For some, the holidays are about spending time with family and friends, putting smiles on loved one's faces or rushing to get that last minute perfect item for that special someone. For me its about eCard; lots of eCards.Some of our clients (and our client's clients) have come to depend on us for producing interesting, ridiculous, or just plain wacky eCards year after year. This year, I thought I would quickly share some of my favorites and talk a little about how they were produced so without further ado I present to you the Radii eCard Bonanza!

Martha McCarthy and Company
http://www.mccarthyco.ca/seasonsgreetings/


Without question one of the wackiest and most fun eCards we created this year (or any year for that matter) was for the Toronto based family law firm Martha McCarthy and Company (MMC). MMC wanted to play off the popularity of Angry Birds but tie it back into their business. Working together we came up with Angry Blondes - a holiday themed Angry Birds game featuring two MMC lawyers instead of birds.

The game was built out entirely in Flash with an HTML and CSS driven wrapper to house the Flash SWF file. Due to the tight timeline, we decided it was best to base it off of an existing commercially available template (http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2011/06/07/how-to-make-angry-birds-part-2/). Even though this did give us a HUGE head-start, I still had to do a fair bit of finagling to get the template file to work correctly with Flash Builder (it was built with the windows based AS3 IDE Amethyst).

Once the template file was loading up correctly it was simply a matter of creating the MMC graphics, laying out the the three levels (each level was its own movieclip), adding in the sound-effects, and including the Angry Blondes intro and final scenes.

VAULT Solutions
http://www.vaultsolutions.com/seasonsgreetings/card.aspx


The basic concept behind the VAULT eCard revolved around Santa's sleigh needing repair; the user is tasked with picking the best parts to create Santa's Sleigh 2.0. Once the user has finished building the sleigh, it gets added to a physics driven slope so they can see their creation in action.

The remainder of the VAULT eCard was built with standard AS3. All the parts get added and stored in arrays with each part having its own speed, looks, or capacity property set beforehand. Next, a timer randomly selects a new part from one of the arrays to get added to the conveyor belt (making sure not to add a part that is already visible).

The physics system in this eCard was made possible by the fantastic World Construction Kit (WCK), a port of the Box2D physics engine that integrates wonderfully into the Flash IDE. After a relatively painless file setup (you need to get your Flash file talking with the WCK code), you are able to apply all types of physics to any flash graphics or movieclips you have on your stage. If you're at all interested in Flash and physics I would highly recommend you take a look at the WCK here http://www.sideroller.com/wck/ it is truly excellent.

J K Hannaford
http://www.jkhannaford.com/greetings/2011/


J K Hannaford (JKH) is another Toronto based law firm that we created an eCard for this year. JKH typical likes elegant and simple eCards so we decided to try to virtually re-create the timeless experience of opening a physical greeting card, but on the web.

The JKH eCard was built using a mixture of newer web technologies. jQuery drives most of the functionality and card animations, while CSS3 adds some extra niceties like drop-shadows and gradients.

Radii (2010 eCard)
https://goradii.com/2010eCard/


Though it was actually created for 2010, I thought I’d still share Radii’s eCard from last year (we didn’t have a blog at the time). This eCard puts the user into the experience via their web cam. They are tasked with moving their hands and arms to catch falling gifts before they hit the ground, think of a simplified version of a Microsoft Kinect game. The motion tracking was made possible by this excellent Flash library: http://blog.soulwire.co.uk/code/actionscript-3/webcam-motion-detection-tracking.

Final Thoughts
Though its usually daunting to juggle the production of numerous eCards at once, I always look forward to the challenge. It always gives me an opportunity to experiment with new technologies I've been eyeing over the year. So what’s the coolest or craziest eCard you’ve seen this year?