Many years ago, not long after Strawdog started up, we had an idea on a piece of paper for a game that had cubes, grids, pellets and powerballs, but we weren’t sure how it would work as a game, or what to call it. To remedy that, we made a short movie clip (something we do all the time now) with all our ideas chucked into the pot to simulate how the game might look.

The rest, as they say, is history – this little cube game idea soon became “Cuball”, then renamed to “Ora”, and was finally released on Xbox 360 Live Arcade, PlayStation3, Wii, iPhone, iPad and the Samsung App Store as “Geon”!

You can enjoy this clip of our prototype movie, as well as other Geon promos on our YouTube channel – Click Here!

We’ve some truly outstanding team members here at Strawdog Studios who all contribute a great deal of expertise, time and effort.  That’s what makes our games as good as they are!  

This month we say hi to James Curran, Lead Artist and Animator since 2005.  Most of James’ work recently has been focused on our Peppa Pig games for iPhone and the Nintendo DS ‘Theme Park Fun’, for which he produced all of the art and animation.

We asked James a few questions on his work, opinions and views…

What are your special skills? Most of my work is done in After Effects and we developed a script to export art and animation from AE for use in our games. Initially, this was just used for user interface design, but was later developed to allow art for entire games to be created in After Effects, as with Peppa Pig.

What do you think the year ahead holds in store for the industry? Digital downloads will continue to grow as more platforms are released this year, such as the Nintendo 3DS, Sony NGP, and Xperia Play. I think browser-based gaming will also be a big development over the next year giving people instant access to gaming, making it more accessible to a wider audience.

Your favourite game of all time? Super Mario World. I grew up playing platformers and this is still my favourite! Be a perfectionist. If you think something can be improved, then always take the time to improve it. If you aren’t happy with your work then other people probably won’t be either!

Your top tip for success?

A top Strawdog team member for sure.  Thanks James!

Strawdog Studios has recently partnered up with Turbulenz, a superb platform that will enable us to publish and sell all of our games in a browser format, opening us up to a much wider online gaming market.

Turbulenz is suitable for casual and AAA games.  It requires no binary download and no install.  The best bits are that gamers play directly in the browser and games can be sold virtually anywhere on the web!

We’re really chuffed to be working with Turbulenz and looking forward to taking our already successful arcade style game Space Ark directly to a potential audience of 500 million gamers!

For more information and to talk to a member of our friendly team, click here.