The 2008 Codie Awards have been announced. Little did I know that a project I played a major part in was at least nominated for a couple Codies, we actually WON the award for “Best Instructional Solution for Students at Home”. Pretty nifty, and its just the latest in a series of awards for the Pokemon Learning League.
So far the awards have been the Codie, a 2007 Outstanding Products Award from iParenting, a 2007 Best Educational Software Award, and we were a finalist for Distinguished Achievement from the Association of Educational Publishers.
I won’t go into the “making of” in the least, cause you know, it’s safe to assume that most clients don’t appreciate any ups and downs of working with them made available in a public forum. But…..pretty nifty anyway right?
The project is:
http://www.pokemonlearningleague.com/
And of course, yes I played a good part in it, but there were plenty more people involved at the company I work for 360KID.
We just launched a new application at 360KID! I wish I could say I did all of it, or even most of it, but I did step in to help a lot during the final stages – just so I can say I took all the credit from the project’s real programmer Clint Little. I have a few Flex projects under my belt now, and they all look fantastic compared to most of the ones I’ve seen out there. This one is no exception thanks to the great animation and illustration my company does. I look forward to launching more and more Flex applications that have a fun look and feel. We’re so close to launching our other projects, I’d love to show them since I was the main developer – but this one is another one to be proud of regardless of who did it.
This game called Budget Hero was developed for American Public Media, and allows you to play cards to adjust the federal budget and see if you can balance it. Also allowing you to earn badges, you can see if you’re also doing your part to maintain the military, health care, etc. It’s up to you to make sure the stuff you think is important doesn’t wither away and STILL maintain the budget.
Click to Play Budget Hero
Still waiting on the final video, but this is part of my March Madness of projects. My year has been insane so far with way to much work. Like an idiot, when my friend Jason Burke asked if I could help out with a series of 30 or so illustrations to be finished in less than a month, I said yes!
But, it was fun. I hadn’t done illustration work in a while, and had just discovered the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator. The tool allowed me to make some cartoonish, yet 3D like drawings. Yes, I’m a perfectionist, so some didn’t come out as good as I’d like, but I’m happy with it overall.
First, I’ll show the one that creeped out my wife the most. This is the forced child clothing labor camp:
On the next drawing I learned to use the pattern brush in Illustrator a little better than my previous attempts at it. It was incredibly useful for painting the leaves on in various configurations, and the grass as well. And there’s tons more – but lots were small, here’s the rest I put in my portfolio:
Thats it! I haven’t blogged since February, but I do have more projects coming down the line – they just need to launch. I have worked hard this year, it’ll be nice when I have something to show for it.
