Flash, Flex, iPhone, Android

We've always fancied ourselves as a digital media production house that could trump London bases studio's and deliver cutting edge interactive content for much better value. This month we're delighted to announce that we have started another London based collaboration with Flynn Productions a London based creator content on all platforms: live action, animation, photography and design work across the board.  A bunch of ruddy lovely people who we hope we can work with many more times in the future.

Twisted Studio was commissioned to create two interactive elements of a large scale web site being unrolled in 2010.  You can see the demo versions here on our website:

• Flash Tile Game - A flash tile based game with seamless video content between stages
• Video Timelapse Journey Through London - A framework to show a series of interlinked videos as your drive really fast around London to see the sights.

We really look forward to seeing these two when they join the main website which will be completed for the launch in Spring 2010.

We are moving surely but steadily into the realms of experimental interactivity technology to bring new dimensions into marketing strategies. It stands to reason of course that we need to involved in all that is unholy and crazy in the digital world... so happily we meandered over to the reLaunch of the Cultural Lab in Newcastle and boy were we amazed by the shere coolness in toys they let us play with.

Firstly however, what is Cultural Lab? Here is what they say. Cultural Lab is :

• A centre for creative inquiry in the broadest sense of the term
• A world class research facility for experimentation in interactive media
• A Hub, hosting and incubating projects in art and technology
• An actor in the North East's cultural ecology, sharing knowledge in our digital society

Humaniquarium

Very cool touch screen technology using IR and cameras

These are just two of the ones we had the most fun playing with but there is more... so much more!!

For those who haven't had the pleasure of popping down to our office as of late, we now have a suitably twisted hand painted wall mural smack bang outside our office. Its visible from the main Boho corridor, so if ever you find yourself meandering the corridors of the Boho building feel free to take a peek at this unique piece of artwork:)

Gravity or Rage?

So this was the end for a beloved member of the Twisted Team, for many months it had been there to support me, cheek to cheek. Alas poor Ergo i knew him only a short time, but he and his 'Made in China' label must now live in a skip....

Just going to prove what everyone always tells me... don't sit down so hard, your not exactly a small guy... suppose there is no denying it now... anyway moving on, silver linings and all that jazz, its time for my new chair...

Whip out the plastic lads I'm going shopping!

Click to visit

Exciting times!! We're soooo... looking forward to attending Flash on the beach , we missed out last year because of a China trade mission. But no more excuses, we should be there, so much to learn and share, so many familiar flash developers to make connections with. We can't wait!! It's going to be great!!

It's exciting times....augmented reality is finally seeing more wide spread mass market gaming implementations, after many years of teasing us with odd ball museum pieces and tech demo videos/obscure experiments, with upcoming DS and PSP releases, which are definitely worth checking out:

invizimals

ghostwire

With Invizimals being of particular interest, I'm almost tempted to finally get around to buying myself a PSP to complete the olde console collection.

On another note, and of much more interest to Twisted is this little nugget...FLARToolkit

Yes AR in flash through a WebCam, some crazy people over in Japan have been playing with it for a while now, with an actionscript version of the ARToolkit, called FLARToolkit and its about time we get a little creative ourselves, watch this space as our voodoo wizards get to work on brewing up some more flash magic.

This is something we were waiting for in a big way. Flash is on newer Android mobile sets. Whether or not it will be a complete support is not entirely clear as of yet, but even a majority support will be something to celebrate. The removal of Flash Lite has begun, soon it will be just flash. There are some who are saying that this is a Flash Lite build, however if your aware. Adobe's aim is to close the gap on Flash Lite and Flash, until eventually they are the same platform. This is all part of the Open Screen Project.

Click here to learn more about this and see it in a video
Read more about the Open Screen Project

This is big news for Twisted and all flash and Flex developers who have long been waiting for a nicer way to develop for web and mobile almost simultaneously. Cutting the cost for our customers and adding more value. Its early days but you can see the direction the market is starting to head.

Okay for those of you who know nothing about Codeworks and Gameshorizon an extract from their website:

"GameHorizon is the leading business network for UK-based games companies - developers, publishers, middleware firms and other service providers. Our goal is to facilitate more collaboration, improve knowledge and increase local and international trade for UK-based games companies…"

To say the least the conference was highly educational, we were able to see how self claimed traditional market routes were changing for game development studios. This wasn't entirely news to us but we were very pleased to see our fellow peers taking notes and planning new ways to take advantage of the freemium culture that casual games and online content are breeding.

Some of our highlights worth mentioning we're some great talks from the BBC, Jagex, Mr St. John, as well as some great discussions about self publishing. I have alot of notes and when the video's are launched there are a couple i will link here to allow you all to see the wealth of knowledge these conferences can supply!

We finally launched our web cam, we admit it's not the most interesting TV show in the world. Kind of like Big Brother with no sound. But it does prove something, we are real people, we sit in an office just like you and we have our good days and our better days [^o^].

Go to our contacts page and follow the link or you can visit it directly here but its not always on, sometimes we're sacrificing some goats or chickens, we were asked to not show that... shame...

Something we make sure to do is watch our market, the iPhone is still something of a treasure trove to us with lots of potential. That's why when we heard on the grapevine that apple was bringing out its new 4GB model we couldn't help but be happy. Rumour has it that the model is out very soon in the U.S and will be a $50 to $100USD price cut from the original costing. Now whether this translates to up to £100 pounds we will see (it tends to not work our way for these things in our experience). I'm sure however that 4GB cheaper models will sell like hot cakes to a new demographic who want to be a part of the new iPhone generation. Good news for developers with a bigger and wider consumer base the pie just gets a little bit bigger. You can read a little here and we always suggest you keep your eyes and ears open. We have a little secret about some iPhone competition but we can't say just yet. Something that's going to change a lot on the application store frontier.