Since graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone with a Masters I’ve been QRing, pitching, job hunting, application filling. I even found time for a bit of cheese mongering..!

However, SuperFly is alive and well in spirit… follow http://hellojon.wordpress.com for the latest but updates will be posted here from time to time and if all goes well a couple of SuperFly projects may appear in the coming months.

So, we’re not doing the ‘dying fly’ just yet, but the best place to be for now is the wordpress site above :)

See you soon!

More to follow very soon…

It’s always a challenge…

Beautiful sunshine today while I’m in writing… and why..? Well, because we used up all the rain yesterday when I was outside!

Yesterday was SuperFly Space Hop…

‘Space Hop’ was all about taking the basics of NEoN Knights’ QR hunt and putting it into an digital or eTourism setting.

View SuperFly Space Hoppers – St Andrews in a larger map

The QRs were located at local ‘tourist-y’ business and sight seeing locations such as the local theatre or ice cream parlour. As the whole event ‘hangs’ on a special Google map I also tagged locations on the map (which would have been more difficult to hide QR codes) with video and images relevant to the area or integral to tasks that the teams were to complete.

I won’t comment just yet on the quality of the game (that’s not really for me to say, check the comments…), but the weather definitely dampened spirits to a degree.

I have learned a great deal from the experience and would be interested in another shot at it. Maybe something for a high school challenge…

For more details you should visit my other blog ‘MysteryBoxes‘

Yay! Exciting new opportunities for SuperFly and the creative community…

Brand New Call For Entries: SuperFly QReative

Background
I’ve been researching Games Based Learning (GBL) recently for my Master course… see MysteryBoxes for more info…

NEoN Knights was influenced by this thinking but also continued to influence the direction my project and research I took after the NEoN festival. One of those avenues was Learning and Teaching Scotland who design the National Curriculum for education in Scotland. One of their many divisions is the aptly (and cool-ly) named Consolarium who are dedicated to exploring and supporting GBL.

Consolarium are behind Game To Learn, a GBL conference taking place in Dundee next week and SuperFly was asked this week to exhibit NEoN Knights and talk to delegates about QRs and how they could be used in learning.

Exhibition Opportunity: SuperFly QReative
Of all the research that I did around the time of NEoN Knights one blog post in particular stuck in my mind as it demonstrated how flexible (or sloppy) these potentially very dull little codes could be, and still work!

I invite you creative people to submit your own working QR code.. but get creative on it, and be as far out as you like. You might, as SuperFly did, just add a logo to the code somewhere, maybe send in a photograph of a 3d version or even animate one?! It’s entirely up to you what it looks like and where the link goes… just make it family friendly as all QRs will be exhibited on this site as well.

Call for Entries: Deadline
…is tight! the conference starts next Friday, so to get them all organised I’ll need everything in by midnight on Wednesday 16 March. Submissions should be made via the online form on this site, be bigger than A4 in size, 2MB or less and labelled as follows:

qr-’yourname‘.jpg/gif/pdf

(if you submit more than one – up to 5 per artist – please add a number (1-5)to the end of you name)

So, get going, and spread the word.. lets get a cracking QR exhibition going!

Inspiration

Kaywa: QR Generator and Reader

Beautiful Pixels: photoshopped, doodled, perspective, creative!

Adverblog: a 3d example but could also inspire animation, etc

Content Developer: more creative QRs and videos

Hmm… I know the last 6 months of 2010 have gone without further mention… the last few months on the MDes course has been really busy.. dropped straight into it again with interviews with experts, presentations and also doing a bit of teaching on an Advertising course.. so I kind of lost interest in the post.

So, rather than post something that even I don’t want to read I’ve been populating my other, blog: MysteryBoxes

The focus of MysteryBoxes is my Masters course and the research, classes and project that I’m doing for that so it’ll be updated more regularly.

However, that’s not to say that SuperFly is on the backburner.. there are a couple of ideas being discussed and researched for this year and I’m hoping that at least one of them will be a collaboration as NEoN Knights was. Keep an eye out for developments, subscribe to the newsletter as I’m sure that 2011 will be the year that I actually learn how to use that facility, and if you have any ideas of your own for a SuperFly project please get in touch.

As ever it would be great to get involved with advertising events that would like the SuperFly exhibition (event-within-an-event) kind of touch, so again, if you’re interested the  get in touch!

Finally, for now, I’ve posted some images from  the NEW SuperFly book!

Unfortunately it’s the only one… I created it in iPhoto over the Christmas holidays. Reasonably often I am speaking to people about SuperFly or using it for my masters as an example of something I’ve done… and I was getting fed up of having images float on the screen of my laptop. It’s much nicer to be able to put something into someones hand and they can browse through it at their leisure. It cost me about £30 – which is quite expensive – but in comparison to online alternatives I just felt that iPhoto gave me more control and now I have the printed copy I am extremely happy with the results.

So, i’d recommend this as a way of documenting and presenting a project for interviews or creating a library of projects as you would a portfolio, but in a slightly more finished product.

Happy New Year! I hope all is well with you in 2011 :)

At the end of 2009 I seem to remember writing ’2010, year of the Fly!’

..and-finally

Well, i’m not going to claim that SuperFly set the World on fire but it’s been a whirlwind of a year for me creatively, and a lot of it is down to a little side project that grew many arms and legs.

I first thought of something which resembled SuperFly about 6/7 years ago, fascinated by the idea of turning a stretch of street-poster sites into a exhibition of MY work. In early 2009, inspired by the promise of Dundee’s own Digital Arts festival programmed for the coming November I was prompted to put my plan into effect.. although by now it had become an exhibition, not for me, but for local artists which i would organise and do the design work for.

By November 2009 SuperFly:1 was done and dusted and I was thinking about what should come next.

Oddly, I had had several comments regarding SuperFly’s subversive use of advertising space while, at the time, I was considering the commercial possibilities of applying the exhibition concept to advertising.

..what-is

Never Get Out Of The Boat – Eaon Pritchard

I didn’t have any concerns of ‘selling out’ or ‘selling out’ the artists involved. Firstly, no one would ever be involved in an exhibition without knowing who the sponsor/s would be and secondly, as opposed to commercial art where the illustrator/photographer/designer/artist is for hire and working to a brief, SuperFly artists work is the centre of attention, a vehicle for their work and not to be used as a backdrop for an ‘ad’.

So, what follows is part one of a review of what has happened over the last year, including links to old blog posts where you’ll find a little more info and images. I can’t believe this has all happened during the course of ‘one’ year but reflecting on 2010 certainly helps focus on the jobs for 2011.

Also, look out for artist profiles as they surface over the following weeks.. a thank you to all who have contributed to SuperFly which wouldn’t exist without their involvement.

Hope all’s well with you in 2011!

January
Central Station, a ‘creative Facebook like community (curiously, run by a dedicated division of an advertising agency in Glasgow) was looking to collaborate in some way for their Pop-up day in Dundee, planned for February 2010. This was the perfect opportunity for me to pitch SuperFly’s potential as an ‘advertising’ tool. I proposed that SuperFly cherry pick a selection of illustrators to form a ‘Dundee-only’ poster Exhibition that would also advertise the Pop-up day. With only 3 weeks to the event the posters were up in just a week and a half and the Central Station Vs SuperFly exhibition was live!

..its-happened-again

February
By this point I was bubbling with ideas. The Central Station event was such a positive experience (I gave a short presentation on what SuperFly was all about and the Hannah Maclure Gallery hosted a week long exhibition of posters and photos of the two shows), so much great feedback and many new acquaintances made through the artists taking part and the day itself.

March
Happily, as a result of meeting via SuperFly and discovering a shared interest in all things ‘hand made’ three of the CS exhibition artists got together and formed ‘Dundee Jamboree’. Their first event was ‘Bits ‘n’ Bobs’ on Tuesday 2 March, 2010. To date they’ve had four, maybe five, events and very cool they are too. You can get a taste of the second event, ‘Big Top Jamboree’ (May 2010) in my SuperFly-On-The-Wall ‘mini-doc’ here:

…superfly-on-the-wall

Otherwise you should visit their website for more info, they’re sure to have more up their sleeves for 2011!

April
Starter For 6

If you haven’t heard of SF6 and you are in anyway interested in being a creative business in Scotland then look them out! Run by Scottish Cultural Enterprise it’s a fantastic project to be a part of and you have the opportunity to pitch for up to £10,000 in cash for your business. Challenging in the most positive sense of the word – i’m purposely NOT going to link because if you want it you should go find it! GO!!!

May
Blonde Digital

These folks have been an invaluable source of encouragement this year.

Spurred on by the feedback I was getting at Central Station and SF6 I posted a ‘very’ cagey brief for a ‘Real World Digital Treasure Hunt’ on 38 Minutes (http://38minutes.ning.com/) and within 15 mins it was picked up by Rachel, a planner at Blonde. Several emails and calls (and months) later we managed to arrange a meeting.. but more of that later. But this is the thing.. the meeting (5 months later!!!) was, as they say, ‘gravy’, the initial contact alone was immensely encouraging.

So, if you are in a position of ‘power’ to aid or simply encourage then do it.. you can’t underestimate the positive effect it could have.

June
A perk of SF6 is a mentor. Mine was Alex from Vox Populus in Glasgow; a . She not only gave me my fair share of advice and encouragement but also offered me a spot at the Hidden Lane festival. You can read about it here:

…hidden lane festival

Hidden Lane is a great day out. family friendly and if nothing else I learned that if you want to be a hit with the kids then take a sand-pit with you!

HL was another great opportunity.. and example of being given a boost from a company that could just as easily passed by – thanks Vox! While the collaboration with Ice Cream Architects was a really positive experience it’d still be great to do what I originally intended, which was a live drawing event.. we’ll see.. anyone up for it in 2011?

The first half of the year away and I was considering sidelining SuperFly. It was fun, but really hard work, and with a family, full-time job and no real illustration of my own getting done I thought I should maybe focus on the illustrator for a while…

It was at this point that 2010 really started cooking..!

More soon!

XBox360 is handed over to the NEoN Knights 2010 winner

So The NEoN Knights QR Hunt really warmed up as we got into Thursday morning. shaun60000 had been out periodically between 5 and 11.30pm on Wednesday evening collecting all of the poster site QRs and the likes of thedirtbox and edwardshallow looked like they might be significant competitors.

However, by 5.30pm on Thursday we had a new contended in the form of minimatt who was level pegging with shaun60000 and the others were falling behind.

Controversially edwardshallow tweeted at 5pm on thursday: #NEoNKnights Any fellow NEonKnights willing to help me win the XBox? It’d used for public gaming nights in Dundee’s first gaming café!

edwardshallow amongst the Akinori Oishi exhibition

The top spot would change fairly regularly during the course of Friday morning once the big earner on the NEoN Knights video was released, but by midday on most of the remaining 15 players had all but given up with several big leaps forward but nothing to challenge the 3 main players.

For those three the posters had be scanned, the flyer had been scanned and the tshirt had been scanned and they now all had scanned the code (an all important 500 points) at the end of the video.

It was at this stage the wildcards were introduced into play.

edwardshallow next to the huge ‘NEoN’ foam letters

10 new codes, all with varying value between 25 and 150 points but more importantly 2 of them had minus points!

minimatt and shaun60000 watched each others game play carefully to try and ascertain which of the 10 were negatives. Through this method they both managed to scan 8 codes without being caught out and decided to play safe. Amazing edwardshallow while working alone, also managed to avoid the negapointers!!!

At 4.30 on Friday afternoon, as the final hour of NEoN kicked off with the ‘Industry Panel’ the Three Overlords of the NEoN Knights tournament (SuperFly, Tim Pryde and Rick Curran) knew what needed to be done.

We had reserved a further 10 QR codes for a stand off between the 3 leaders which would take place at the private view of Akinori Oishi’s exhibition at the Hannah McClure Gallery where we were due to present the winner with an XBox360.

Clearly content with sitting equal 3rd at the top of the leaderboard minimatt was a no show. We quickly modified the NEoN Knights system to accommodate 2 players and while they were escorted from the room we planted the codes. Some were on the person of guests at the exhibition – some were hidden around the gallery, behind the bar and on the veranda.

All 10 codes had been printed twice but were only good for one scan. Of course the other player wouldn’t know they were ‘dead’ until they received a message telling them so. Also, just to mix things up, we included two negapointers.

It was 7.30pm, the stage was set, the guests were briefed (to help or hinder as much as they liked..) and the players were set lose into the arena.

Very soon the guests were choosing their favourites and and helping and hindering based on their preference. ‘edwardshallow’ was leaping around the place like a lobotomised Bambi while shaun60000 stealth-like, seemed to disappear into the crowd routing out codes.

7 or 8 mins later and it was all over and neither had a clue how they had done. :)

It would seem that, given his score, shaun60000 managed to find both negapointers as he only managed to increase his original high score by 100 points.

But with a 400 point lead it was edwardshallow who was named the victor of NEoN Knights 2010; and as the XBox was thrust into his hand, true to his word, he announced that the XBox would be donated to the Gaming Cafe that he’s setting up in Dundee.

edward and Shaun were such amazing contributors to the project that we can’t thank them enough, and it was fantastic to see so many people engaging with them during the final stage of their quest!

So, congratulations to edwardshallow (@edwardshallow) NEoN Knights winner 2010 - final score: 3930 points.

Also to shaun60000 (@shaun1two) for being a fantastic runner-up and a catalyst for inspiring several other players to join the game so early on.. (and for the loan of his video camera on which I captured the final frantic event).

edwardshallow and his XBox

Congratulations also to minimatt – sorry you couldn’t be there on the night – but if you are able to turn up to Hannah McClure Gallery there is a runner up prize waiting for you – but you’ll need to be able to prove you are minimatt so contact me first!

Finally I must thank our sponsors:

Hannah Maclure for supplying us with such a fantastic arena and sponsoring the XBox.

NEoN10 for sponsoring the poster space and posters

Tayprint for sponsoring the Tshirts

Blonde Digital (Edinburgh) for sponsoring the software.

I must also personally thank Tim Pryde and Rick Curran (WideOpenSpace, Dundee) for not saying “no” to my insane requests and being as enthusiastic for this project as I was. It’s so much more interesting and fun when you collaborate on projects such as this and they shared the load beyond the call of duty. :)

Huge thanks to Deryck Wallace (The Cooker) for taking the photo’s in this post while I was busy ;)

If you have any comments or queries regarding the project then this is the ideal forum but by all means contact us via email or the submission form. If you would like to see NEoN Knights at NEoN11 or see the game (or something like it) happen elsewhere then please contact SuperFly, again, via the submission page.

Beyond all else, good day, good night and remember – NEoN Knights ENDURE!

For a blow-by-blow account of the action through the perspective of Twitter visit Tim’s blog

On the final day of ‘North East Of North’ 2010 a young twitterer commented that he’d ‘learned more in the final two days than in 2 years of school‘!

Whether that was a personal comment on the ineffectiveness of the local Education authority i’m not sure but what I can confirm is how fantastic NEoN was this year. From Superfly’s perspective not only was there a great balance of art and technology but the speakers regularly went beyond the aesthetic and into the psychology of our relationship, as the audience, as players, and as designers, with narrative. How should that narrative be constructed and presented and what responsibility does that bring..?

So there were big questions being discussed and answers came from many view points.. not always in agreement with each other.. so it’s down to us as individuals to decide where we sit on that spectrum of thought.

App Jam Conference
Monday – Wednesday of last week was the inaugural NEoN App Jam. Part conference, part competition, and absolutely no sleep for the teams who had 48 hours to build an App. SuperFly was pre-occupied with getting NEoN Knights off the ground but feed back from those who attended the conference was extremely positive. The location of Discovery Point seemed to work well and I can definitely vouch for the food. spot on! ;)

Above – Discovery Point – home to the App Jam
Below – Jamie Shek of ‘I Give A Damn’ Winning team of App Jam Dundee 2010

NEoN Conference
Thursday and Friday was the NEoN conference based at Abertay’s Centre for Excellence. Another great venue and more great food. :)

Dino Dini kicked off on Thursday morning with his own brand of philosophy. As someone who was more caught up with ‘Gridrunner’ than ‘Football Manager’ I wasn’t that familiar with Dini or his work but he really got the ball rolling in terms of why it is we engage with all this ‘fake stuff’ on screen. He also made the point (with which I wholeheartedly agree) that ‘excessive narrative reduces player experience‘. He gave a fantastic example through his experience with the vintage space pilot classic ‘Elite’ (a favourite of mine in the 80′s). The game provided a world but the story and experience was entirely immersive and of your own making. He took this a step further by suggesting that assisting the player in their own stories helps them to ‘understand and develop themselves’.

Pictoplasma (with a few of their furry buddies) were up next and gave a great overview of the evolution of character – ‘Character’ being the theme of the conference. While Dini seemed to focus on ‘us’ as the character, Pictoplasma come from a completely different angle. They compile exhibitions and books of illustrations – again, in many ways the narrative is down to the viewer. While the emphasis is on design and illustration they also made the connection between ‘avatars’ and ‘death masks’ and the freedom to be someone  - or someTHING – else!

Above – Pictoplasma character suit and their ‘character scale’

In the afternoon I attended a workshop presentation by James Alliban of Skive (London). He was demonstrating his work in Augmented Reality and, again, narrative took up a reasonable slice of his presentation. He quoted an Indian proverb that says, “Tell me a fact and I will learn. Tell me a truth and I will believe. Tell me a story & it will stay in my heart forever.” This resonated with me as I’ve long recognised storytelling as a significant medium for learning (it’s as old as time!) and yet, these days, it seems to be relatively untapped and it’s cetainly an area that I’m interested in pursuing. (Only this week a documentary on the BBC demonstrated how storytelling is being used to assist sufferers of Dyslexia to learn!)

Another interesting point (crucial, I would suggest..) that Alliban made was that while digital interfaces for experiencing new media, (from spellcheckers to Virtual Reality, etc..) can create valuable extensions to our lives they can also make ‘significant amputations‘. Again, this highlights the responsibility associated with creating such applications.

You can follow his blog here.

Above – Ian Anderson (r) and Lyall Bruce of Sooper Double D

We could be Heroes..
It was also a year, it would seem, for my design heroes to turn up in Dundee. First up was Ian Livingstone, co-creator of Games Workshop, Warhammer and (more significantly for me) Fighting Fantasy. He gave a great overview of gaming from traditional board games, through Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer, and then his ‘second life’ in the realm of digital games and in particular Tomb Raider who, his publishing company, Eidos was responsible for bringing to our attention. I had the opportunity to speak to him during an early lunch on Thursday (you can see my signed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain here) and he showed me the draft layout for a new Fighting Fantasy book that he’s in the process of writing!
On Friday it was ‘graphic design hero’ Ian Anderson, designer behind the mighty the Designers Republic (I <3 my DR)! I was going to ask him to sign my tDR Angry Man poster but in the end I decided that, being Ian Anderson, it was more appropriate for him to sign the tube (don’t want to spoil the poster ;)) and he graciously (though reluctantly “..the work is the signature..”) agreed, complete with Angry Man doodle. (And it’s not going on eBay!)
He did a great Q&A with Lyall Bruce of Sooper DD and then happily sat and chatted with myself, Sooper DD and Tartanbaffies in the Hannah McClure Gallery for an hour or so.

Above – Lyall Bruce (Sooper DD), Ian Anderson (tDR) and John Patterson (Tartan Baffies) Hannah McClure Gallery

I’m conscious that this is an Epic post so i’m going to wrap up..!

Other highlights through the two days were designer/illustrator/artist Akinori Oishi who collaborated with UK character design giants TADO on a poster design for the NEoN programme and also has a solo show in Abertay’s Hannah McClure Gallery until January. He captured everybody’s hearts and imaginations with his (frustratingly) simple designs and humble personality; and not least by his assertion that ‘I just love to draw, it’s my hobby-job‘! ;)

There’s also the potential for a ‘Law hill’ character vinyl toy!

Above – detail from Akinori Oishi exhibition
Below – Aki’s ‘Abertay Student centre’ and ‘Law Hill’ characters

Oscar winning Ken Perlin (TRON) was also fantastic in his demonstration of his work in visual effects and animation. I loved how he explained that the real person he had modelled his ‘face demo‘ on had a ‘significantly higher polygon count‘. He also has his own 3D printer at home ;)

Industry Panel – Friday
The final hour of Friday was taken up by a Q&A of what was designated an Industry Panel of Pat Kane, Simon Meek, Fraser McClean and Tim Pritlove. Google each and every one and you’ll get a glimpse at the level of experience and expertise which was on hand at this years NEoN.

Many areas were covered in the Q&A from DRM and Copyright through to ‘what’s next?’ for digital industries.. What I took from the questions on DRM and attention spans was that if something is ‘good’ and/or ‘valuable’ then it WILL find an audience willing to invest their time (attention) and their money! (ie pay for it and not pinch it)

To summarise i’d say that while last years NEoN was a step forward for Dundee and the local creative community – NEoN 2010 was worthy of any major city in the world. Maybe now the powers-that-be in Dundee will finally sit up and take notice and realise that while there is real talent and interest locally that will organise, curate and sustain this kind of event, unless it is nurtured and encouraged (and employed) that same talent won’t hang around if they are wanted/needed elsewhere.

To freshen things up (you’ll notice w have a very interesting leaderboard just now..) there will be some ‘wild card’ QRs introduced into the game this afternoon. There are 10 new QRs although there are 2 copies of each around the Festival campus (and maybe routes in between).

NOW – the important thing is that while you can gain points with these QRs there are a small number of QRs which will take points away.. sneaky eh..? Well, that’s life. So beware. You won’t possibly be able to tell before you snap them but if you are sneaky enough you might catch the reaction of someone else who does! ;)

It’s down to you now.. and as ever.. NEoN Knights – ENDURE!

PS – This is also a goo opportunity to leave comments about how you liked the game and if you’d like to see us at NEoN again or anywhere else for that matter.. comments here! :)