"ORLEGI" 2010 from the gela on Vimeo.

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The inspiring team at Whole Foods Market asked that we create an animation announcing the opening of their Lynnwood, WA store, but were adamant that it also share the values they hold dear when it comes to healthy and sustainable lifestyles. They didn’t want a commercial; they wanted a story.

Our initial meeting was enlightening. We not only learned about their Whole Kids Foundation, whose mission is to promote health and wellness for the next generation, and about the rich company history that is woven throughout their values even today, but we also learned that gently rolling a Satsuma helps to release the flavorful juices. They asked us about our first “organic experiences” and their wish that every child have the opportunity to know what it is to enjoy safely sourced, organic products. Let’s just say we enjoyed our collaborative sessions.

They strongly believe in their mission, as do we, to create a healthier and more sustainable culture for our kids so we began the project with an abundance of positive energy.  Animations take a great deal of work—it  would be a stretch to call any of it a breeze—but  there was a certain sense of ease with which the concepts came together as both teams shared their visions. It all just made sense.

The animation is more than the opening of Whole Foods Market in Lynnwood. It’s about the beginning of a story—our collective story—one in which a child can be the teacher, a community can be the voice and a patchwork quilt of earth and water can truly be Whole.

When We Share...We Grow from Whole Foods Market® PN on Vimeo.

We want to give a big thank you to the Whole Foods team as well as all our hard working Plexipeeps for coming together to share this great message and we can’t wait to see you all at the new Lynnwood Whole Foods Market opening March 15th!.

Also, check out the When We Share, We Grow animation on the big screen starting March 2 at the Alderwood Mall Theatres.

Tashtastic from Tessa Morgan on Vimeo.

This was not the intended message of the piece, to be sure, but after reading Michal “Lippy” Lipman’s account of the birth of this great doodle, we are pretty sure it spoke the same message to animators everywhere. Lippy defines himself as a storyteller. Not by trade, mind you, but in a deeper and more complex part of his soul. To a degree, many animators feel this way because after all, what is an animation but a way to evoke the emotion behind words using moving artistic imagery?

If a picture tells a thousand words, than even the shortest storyline animation can evoke a thousand emotions. From the use of color and texture, to the expressions and body language exhibited through characters and the necessary high-level grasp of context, so much can be said in a very short amount of time. Using an in-depth understanding of human communications, successful animators can make an audience understand even the most complicated of ideas in as much time as it takes for us to read one short paragraph.

Short storyline animations can go beyond broadcasting a brand; they can send a message full of the complexities of your journey as a company: This is who we are and this is what we stand for. Not bad for about 60 seconds out of your day.

Wired Magazine reviews 4 portable solar chargers

What device could you not live without for more than a few hours? Keep it clean now, this is a family blog.

To sum up, Leyden ultimately claims that free-to-play games will conquer the gaming console market and have the potential to be highly profitable thanks to in-game purchases. Kaplan counters that the model as it stands is not sustainable, especially for creating high-quality games.

While there’s no telling who will win the “I-told-you-so” rights, or whether either of them will get the chance to do so, there's just no arguing that the trends affecting the traditional gaming world will also affect the world of advertainment and gamification. While many theories abound, it’s hard to do anything but speculate how an expansion in the free-to-play market would impact how we successfully gamify everyday experiences.

Given the adaptability of the console makers to meet the expanding list of customer demands—after all, consoles like the Xbox and PS3 are fuel more than just our gaming habits—we don’t see that model dying out anytime soon. From a game developer perspective, each platform carries their own methods for making or breaking innovation and creativity. Ideally, the vast array of mass and niche markets will support both models in their own way so we can all just play nice.

“I still like hefty real-life books, but mostly I like e-books if I have a second, vertically oriented screen. I just always want to be able to glance at the book, whether it’s on my desk or on a screen. Hate having to scroll constantly.” – Joel

“I love (hardcopy or digital) books but don’t reference them much day-to-day. I find them really helpful when getting started with something that’s new to me – a brand new platform or language. After that I usually turn to Google or stackoverflow for questions as they come up. In theory it’d be nice to buy something on the kindle store and read it on your iphone or your PC but PDFs usually are even more portable. And I agree with Joel. Having a vertically oriented monitor makes them a lot easier to read quickly.” – David

“Sitting at my desktop I'll pretty much only use digital (e-books or forums), but away from the desktop, just reading to learn, I'm okay using both. I actually probably prefer the hard copy to the Kindle in this scenario if the book has large blocks of sample code.” – Ian

“What’s a ‘book’?” - Jesse

Well there you have it. Dev’s, what do you prefer when you need to pull from reference material? Answer in the comments below and also you can thank us for not doing a Valentine's Day Post.