Now on the site: Video Courses!
posted by robert | filed under news, projects, tutorials/samples
As of today, there’s a new section open on my site: Video Courses!
Here you’ll be able to browse through the contents of courses I’ve created with video2brain (currently only the one, but more are in preparation!) or courses which I particularly recommend, watch free lessons and sample HD videos and also purchase the courses for both online and offline viewing!
The little TV icon appears on all pages of my site and allows you to jump straight into the video training centre.
For those of you wondering if you should check out my “iPhone and iOS Application Development Workshop” course or not, take a look at the free sample videos or just go for it straight off – it’s yours for the bargain price of only £21.99 – for nearly four hours of HD video training!!
You know it makes sense 
There it is – up on the top right of this page…
Enjoy!
Ch ch ch changes…
posted by robert | filed under news, projects
As hinted at in my last post, not only have I rekindled my joy of teaching and combined it with my love for code, but other changes are on the cards for this year. As if coming back to the UK after 18 years living in Switzerland, setting up a new home smack in the middle of London with my wonderful girlfriend Daša and embarking on multiple new personal projects is not enough:
I now have a job
That’s right – I’m no longer working 100% freelance.
If you take a look back through projects I’ve worked on over the last 4 years you’ll see one name popping up over and over: Substance.
Substance is a multi-award winning digital media and publicity agency specialising in the film & entertainment industry sector. As an established provider of on-line promotional and marketing materials to leading film distributors such as Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers, Substance have handled campaigns for recent titles such as Inception, Avatar and the forth coming Green Lantern. Substance also works closely with a number of commercial clients such as ATOC and the UK arm of the US broadcaster HBO, makers of shows such as True Blood and Boardwalk Empire.
Much of the freelance work I’ve been involved with for Substance has been for films and campaigns for Fox, Warner Brothers and HBO – including some True Blood work that’s running globally and should be seen in the UK later this year. In fact, my first Facebook App, the “Garfield Photo Invader”, was created for Substance. (alas, no longer online, as is the way of the fickle Facebook World).
As of 7th of this month I am now officially working with a fantastic team over at Substance in the role of Creative Technologist, with a focus on introducing more mobile and other new technologies into the mix of services we can offer our clients. It’s going to be exciting and there are already some very interesting projects set to keep me busy!
You’ll find me at Substance around 60% of the time and find me hacking away on my own projects, making stuff, working on select client projects from time to time and putting together more courses and tutorials with the lovely people from video2brain (to name but a few of the activities that fight for my attention )
Watch this space for exciting project news, new App announcements and more courses and tutorials!
Get Mommafied with Big Momma’s House 3
posted by robert | filed under flash/flex, projects, social media
After a busy few weeks working with the lovely people at Substance, I’ve managed to find time to write about the first of two projects I’ve been working on: Big Momma’s House 3 Get Mommafied!
The project involved the build and implementation of a combined microsite/Facebook App which allows the user to choose a photo of themselves from their hard disk or Facebook albums OR to take a snapshot with their webcam and then to proceed and give themselves the full Martin Lawrence-style Big Momma treatment – to Get Mommafied! They can even choose a wig or dress to suit their style
The result can be posted to their Facebook Wall, Twitter (via Twitpic), downloaded or copied as a HTML embed link for use anywhere they wish.
Substance’s Craig Beswetherick (@GrindheadGames on Twitter) was responsible for the nasty pixel manipulating stuff and yours truly wrapped it all up with the rest of the UI, Facebook goodness and functionality. The design comes from Substance’s in-house artistic guy Ewan Brock (@letsbrock) and the final site/App has been rolled out in numerous countries including the UK, Russia, Mexico and throughout Europe – resulting in some interesting challenges with sizing on buttons and text fields. Naturally, localisation was carried out by using XML for configuration and copy.
The App was built using FDT4, assets in Flash and based on PureMVC for the simple reason that I have a nice little Facebook App template built up using this framework. PureMVC is by no means “pure” MVC but having a pre-built “template” which uses such a simple-to-use framework is a definite benefit when approaching new projects.
So. Go ahead and Get Mommafied! You may be surprised at how good you look with an extra 50 kilos in a wig and a dress!
Available NOW in the App Store: TicTacTomato!
posted by robert | filed under iDevices/iOS, news, projects
My new iPhone/iPod Touch App TicTacTomato is now available for purchase from the App Store as of today!
TicTacTomato can now be purchased - just in time for Christmas
I’m particularly excited about this as it is, in my (totally unbiassed, of course) opinion, a perfect App for Christmas – guaranteed to entertain the whole family and most likely to totally infuriate them too! It’s a game we all know, whether we call it Tic Tac Toe or Noughts and Crosses – BUT it has a surprise twist, or rather splat, to it… Who knows when your winning game may be completely destroyed by an evil hidden tomato! Play, win and hope you don’t get splatted!
I actually started to develop the App months ago as a Flash CS5 beta project – to try out the Flash iPhone builder/exporter/whatever it’s called now. After a while, I decided that I really wanted to produce it as a native Objective-C iPhone App and rewrote the whole project, including reworking most of the visuals. Taking into account the disruption that a couple of other projects and my move back to the UK from Switzerland caused, it’s great to see the App now live and “in the wild”.
Today marks the launch of version 1.0 of the App and I’m hoping you’ll all pop along to the App Store and buy it, give me lots of positive feedback and send me your thoughts for what you’d like it to do in version 2.0!! A couple of things already planned are multiplayer capabilities and configurable game complexity. Whatever comes in the next version, the game will stay true to it’s simple philosophy: Entertain and infuriate 
So, here we go: Click the button to download the App!
Looking forward to your feedback. Enjoy playing TicTacTomato!
tags: App Store, Games, iPhone, Objective-C, TicTacTomato
