Our Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab is nominated for Website of the Year and the People’s Choice Award at the FWA. To cast your vote, head here.

Artholes.

Fl@t33’s new book “Postcard” (Lauwrence King, ISBN: 978-185669-569-5) is now out, featuring (thanks, Tomi!) Less Rain Tokyo’s stationary and website:

Less Rain has been nominated for agency of the year at the 2008 .NET Awards, and our Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab has been nominated for website of the year! Vote now, at thenetawards.com.

Update: Voting is over, Flight Lab made it onto the short list for website of the year! Although that short list is very short, the competition is tough. We are up against Happiness Factory and Eco Zoo. So, fingers crossed!

Update: And the results are in: congratulations to Eco Zoo! Flight Lab made it runner up, not bad at all!

The ‘A Message From Earth’ project invites Bebo users to submit messages and pictures that consider the planet from a fresh perspective. A selection of these messages will be broadcast from the National Space Agency in Ukraine on October 9th. The messages will travel on an amazing 120 trillion mile journey from Earth to Gliese 581, the closest planet believed by scientists to be capable of supporting life.

Less Rain is responsible for creating the unique ‘A Message From Earth’ application, which is the first fully integrated rich media Bebo application created entirely in Flash. The application encourages users to compose messages in text, photo or drawing form. Users can vote on their favorite messages, with the top 500 making it into the galactic broadcast on October 9th. This digital time capsule is historically significant, being the first ever space transmission where the content has been democratically formed on the Internet.

“I understand that in the majority of cases these messages may be naïve, but I also hope that we will receive a creative and fresh look at the subject,” says Dr Zaitsev, one of the world’s leading experts in interstellar radio communication and A Message From Earth Team member.

What is your message from earth?

Let the Universe know by submitting your composition by September 30th. You might even receive a reply - in about 20 years!

Visit www.bebo.com/amessagefromearth

And… if you want to vote for me, check my latest submission in this widget:

Tuesday August 5th: Volume 3 of talk about the weather! Four inspiring, colourful and must-see presentations made a great evening!

Learn more about talk about the weather and subscribe to our newsletter. By subscribing, you will get an invitation once a month automatically.

See the photos of Vol.3 here.

We are looking for a senior interactive designer / creative lead with a solid academic background in design and substantial online experience in building rich-media websites.

You will be responsible for coming up with concepts for corporate & consumer websites, designing interaction with the information architecture in mind, as well as producing implementation-ready screens.

Every project we do demands a great concept / idea behind it and pushes the boundaries of what is possible, so you will never find yourself doing the same website over and over again.

You will be the main creative lead for the London office; working with developers, designers and project managers to ensure your creative vision stays intact. You will also be in touch with the Less Rain creative & technical directors in Berlin & Tokyo.

As a person you are always thinking of new ways to use design and interaction to solve problems. You are quick and stress tolerant, with attention to detail and good communication skills. You are comfortable talking about your ideas and can inspire others to follow your lead.

Skills

• Experience in designing rich media large scale websites
• Academic background in design, with excellent Information design & typography skills
• A feel for good usability
• A minimum of 5 years experience
• Excellent knowledge of Flash (as a designer, no coding experience necessary), Photoshop, Illustrator / Freehand
• Moving image & 3D software (After Effects, Maya, 3D Studio Max etc.) is a bonus, but not essential.

Initial salaries are comparable to the market level. Our first and foremost priority is to create quality work, and we do our best to apply this principle for everyone’s benefit.

Send your resume, references and portfolio to jobs@lessrain.com.

No agencies please.

We are currently looking for an intern. Do you have open eyes and an open mind?

Are you interested in travelling through digital culture, experiencing new pixel breezes and swimming in a pool of creative ideas?

If you’re:

• interested in working for a creative web design agency in the center of Berlin
• excited by animation
• a student in communication design or a related field
  (please no first year students)

don’t hesitate to contact us.

Technical skills:
You should be well versed in the Adobe CS programs: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and have a basic knowledge of Flash and After Effects.

Language skills:
As Less Rain is located in London, Berlin and Tokyo and all three offices work closely together, command of the english language is an essential requirement.

Preferably, we would like to find someone for six months. The internship starts in mid of August. Remuneration will be paid.

Please send your application including CV and samples of your work to Anna of Less Rain Berlin: anna@lessrain.com

As a practical add-on for our loyal Flight Lab users we created a mini hangar widget that users can embed on their blog, social platform profile etc.

We happily used Clearspring as the platform for our widget, just click “Get this and Share” and take it away. If you enter the e-mail address you registered with at Flight Lab, the widget display your own planes to show off your flight machine building skills.

Related Posts:
Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab
Developing Flight Lab

Flight Lab just won at Flash in the Can! Nothing on the site yet, but I found it here. Hope it’s true.

We were nominated in the categories “3D” and “Technical Excellence”. While we won the first one, the latter went to preloaded for “Launchball” - congratulations!

Apparently, we also won the “Best in Show” award. Which is amazing. Especially with the ridiculous acceptance speech video we handed in. Thanks everyone at FITC, and thanks to our moms…

Update: FITC posted the results…

Flight Lab is a finalist at this year’s FITC Awards, in the categories 3D and in Technical Excellence. Cast your vote at the Peoples Choice Award at http://awards.fitc.ca/pc/

Bring on the wood and sheet metal! Break out your saw! Cut the pieces to size, assemble them, paint them and… voila! You’ve built your own airplane. Now it’s time to get it off the ground… will it fly…?

As of today, Less Rain’s new 3-D model application with integrated flight simulator, the Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab, will be online, a 3-part game based on Red Bull’s Flugtag event.

Step One: The fuselage, wings and pitch elevator are cut out of Styrofoam, cardboard, wood or scrap metal. The pieces are then automatically assembled into a 3-D airplane. Material and shape will later play an important role in the machine’s flying properties.

Step Two: Customizing the parts. This can be done by uploading your own photos, designs and patterns or, alternatively, using brushes to paint the machine ‘by hand’. The results might be anything from a realistic looking airplane to an abstract flying artwork.

Step Three: The prospective pilot can test the quality of his custom-designed aircraft and its flying capabilities amidst stunning natural scenery in the 3-D flight simulator. The machine is launched from a floating launch pad using the arrow keys. First the wings beat softly then the plane takes off energetically into the big blue sky.

The goal now is to cover as much distance as possible. To achieve this, users may experiment with acrobatic maneuvers, collect cans of Red Bull to refuel and employ the thermal updrafts – but they must beware of the bumpy crosswinds!

Points are given after each flight for distance covered and piloting style. Loops, drifts, rolls, low-level flight and other maneuvers are rewarded. In addition, the other users rate the plane’s design. A total score is calculated which, if it’s good enough, may be included on a high score table.

Pilots can store their planes in a hangar where they can develop them further or try out new designs anytime. Another unique aspect of the game is that any user can take-off with any airplane and, what’s more, can change and improve it to their own tastes.

The back-end and user administration part of Flight Lab has been developed by Signal7, our partner of choice when it comes to enterprise level, tailor-made database solutions.

Related Links:
Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab
Pilot avatar motion capture demo and the original Paperdude post
Signal7

Update:
We’re Site of the Day at the FWA! Cheers, Rob!

Update II:
We made it Site of the Month at the FWA! That’s just fantastic, thanks everybody at the FWA!

Update III:
Thank you UltraShock, for the BombShock Award! And we are Adobe Site of the Day for March 4th!

Continue reading: Developing Flight Lab

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