Photo updates from Protohaus Shanghai

The rest of the set at Leo's Flickr.

Reel 08

I'll just put this here for now...






Works included:

+ Motion Theory
+ Protohaus
+ Yahoo! Design Innovation Team

Shanghai, Reel, Berimbau update.

I've been living in Shanghai now. It's been a blast! Perhaps an update on a later date about this whole live-in-china deal.

For now, here's an updated demo-reel, quicktime . I'll post this on youtube some day in the near future as well.

Projects shown in order:

• Motion Theory - Nike One, Particle spring ball and procedural animation.
• Fidg't Visualizer
• Nokia zoomable interface prototype
• Flickr "Viewport" prototype
• Yahoo! Design Innovation Team "Bookscape" prototype.
• Yahoo! Design Innovation Team "Answers Cloud" prototype.
• Yahoo! Design Innovation Team "Trips" prototype.
• Yahoo! Design Innovation Team "Query Bursts" prototype.
• Yahoo! Design Innovation Team "Del.icio.us Jellyfish" prototype.

I didn't want to make this too public early on since there's quite a few things in there that potentially fall into some obscure NDA categories but after showing this to plenty of colleagues I feel somewhat safer in their confidence about this.


Our Berimbau team has also launched a new website under the Ninja Workshop moniker. The game went through a ton of development this summer and we're currently in the middle of redesigning the combat gameplay.

XHaus

Some call it XHaus, or what I personally call "Y!Fail" or internally, "Y!Bang" *smirk*. Yahoo let go of our team, and it's really -really- unfortunate. If anything, it's extremely short-sighted of Yahoo!.

As a "last word" for my fellow colleagues there, I want to thank above all Joy Mountford for starting our team and vision, and Ben Clemens for keeping everything in order and feeding us delicious lunches. They've worked many hard hours and fought to the bitter end for our team.

Every time a colleague asks me "Mike, why the hell are you working at Yahoo!?" I defended them. "Yahoo! is not about search!" I say. "They are a web portal and a nest for innovation, especially in our offices in San Francisco!" For weeks we were certain this would not affect us. I had hope, real hope, that what we believed in, what we defended, were true.

However, when push came to shove, Yahoo! fell flat on its face. This is not a criticism of Yahoo! per-se, but for the silly corporate squabble that puts finances too far above innovation.

To my colleagues in no particular order: Aaron Koblin, Aaron Meyers, Parul, Doug Fritz, Ray Mcclure, Juliana Yamashita, Daniel Massey, Carrie Burgener, Jen Lau, Jenny Chowdhury, Vaibhav Bhawsar, and Mia -- you are all by far the most professional and competent team I have ever worked with and it has been a tremendous honor working with you. My only wish leaving YHaus is to some day cross paths again and pick up where we have left off.

Shiny Happy Fits of Rage

Kupo and I started a album project called the "Shiny Happy Fits of Rage", a phrase taken from one of Kimya Dawson's songs on the Juno soundtrack.

We haven't a page for this album yet so I'll post some links here for you to listen.

The first one is our trial run called Ladybug Editor. It's sort of our thesis to the Shiny Happy Fits of Rage; to set a laid back, merry sunday afternoon feel with a twitch of video-gamerism.

The second song that I've just completed editing tonight is called Counterfeit Kitten. It's slightly more aggressive but equally as mellow. I hope you have good weed!

Works

List of works have now been posted in the section above. It's a bunch of links right now, the best I can do in my limited time. In addition, a ton of clients are left out because their rights aren't cleared yet. Ugh :/

Darkness, Darling

The songs I've been making the past couple of days have been culminating in an album of sorts, "Darkness, Darling". Go there to check out new songs, progress notes, etc.