding a daily quote and a large link to the First Presidency Message. During this period, new sites were designed such as mormon.org and providentliving.org.


2002-2004
More sites were designed during this period such as Home and Family, Stake and Ward Web Sites, Church History, and Newsroom.

2005
...Which brings us up to the present. This new design is expected to be released this year. It was previewed and usability tested at Education Week at BYU last summer.

New Talent - Scott Stoddard

I discovered a new Flash game programmer/character designer and it turns out he lives in my neighborhood. His site is:

http://www.spiritonin.com/

Check it out!

Golden Gate Panorama

This panorama was created with Photoshop's stitching function so it is not the best, but it gives a good sense of our walk that turned into a hike (click on the picture to see it larger).

Tony Hawk for PSP

I got a new game today. Tony Hawk's Underground 2 for Playstation portable. It is AWESOME. Here is a product description:



You've been chosen by Tony Hawk to take on Bam Margera as your teams go globetrotting on an insane road trip: the World Destruction Tour. THUG2 grinds in with a hilarious story mode, an unprecendented level of customization, and more moves than the Skate Gods could dream of. Make the world your own skate park, as you spray your custom tag, slap stickers, and even create new skate lines as you wreak havoc. Now you can play as yourself, your teammates, or over 20 special guest skaters. When you're ready to go old school, check out Classic Mode with all-time favorite goals like S-K-A-T-E, Secret Tape, and High Score against a 2-minute timer. Grab your board, an arsenal of spray-paint... jump into the tour van and get ready to wreak havoc across the globe.

SF Flash Forward Conference - Saturday April 9

We spent this morning touring then rushed to the airport. I played Twisted Metal all the way home.

SF Flash Forward Conference - Friday April 8

Advanced Character Animation
Chris Georgenes of www.mudbubble.com showed some animation techniques.

Unleash Your Debugging Arsenal
Paul Ortchanian of www.reflektions.com demoed debugging techniques in Flash. He spoke about "unit testing" which is basically tracing every line of code as you program to test assumptions. He posted some valuable unit testing components and his notes at:

http://www.reflektions.com/lectures/

The O'Reilly Radar
Tim O'Reilly of http://www.oreilly.com/ gave a lecture. This is the famous technical book publisher. They have a new magazine called MAKE.

Lunchtime
Chevy's Fresh Mex. Great fajitas, Batman!

Cut, Paste, Animate: Collage Animation
Evan Spirellas from www.jibjab.com gave some very informative demos on his collage animation techniques. He designs large for TV then scales down for the web. Kim and I attended a Q&A afterwards where we got to ask him questions face to face. He was very generous with his techniques and advice.

Less Ordinary
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Erik Natzke of http://www.natzke.com/2002.html showed some amazing Flash effects and ads he created for HP. His site speaks for itself.

Closing and Raffle
None of us won anything.

Evening
We took a bus to Fisherman's Wharf and had dinner at Cioppinos. We found a beach then took a cable car back to the hotel.

SF Flash Forward Conference - Thursday April 7

Macromedia Keynote
Kevin Lynch from Macromedia promoted Flash for mobile devices. He also showed the new Flash player. Here is some info about the player:
Click here

Drag Slide Fade 2.0
Brendan Dawes from magneticNorth demoed some Actionscript classes that seemed somewhat useful. It inspired me to start building a class library of commonly used functions.

Evolving Computational Creatures
This was AMAZING. Jared Tarbell from www.levitated.net demoed some examples of Flash organisms.

Lunch
We walked for a few blocks to Carl's Junior. I had a guacamole 6-dollar burger. Mmmmm. I'm sleepy.

A Close-up View of Type
Matthew Carter, a famous type designer who designed Verdana and other popular fonts, gave a lecture about the nuances of designing type. He showed a cool font that has interchangable serifs. It is not available, but I WANT it. Here is a specimen:

http://www.feelgoodanyway.com/identity/walker1.html

Here is a Matthew Carter bio:

Click here

3D and Games
Patrick Gardner of http://www.perfectfools.com/ showed how he did some of his award winning games for Coca-cola and other companies. This was insiring to see how 3D and "2 1/2-D" are being used in Flash to simulate depth.

A Warped Look at Flash
Ze Frank of www.zefrank.com showed some extremely funny work on his site. He uses Flash in very innovative ways. To me he was hilarious and is an exceptional improvisational actor. Be warned that his web site is a little too harsh to be viewed at work. Wade carefully.

Flash Film Festival
Flash pieces were shown and designers recieved awards:

Click here

Our music Flash application (http://www.lds.org/cm/display/0,17631,4996-1,00.html) was one of the finalists but didn't win.

Dinner
My brother Mike was in town and he picked me up and we went to an Italian restaurant and then he blazed down Lombard Street.

SF Flash Forward Conference - Wednesday April 6

KEYNOTE:
Made You Look Again - Stefan Sagmeister
-http://www.sagmeister.com
-Very creative (and sometimes crude) approaches to design
-This guy liked himself a lot

Lunch
While standing in line at California Pizza Kitchen we met two guys from Punchcut, a SF design studio. Both guys were BYU graduates and LDS. I had a long conversation with Joseph Pemberton who is the creative director.

pemberton@punchcut.com
TEL. 415 445-8855

Flash Video In and Out (two sessions)
-Very good introduction to get started using Flash video
-www.pixelfury.com

Best Practices Experts Panel
-Robert Reinhardt www.themakers.com/
-Brendan Dawes www.magneticn.co.uk/
-Chris Georgenes http://www.mudbubble.com/mad2005/main/mad_2005.htm
-Joey Lott http://www.person13.com/
-This panel was very good. Each designer gave their list of rules to live by

Evening
We went to Fisherman's wharf and ate at Neptune's palace and watched the sea lions bicker with each other. Afterwards we took a cable car ride back to our hotel. Kim made the mistake of talking to a homeless man carrying a large, live chicken. He made some colorful remarks. I guess we were walking through a bad part of town. It was a rush.

SF Flash Forward Conference - Tuesday April 5

Before I left I bought a Playstation Portable (PSP) and played Twisted Metal on the plane. We took BART from the airport to our Holiday Inn Civic Center hotel.

Around 5pm we picked up our packets and got our badges and went to dinner. Bummer. My wireless card doesnt work in the hotel.