This was fun to work on: a new iPhone app (for iPod Touch, too): "Veggie Tales Just for You." We contracted with Big Idea Entertainment to animate their characters. They got the voice guys for Bob and Larry (the Tomato and Cucumber leads) to record over 3000 names. You can search a database and pick the name you want then it builds the customized game and downloads it on the fly. I tested it out and it's pretty neat to have Bob sing my name. The "game" activities are pretty simple but I bet it will be a lot of fun for little kids that are into the show. You can spin them around and make them change costume. Change the backgrounds by dragging on them, or make Larry play his tuba by pressing on him and notes fly out and fill up the screen.
You can click here for the app
I'll post some of the animation (if I get clearance to show it). Or at least discuss the technique a little. The show is originally done in 3D but I built the game assets in Flash, just manipulating some still renders they provided. Came out looking pretty much like 3D.
Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com
Okay, here are a couple of animations I did for this app.
This is the intro theme song :
The cool thing is that the program takes the name you pick from the database and then marries it with the rest of the animation while downloading the app. In this case "Cassie."
And this is a sequence that wound up not getting used, I think for lack of time. (Hopefully we'll get it implemented in an update.)
So, the original assets were generated in a 3D program (I don't actually know what they use at Big Idea) but I cut them up in Photoshop, making my usual "Mr. Potato Head" pieces and pulled them into Flash to create the sequences we needed for the game. A glitch in that production model is that Flash can't be imported directly into the iPhone app. I had to export everything as a png sequence which the programmer reassembled in his authoring environment.
Ted Nunes - www.tedtoons.com