by Viologica
I’m very proud to announce that we hit gold again on FWA. It is the third one in the last 6 months, not that I’m counting or anything. Psst…between me and you if you visit back this Sunday we’ll have some other great news to announce.
Link: http://www.autotopsy.ca
_Posted in General
by mrmcq5
Apps for the iPhone are arguably more important than the phone itself. It’s become a jack-of-all trades device that consumers, business playas, and technogeeks all die for. But where do you go to find those apps in the rough? or the elephant in the room you somehow didn’t notice? We’ve prepared a short list of links we’ve been finding incredibly useful to do just that: find great iphone apps.
http://iphoneapppodcast.com/
Perfect for viewing on your iPhone/iPod Touch before you buy or download the app contains video reviews of apps.
http://www.iphonetoolbox.com/
This site is cool in that it shows what the app looks like on the phone itself. When visitors roll over, they get a quick snippet about the app. Clicking on it brings you to another quick introduction and a link to the app’s website or something else with a more in-depth review.
http://www.iphoneappreviews.net/
Clean appearance featuring quick blurbs on apps and always important comparisons against other apps that provide similar services. Got to love honesty: “one of the dullest games I’ve ever played.”
http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/category/appstore/
iPhone School has quick glances and typically uses video and pictures to help
http://www.iphonealley.com/reviews/apps/
iPhone Alley offers reviews and probably the best snapshot summaries with pros, cons, and the bottom line.
http://iphone-apps.toptenreviews.com/business/
Looking for apps for business? Need to say anymore?
http://www.imedicalapps.com
Quickly becoming an important market segment in application development on the phone OS, this site like the link above specializes in apps and news in the medical industry. This segment should explode with the advent of the iPad.
http://www.apprater.com/
Taking a different approach, apprater allows developers to submit apps for review through a form. Quite a nifty discovery engine at work here.
http://www.148apps.com/
A well polished site with an editorial review process. Well written reviews will keep us coming back.
http://www.appstorehq.com/
A personal fav, this site pulls in blog posts from around the blogosphere – fairly Spartan design doesn’t distract too much from the sheer utility of the site.
Definitely worth doing a follow-up post with respect to sites that focus in on specific markets like books, games, business, medical etc.
by adrian
Autotopsy: “Point of Impact” from Jam3 on Vimeo.
For this week’s Hotshot Toronto-based collaborative studio Jam3 craft an immersive online experience to showcase gritty TV drama Crash & Burn.
The online experience at autotopsy.ca puts the viewer in the driving seat as the show’s main character and a young insurance claims adjuster Jimmy Burns is hot on the tail of a multi-vehicle pile-up. The viewer is taken through his journey step-by-step to piece together the complex jigsaw, and invited into a hellish crash scene that allows them to delve deeper and witness the moments leading up to the crash.
Part-game, part-narrative experiment, the sophisticated site serves up an array of interactive video content alongside character case studies that provide hints and distractions alike.
“We knew this had to be more than just an online video, and we wanted users to be able to experience in whatever order to their liking,” explains Jam3 creative director Adrian Belina. “It begins with the end or ‘aftermath’ and essentially sets up the ‘WTF?’ premise of the site. From there viewers fly through our frozen moment in time and can stop at any person involved in the accident and view three things: the approach, Jimmy’s two cents, and the case study.”
These are essentially the before, during and after elements of the site, which evolve the more the viewer explores. Users are given different options to interact with the site, such as a stylized 3D overview of the accident built in Papervision that allows people to jump to any point within the accident. Users can also drag the scene frame-by-frame with their cursor, jump to a point on the timeline or fast-forward with the mini-navigator.
The site took five months to complete from conception to the finished product, and Jam3 had the challenge of fitting the construction of the site in with the show’s timeline schedule. “We spent about a month conceiving the story, working out how to make it interactive and how the accident would unfold. We essentially sat in a boardroom with dinky cars running over different scenarios of who hit who first,” recalls Belina. “Interactive fiction is a fairly new concept and I think what attracts people to it is the notion of piecing together a puzzle. They are controlling what they see and how they see it.”
You can check out the intro film from the site below, and if you’d like to play detective and experience the interactive elements in full, visit the site at autotopsy.ca.
_Posted in General
by Viologica
Developed by Jam3, Toronto’s MacLaren McCann and US-based Motion Theory, the site is an experience entirely in itself, taking the viewer on a tour through Buick’s creative process and philosophy. Incorporating full-window documentary video and voice-over work to enhance the whimsical nature of the content, tied together by the bow of visual effects, it’s a visual tour-de-force which holds the viewer in place, content to soak in the feeling evoked by the entire production.
The microsite consists of a tour through the overall Buick process, with three links (to the new Regal, Enclave and Lacrosse) jumping to the regular Buick site.
_Posted in General
by adrian
For a company like ours whose specialty is Flash and interactive production it’s disappointing to say the least that we won’t fully be able to take advantage of what Apple and some people deem to be the new “it” device or “game changer”.
Will it sell? Will we in the coming months or year figure out how to make this “useless” device useful? Probably. Until then it still remains just a large, cool gadget at best to show off to friends. Had it been more computer like with multi-tasking and an actual browser that lets you “surf the web” instead of just a giant iTouch it would reach the masses much more quickly and not just the mac fanboys (to whom Apple can do no wrong).
As much as I love my Apple stuff and am part fanboy, they’re starting to get more and more irritating. Their insistence on making things proprietary is annoying. The Apple TV could have been great but its a complete dud because of it. Would the game changing iPod which changed a whole music industry have sold so well if they said you had to convert all your music to an iPod specific format instead of the MP3? (anyone remember sony’s mini-disc?)
Personally, I’m still waiting for an iPhone that has a flash on it like my crappy phone did 3 years ago.
_Posted in General
by Viologica
After 4 months of endless creative meetings and long hours of VFX/rotoscoping, design and development Jam3 pushes live an interactive movie of a gruesome car accident at point of impact. The initial video is a frozen in time camera move that allows the user to navigate through an explosion of fire, glass and wreckage as several gateways of content reveal them selves to learn more about how? and why?. Look out for our papervision map that gives you a complete 360 birds eye view of the horrendous accident.
Link: http://www.autotopsy.ca
_Posted in General
_Tagged 3D papervision, autotopsy, CG, crash & burn
by Viologica
AGO commissioned Jam3 to the design and develop a King Tut online exhibition like no other.
The King Tut Experience is a virtual museum built in Papervision 3D where users can explore and learn about some of the key artifacts in the King Tut Exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.
We also developed a motion graphic advertisment of the long awaited exhibition housed by an HTML hybrid website.
MOTION GRAPHICS
Link: www.kingtutgala.com
PAPERVISION EXPERIENCE
Link: www.kingtut.ca/experience/
_Posted in General
_Tagged 3D papervision, experience, King tut
by Viologica
We designed/developed a highly polished HTML hybrid site that consist of high end VFX portraying the convoluted story of a corrupt insurance company.
The new hit TV show Crash & Burn is a tounge and cheek drama/comedy that airs on Showcase.
Link: www.crash-and-burn.com
_Posted in General
_Tagged CG, crash & burn, hybrid, VFX, video
by Viologica
by Viologica
Yes…we all know what you think this looks like but in reality this is part of some of the massive lighting that was used for the Lexus shoot that Jam3 was lucky to be a part of. Yes…it was hard to leave cold Toronto for the sunny Miami beach…booo. Thanks Dentsu. Stay tuned for the new Lexus website we’ll be releasing later this year.
