We at Oddly Studios are a close bunch.  So I would like to speak for all by wishing our own Sheharzad Arshad, skilled Art Director at Oddly, all the very best as he wings his way across the pond for  his wedding.

I have known Sheharzad for some time now.  We’ve worked together in college, at the agency, and finally in our own shop with our friends.  I can say that I have rarely met anyone as dedicated to their craft as he is.  He practices hard every day, never allowing for procrastination or negativity to get in the way.  He goes the extra mile for every project, and at the end of it never forgets to invest something in his own creative reserves as well.

More than that, Zad is a good person – respectful to his parents, a dedicated mentor to his pupils, and a loyal friend.  He puts good into the world, by inspiring people to use their imagination, and dream along with him through his many popular works of art.

So Zad, safe trip, a happy day, and we look forward to meeting your new bride.

Best wishes from all of us!

Mattel  Matty Elf Launcher

At Oddly, we love making games.  So when we were approached by Pebble Interactive to create a holiday themed game for Mattel, we jumped at the chance.

The Idea

After much head-scratching, we finally got back to basics with pencil and paper.  Sometimes the old ways are still the best ways.  We got our own Art Director Sheharzad to take the well-known character Matty Elf and put his own spin on him.  We jazzed him up with a spiffy new crash-helmet, popped him in a cannon, and fired him at high-velocity straight into a pile of presents!

Of course, it’s never just that easy.  First we had to make the side-scrolling 2D engine for the game, and it had to be able to move large images quickly without slowing down anyone’s computer.  And we matched  that with crisp custom-made sound effects.

Lastly, working with Pebble we put together a user-interface that would be simple enough for kids to use, but would sit atop a game challenging  enough for even big kids to get a kick out of it.

Of course this wasn’t the last we saw of Matty.  Thanks to the popularity of the game, we went on to design and build several more concepts into rich media ads, putting Matty into the role of hover-board flyer, and crane operator!

Manulife Travel CheckList

Planning a vacation is an exciting time, with a lot to do all at once.  How do you get people to take a little time to think about the all-important details of selecting travel insurance?  This was the challenge presented to Delivinia, and the reason they came to Oddly Studios with their idea.

The concept was for a quiz that would help people choose travel coverage that was right for them.  But who wants to think about boring forms to fill out when travel adventure is on their mind?  Instead, Oddly would create a richly interactive guide, utilizing pleasing animation and artifacts of travel to keep visitors in the excitement of vacation planning while also getting good advice of travel coverage.  We would also enter them in a contest to win some prizes, making the visit all the more enticing, and we would give them the opportunity to share the experience with their friends.

The Travel Checklist is a rich interactive experience that guides visitors through a series of questions to reveal to them their ulimate “travel type”.  Are they shop-aholics?  Outdoorsy?  Beach loungers?  The Travel Checklist would make a recommendation based on travel preferences.

If they enjoyed the Checklist, they would have the option of sending their travel personality off to a friend, who could themselves try the Checklist for the chance to win prizes.

Technical Considerations

The Travel Checklist has a fair amount of logic to it.  We wanted to make it so that users could go back and change their selections – but doing so changes the type of questions that follow.  It’s kind of like the paradox – “if you went back in time and changed something, would it change your world as you know it”.  Oddly devised a custom logic algorithm that could not only handle such changes, but could also be defined via a schematic document.  In other words, mess with space/time all you want!

(Okay, maybe it just let you customize the logic of the Travel types, but it was still very nice.)

In addition to the Flash work, Oddly took on all the HTML, CSS, Javascript and Social Bookmarking of the site as well, hooking up a javascript based lightbox and integrating it with the Flash.  We created the database and a remoting gateway to communicate with it, and set up all the validation.  And for analytics purposes, we implemented two types of tracking.

We did it again!

Following a year of intense activity, much fine work, and meeting many great people, Oddly Studios are pleased to announce the new studio location at 555 Richmond Street West in Toronto.

We’re a downtown kind of shop, we like to stay close to the action.  The Richmond Street location will allow us to do that, while adding on many conveniences for ourselves and our clients.

We will retain the location at 495 Queen West, which will continue to serve as the location for our fine-arts activities, after-hours Flash instruction, and support of local artists through the in-house artist program.

We will definitely have a party – just not right now, we’re way too busy!