Gabe Swarr recently lent his design and animation skills to an iPhone game. MeowWalker (iTunes link) is a Michael Jackson-themed, rhythm-based game that Swarr designed and animated in Flash for Robot Symphony. As the iPhone doesn’t support Flash, they obviously exported the frames out of the software, as does the Pocket God team. I was watching this trailer below and wondering how they got the rights to Jackon’s Thriller, and then I read on Swarr’s blog that the app actually searches your iPhone for MJ tracks and pulls them into the game. Clever stuff.
Flash-animated iPhone games are popping up like mushrooms. This one, by Joe Cartoon appears to have been created while taking mushrooms. It’s called Blend the Boss:
… and one from the Happy Tree Friends team, called Slap Happy:
Speaking of games, here’s some Flash-animated gameplay footage from a Virtual Puppy that UK-animator Paul Nicholson created for Cartoon Network’s Boomerang website. Nice stuff!
I don’t have an iPhone, and I’m actually considering the Palm Pre to replace my dying Blackberry – but even those of us without the ubiquitous gadget know how big this damn App Store has become. Noone is more aware of this than Allan Dye, whose work you’ve seen here a number of times. He lent his design and animation skills to a new game from Bolt Creative called Pocket God, and the thing just took off. It’s held the #1 “paid apps” spot on iTunes, and it currently hovers around the 4th spot. It’s obviously not a Flash app, as Apple is loath to include Flash on their device, but all the animation was created with Adobe’s software. Dye exports his animation as PNG files and then edits an XML doc that calls up these PNGs. Pocket God programmer Dave Castelnuovo has developed a system that automagically creates XML data to control the PNG files. Allan and Dave co-wrote this sequence of fan-suggestion vignettes, which Allan animated.
iPhone app mania has apparently claimed a number of Flash animators. Jeremiah Johnson launched Ninja Buddy and my pal Sean McKenzie is part of the team behind the newly launched Wedgie Toss 2 (launches iTunes store).
Oren Mashkovski, Mysh and JP Vine recently formed a venture together, called The Missing Link. They didn’t waste any time getting their first project off the ground – a promo for an iPhone app. WorldMate “takes the pain out of your business travel,” and this Flash-animated video takes the piss out of other, less useful iPhone apps.
It’s no secret that owning an iPhone makes you smarter, taller, more interesting and, well…. a little annoying. Okay, we’re all just jealous, but that doesn’t make this Flash-animated short any less funny. Cell Phone Reunion, a Collegehumor.com original, was written by Sam Reich and Mike Parker who also handled the animation.
