Thanks to the folks at Web Designer Magazine UK for the nice profile article on us in this month’s issue.
www.webdesignermag.co.uk
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School Cool
Finding inspiration is a hit-and-miss task. You can actively seek it out and come up empty. However, if you are open to seeing and noticing the spaces around you, occasionally you’ll stumble across something special in a place you least expected.
The back blocks of Papamoa in the Bay of Plenty was the last place I expected to find a stunning piece of public architecture. But recently on a walk to free up the desk-legs and the mouse-hand, nestled between cheap brick housing with fake pillars and phony tuscan mansions with mock water features, I found this.
Papamoa College is surely the coolest looking school in the country, if you’re into a modernist aesthetic that is. How much more inspired would I have been at college attending a campus like this 5 days a week for 5 years?
More info on the project from the construction company, and these guys are the architects responsible.
Top of the Blocks
Choice! AnimalBlocks got some iTunes App Store loving this week – first it was featured in the NZ App Store as New & Noteworthy and then What’s Hot in ‘Games > Kids’ and ‘Games > Educational’. Shortly after that it appeared on 14 European iTunes App Store homepages as New & Noteworthy and was further featured on the UK and Ireland stores in ‘Apps for Kids > Learning your ABC’.
These App Store features helped push AnimalBlocks up to the #1 Kids Game and #1 Educational Game in the UK and Greece! It also broke into the Top 100 Overall for iPad apps on the UK and Greece stores.
Update: March 26th
AnimalBlocks is now New & Noteworthy on 75 App Stores Worldwide! It also hit #1 in New Zealand and Bulgaria in ‘Games > Educational’ and has been sitting in the top 10 for ‘Games > Kids’ and ‘Games > Educational’ on a whole lot of stores – United Kingdom, New Zealand, Greece, Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Taiwan, Italia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Nederland and Lebanon.
We got a great review from iPhonewzealand as well. They loved the graphics, multitouch and physics, and concluded “…this app is a must have if you have kids”. Read the whole review here;
http://www.iphonewzealand.co.nz/2011/all/kiwi-app-review-give-away-animalblocks-for-ipad/
Here are some snaps… from the original post, not the update.
App Appeal
Flightless is proud to be supporting App Appeal, a group of New Zealand developers supporting Christchurch earthquake relief. Until March 5th, 100% of the proceeds of our iPhone game Top Dog and a whole lot of other great Kiwi Apps will be donated to the NZ Red Cross.
Website: http://www.appappeal.co.nz
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/NZ-app-developers-donate-100-of-proceeds-to-CHCH-EQ/114303791977949
NZ developers supporting the cause include;
Flightless: Top Dog: Farmyard Adventures
Majic Jungle Software: Chopper 2
Launching Pad Games – Scarlet and the Spark of Life: Scarlett Adventures Episode 1
Pixelthis – Sheepish
Minimonos – MiniMonos Flight
Acorn Heroes – Acorn Money
PikPok – Bird Strike
Ancient Workshop – Ancient Frog HD
SoftwareX – Twenty Chinups, Sleepmaker Apps
Dejal – Dejal Simon, Dejal Time Out, Dejal Caboodle, Dejal BlogAssist
Carnival Labs – Duck Shoot
AnimalBlocks for iPad
We’ve been quietly working on our first iPad app ‘AnimalBlocks‘, which is a casual, fun spelling app for kids. After a patient wait for it to be reviewed by Apple we’re happy to say that it was approved and released this week.
What started out life as a quick interactive fridge magnet for Ali’s wonderful animal alphabet illustrations has evolved into a fun and charming spelling app for younger kids. While it might seem pretty harmless, there’s plenty of beautiful design, illustration and tech involved and we’re pretty stoked with the results. We could easily write way too much about all this fancy stuff – perhaps we’ll leave that for some future posts 
Here’s some official description: AnimalBlocks is a casual, fun spelling app for kids. Drag blocks into place to spell words correctly from the AnimalBlocks dictionary. The US and UK-English dictionary contains nearly one thousand common words, including sight words, colours, fruit & vegetables, animals and much more! AnimalBlocks features two sets of letter blocks: one wooden set in lowercase for legibility, and another illustrated animal set for fun. There is also a selection of custom backgrounds, including a beautifully illustrated set of animals by award-winning illustrator Ali Teo. The screen is a true multi-touch surface – great for collaborating with many hands!
For more information take a look at the AnimalBlocks site http://www.flightless.co.nz/animalblocks or have a lurk on Twitter @flightlessnz or go right to the iTunes App Store. If you’ve got the app then feel free to send us your feedback – email animalblocks@flightless.co.nz.
Choice.
Rate my Cocktail
We were stoked and a bit surprised this week to find out that What Cocktail? was App of the Day on two popular sites, Gizmodo and TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). Thanks a lot to both of them for featuring our app – it’s fair to say that their attention has given the app a lot of exposure!
As it happened, we had also just put the app on sale to celebrate Kim’s birthday and National Margarita Day.
Here’s the effect on the rankings…
Gizmodo – http://gizmodo.com/#!5766483/what-cocktail-for-iphone
TUAW – http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/22/tuaws-daily-app-what-cocktail
‘Appy fun times
We’ve been busy but we won’t bother you with the details – it’s not that sort of blog.
Our labs have been busy…
What Cocktail? for iPhone
Kim’s barman alter-ego and all-round cocktail enthusiasm have finally been realised and released as an iPhone app – What Cocktail?. After years of personal research supplying fun and inflicting damage upon family & friends it didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to help build the little dream app either! To be honest, a bit of that damage was inflicted on us during the project as well, as every cocktail had to be sampled. Closely. Very closely. After all, everything was in HD
Here’s some official description: What Cocktail? does all the hard work for you and serves up a perfect recommendation. No more 20 questions with the bar staff. No more indecision. And you can impress your friends. It’s like having an expert at hand. Mouth-watering pictures and smart descriptions let you know what you are in for. Sometimes it’s nice not having to choose.
Some obligatory pre-release testing was performed around town and we can happily report a complete success. Actually, I think the cocktail kaleidoscopes did their job a little too well… but perhaps that’s best left to another more anonymous post.
For more info take a look at the What Cocktail? site http://whatcocktail.com or have a lurk on Twitter @whatcocktails or uber poke it on the Facebook or go crazy and jump right to the iTunes App Store.
We’re working on some extra features that will be out soon and should be a bit of fun. If you’ve got the app already then feel free to send us your feedback – email info@whatcocktail.com.
Please drink responsibly.
Honest.
Flightless Wins!
We are happy to say that we won some bling at the New Zealand Best Awards. Check out our entries at http://www.bestawards.co.nz/studio/flightless.
Our Awards
- Maori Feast interactive won Gold.
- Top Dog – Farmyard Adventures won Silver.
- And Palliser.co.nz, Hamiltonwaikato.com and the Sidhe Identity all won Bronze.
This years awards were held at the Sky City Convention Center in Auckland, so the boys got out their shirts and ties and Lorin squeezed on some heels for a final public Flightless outing. The food was pretty tasty and the drinks flowed freely. In fact, Flightless made the most of the night, starting beverage consumption somewhat early. We don’t get out of the studio much so we thought we would make a weekend of it. Below(*) are a few blurry pics from the weekend and a very enjoyable night! Thanks to our lovely clients and friends.
* There were some photos here. They are not here right now.
Maori Feast
We recently completed an interactive installation for Auckland Museum (Auckland War Memorial Museum), bringing to life a fantastic piece of artwork based on a lithograph of the great Maori Feast in May, 1844 near Mount Hobson in Remuwera (Remuera). The piece was part of the Kai to Pie Exhibition celebrating food in the region and was exhibited using a touch screen control and 50″ television.
The Maori Feast was held over 4 days and had more than 4000 guests dining on 9000 sharks, 11000 baskets of potatoes and enjoying large-scale mock battles and huge hakas. We recreated parts of the artwork to allow us to zoom in and added sound and animation to bring this great scene to life.
The exhibition is on now for about four months at the museum. A scaled-down web version of the installation is available on the Auckland Museum website: Maori Feast at Remuera Interactive. The exhibition was also featured on the Asia Downunder tv programme – you can watch it here, Chapter 2: Asia Downunder, 18 Jul 2010.
