Working closely with the Tate we  devised a game which was not only fun but taught the children about the restoration process. Upon users choosing a painting from the gallery, they are then took to the restoration room where using a number of tools and equipment they can get to work restoring. There are five mini games which reflect the true processes restorers go through when restoring a painting; removing Dust, removing any grime, removing the old varnish, filling in any cracks, and painting over the filled cracks.  The game will give you a score based on how well you’ve restored the painting, and at the end of the game you can compare the Before and After image of the painting to see the difference you’ve made.

We gained inside information directly from The Tates restoration team in the processes they go through and the tools and techniques they use. This included using using saliva and a cotton bud to remove grime from a painting! The game integrates in to the current Tate Kids website allowing users to upload their restored paintings and see other people’s work.

It has been fun working on this project, we have successfully combined 2D (using flash to add effects) the and 3D elements into the game (the art gallery and the restoration room was modelled in 3D to create the right mood and lighting).

We’re pleased to announce that our multi award winning application makes it debut on the iPhone, and it’s even better. We have learnt a lot from the Facebook version of the application, and we wanted to bring new features to the iPhone version.

The app brings several new features to MirrorMe, including the ability to work in offline mode and manually detect your face and apply filters, choose how far in to the future you want to age, and extended sharing options. We’ve also optimised our server so online processes should be even faster.

We spent weeks optimising the application and interface to suit the iPhone, and implemented changes such as the offline mode to ensure everyone can enjoy the results of MirorMe, even without a connection.

Available on the App Store priced at £1.19, download it today and let us know what you think.

The team building day was both fun and challenging. The course, set high in the trees in the forest takes you platform to platform, connected by challenges made from rope and wood. A combination of rope ladders, swing bridges and tight ropes along with several high level zip lines (some more than 700m long!) made the day exciting, challenging and fun. Many of us came some what to overcoming fears of heights, and the day was finished off for many, with some great Fish and Chips in Whitby.

Check out our video montage of the day below.

The Forge work with local artists and schools on different art projects and over the months they have collected lots of interesting data (photos of the workshop, videos of the projects, paintings, stories written by the children etc) The aim of Metamorphosis was to create a site that can display the data collected in a visually creative way for people to browse and see the kind of work that has been created by the pupils.

We came up with the idea of using spirals to link each project together, it also allow the user to quickly browse through each project that was of interest to them. For each project, there is also a word cloud which represent how the pupil feels about the project and what they have learned from it. Adam and Cora visited each school to film pupils and gain their feedback (they say never work with children or animals, but we thoroughly enjoyed it!).

It was both a fun and interesting project to be involved with.

Jeremiah Alexander and Adam Gatenby of Ideonic receiving their Megas award from Aleks Krotoski Academic, tech journalist on The Guardian, presenter of BBC2's Virtual Revolution at Paramount, Centre Point, London. (Photo: Frantzesco Kangaris)

We’re proud to announce that MirrorMe has won a highly prestigious 2010 MediaGuardian Innovation Award (Mega) in the Applications and Gadgets category for its Facebook application, MirrorMe.

Judges praised MirrorMe by declaring: “It’s new, usable, popular and therefore has social value and empowers kids on making decisions about their future.”

The application beat off very stiff competition including from Nike Football Master Control to win this highly prized award.

Receiving the award at an awards ceremony at Paramount, Centre Point, London on Thursday 25 March 2010, Jeremiah Alexander, Ideas Architect, Ideonic says:

“It was mega to win a Mega. Sorry! Couldn’t resist that one! The MediaGuardian Innovation Awards (Megas) are the pinnacle of media award world.  They are the Oscars for our industry. To beat off competition from the likes of Nike to win a 2010 Mega is amazing.

All the team worked really hard developing the MirrorMe application and took risks to push both the technical and creative boundaries. It is humbling to receive recognition from the key movers and shakers in the digital community for this project.”

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/megas/winner-2010-applications-gadget-mirrorme

The Mega awards are run by the MediaGuardian – a section of the national broadsheet newspaper, The Guardian.

This is MirrorMe’s second award this year.  MirrorMe won the Interactive Media Awards (IMA) Outstanding Achievement Award in January 2010.

We increased both our technical and creative boundaries during developing MirrorMe, and with an iPhone version of MirrorMe in development, we continue to do so.

MirrorMe features in the ‘Application and Gadgets’ category along side iPhone apps Bunny Munro by Enhanced Editions,  and the Nike Football Control application. It’s a great honour to be up against such great applications, and shows what great work we’re doing at Ideonic.

The winners will be announced at the awards night in late March. For more information about the MediaGuardian Innovation Awards visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/megas.

Although primarily designed to be simple and fun, MirrorMe has some clever technology behind it. It uses advanced Facial Recognition technology to detect over 86 unique points on the human face and uses this information to create an individualised and scarily accurate facial distortion. It also incorporates medical research to create changes specific to the individual user’s sex, age, location, ethnic origin and bad habits.

MirrorMe will be coming to other social networks in the New Year, and an iPhone version is also planned. Try it for yourself.

MirrorMe is a Facebook application that allows you to take any photo of yourself and after entering an overview of your bad habits, morph your face into its degenerated future form. You can then share and compare images with your friends and experiment with the effects of different lifestyle choices.

Although primarily designed to be simple and fun, MirrorMe has some clever technology behind it. It uses advanced Facial Recognition technology to detect over 86 unique points on the human face and uses this information to create an individualised and scarily accurate facial distortion. It also incorporates medical research to create changes specific to the individual user’s sex, age, location, ethnic origin and bad habits.

Have a go yourself, and see what you will look like when your old! http://apps.facebook.com/mirrorme

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During the workshops we introduced the group to the games industry, some of the games we have made, and gave them a general insight in to how we, and the games industry work. The pupils were then introduced to the Microsoft platform PopFly, which is a great interface to learn the basic logic and behaviors simple games have. After playing some of the games and ripping them apart, the pupils then looked at planning and creating their own game using the platform.

The final session was spent polishing the game, and talking about how publishing and marketing works in the industry with some real life examples of our games. The pupils seemed to really enjoyed the sessions and the school plans to introduce similar workshops to more pupils in the future.