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).

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.

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.

It was great working with the students when we were brain storming and throwing ideas around – it amazed me how much they knew about digital technologies! They had no problem coming up with feasible (and also ambitious) features to add to the project. We took the finished product to the school and I got to see what the students thought of it, it was great to see our product being used in the classroom, and the students were definitely good game testers! I’ve never seen anyone clicking the same icon so many times in one go.