Case: CSI - Training Camp

Early October Extrude Interactive got commissioned to do a game themed around the hit tv-series CSI by Kanal5 (Sweden). So we had to go ahead and do it in swedish, although it feels like a heresy.
We figured that we'd make an old style drag and drop game with a bit of a twist. The interface is based around a toolbox / actionbox with wich you interact with the crime-scene or your suspects / evidence. Every action updates the interface and feeds you back results i.e. DNA-test results, Questioning logs and so forth. When you got enough to book somebody, your performance will be evaluated.
This game was released on December 5 / 06 and currently it contains one case to solve. Work is nearly completed on case 2 and case number 3 & 4 is under heavy writing.
Work on this game has surely been interesting. There was a programming challenge in building a cross-referring system that checked all the evidence and interacted with the state of the game that i almost banged the skin off my forehead on. And then there was the 0-Euro budget for photography that had to be overcome. So I had to develop some kind of trick to make my photos feel like high-end production photographs. Here are some examples:


At the start of each case theres an intro-sequence containing 4-5 photographs. Image on top is from the first case where the owner of a small transport company is murdered. My boss had some ties with people that worked in a similar environment, so we found this setting perfect. This photo is shot with a Nikon D200 digital camera with a Sigma 17-35mm 2.8-4 lens at: ISO 400, No flash, 1/30s @ f/2.8. Got lucky I could hold my hand steady enough.
Punched up the contrast / shadows / saturation and fooled the camera raw plugin that i was photographing tungsten lights, when in fact not (as you can see) to get that green feeling. Also added some vinjetting to close the image up and pull out the important details.

This trick is used constantly throughout production to keep the mood constant. Sometimes the white balancing is modified to get a different color-sceme.

Shooting at night with non-existing lighting required stationary subjects and sometimes a big imagination on how to modify the existing lighting in a scene. Failed to mention the trusty tripod for those really hard shots with 10 seconds of exposure.


For the interface we bought a lot of stock photograpy available from StockExchange and Stockxpert. Those sites are invaluable. All the icons are almost 3 times bigger than the original so that they keep absolute maximal sharpness. A lot of retouching, and i mean a lot was done.


Then there was the matter of getting suspects to pose for camera. At first people where relatively unwilling, so my boss and some of his aquaintances posed for the first. This changed later when the game was official, now theres no trouble in getting people to pose at all.
As you can see alot can be done with minimal resources if you take the time to retouch everything thoroughly.
Same trick here as in the crime scene photos. A lot of contrasts.
All in all, hope you found some of this interesting.

Night Photography

Had a stroke of insomnia last night, just had to work out a way to take great night shots. Apparently not that hard if you have a stable camera for a couple of seconds.

STCC - Sunday

Last sunday "the Company" went for a little trip to Gälleråsen racetrack to check up on a driver we sponsored some months ago. I suspected the whole thing would turn out in one of those days you ought to have stayed in bed.
We caught the bus from Central Gävle about 7 AM. Some cooperative companies had offered to join as well, to cut bus-prices a bit.

I'm far from a bus person myself, but the whole trip actually turned out great. Our boss and some other boss had planned ahead and fixed catering and a movie. Great, something to do for 3 hours I thought to myself. The movie turned out to be "Driven" featuring the award winning Sylvester Stallone. After the gruesome experience I was pumped with American cliché steriods and jumping at the thought of smelling burnt rubber.

And to my personal amusement the whole race track reeked of it too.
Dissapointment struck when our driver had some automotive trouble and had to bail the race early. But his teammate lessened the blow by advancing some 7 placements and finishing 5th total.

Road trip to Germany

I'm home after a 1½ week long vacation in Germany. It all was quite fun at times, even though we had serious business. I had the opportunity to take a lot of photos over the course of the trip. My family owned a house in a small town called Schweina, Thüringen. That we sold during the course of the vacation. Neatly located in the beginning mountains of Bayern the whole town is intoxicated with an old pitoresque feeling. The architecture is simply stunningly retro, 30:s style.

This is the local post office in town. Intact since... cant remember actually. But its quite old. Put it in there so you can assess what I was talking about earlier in my post-journey ramblings. Nearby there was a bar you could order some banana-splits with alcohol inside. I decided to get drunk instead of divulging in the facts a local guide was more than happy to force on unwilling bypassers.

The whole town is enclosed in a mountain pass, some residential areas stretch the slopes but the city core resides on the bottom, creating a cauldron for the sun to cook. The temperature sometimes reached 39deg, C.
After about an afternoon of beeing totally baked in the sun I decided something radical had to be done. I took shelter in some old mining tunnels opened up for the public as a guided attraction, of course i brought the camera along. I figured the strap to have molten in on my sholder by this time.
I spent the rest of the trip trying to dodge the sun and doing fun stuff, like going on trips to nearby towns and getting wasted on cheap beer. Ended up with a half poor vacation and a sunburn from hell. Can't say it didn't have its moments though...
It's really nice to be home again, you just don't realize it until you've been gone for a while.

Case: Furniture Commercial

Did a commercial for a local furniture company recently. It contained a bunch of fun shots to work with. There's a ball bouncing to the beat of music through the store while a speaker sells the concept to the audience.
In the beginning we had a bunch of shots of the store. Thing is that at the time of the shoot it was midwinter. And when we finished the commercial all the snow had melted. So I had to revisit the site and take some more. Problem was that it kept raining all the time.
So basically I worked up some photoshop magic and got that summer look digitally.
The complex part of this tv-spot was the shadow and lighting of the ball.
Since the ball was bouncing all over the furniture i constructed a low polygon mesh of the scene and matched the camera to the real shot in 3D. I then matched the lighting and animated in the ball. The whole spot contained about 10 shots of that kind. So it was a bit of work. This commercial is now circulating locally in Gävle. So the audience is quite slim. But i think it will do the trick.

Case: Product Photography

Recently a snack bar owner approached our company and wanted some lit menu-signs with big colorful picures of his different snacks on them.
I took the boss's car and drove out with some reflex paper and 2x500w halogen construction lights (ooh the proffessionalism). We had kinda fun doing this as the manager and I joked around doing the different setups, between shots i got to eat as much as I wanted. Can't say anything else than that this was a dream gig. Can think of a few gigs that would be cooler, but nonetheless I love my job.

Case: Promotion Photography

December 2005 i snapped some model shots to promote a scooter that Brynäs was sponsoring (those hockey guys again). This was my second photo-session that actually contained people. Previously i found it reasonably hard to direct people. But its getting easier for every time as i learn what i want from each shot and how to verbalize it in simple instructions. A good sense of humor is also required to get the models to relax.
This shot is originally photographed in a really dirty garage with a white wall. I pulled the background using photoshop and kept some of the shadows along with my own painted ones to create a somewhat believable illusion that my company actually owns a photo studio. The scooter was eventually sold and everyone was happy, except for me that got some axel-grease on my suit pants just before a meeting.

Case: Monzta Grand Prix

Writing this post mortum. Because i kinda lack the time to actually update this blog realtime
February 15:th, i completed the game for Brynäs, a very popular hockey team in Sweden. Two months later it had doubled the hits on the website and later on exceded 200.000, with over 20.000 unique players.
The game was made in flash, programmed with object oriented actionscript. This is a racing engine i have been working on for quite a while, with the help of one of my ex co-workers. The graphics are made by me in Adobe Photoshop. Roughly a combination of hand painting, texturing royalty free asphalt and dirt textures from www.sxc.hu.