Do you Blu? I Blu !

December 12, 2011 4:14 pm

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I got an invite from the good peeps at TheBlu.com this morning. Buzz has been propagating around the interweb about the 3d animation version of our oceanminded planet. Academy award winner, animator extraordinaire Andy Jones (Avatar) is one of the board member of this amazing new online adventure. As we speak beloved Dr. Sylvia Earle jumped onboard the underwater bandwagon of this alternate reality.Which will probably translate in more education and preservation in a project that is very “classroom” promising.
First Impressions
Software is in beta and can be quite buggy at times which is expected and normal, I use chrome, I haven’t tried the blu on firefox or safari yet. I created a username and a password, the blu prompted me to install webplay a plugin to access the 3D world and plouf! I was underwater.Swimming around this underwater web universe is a great experience, a tad confusing at first but a few onscreen messages help you to understand the layout and the goals. You dispose of 7 camera angles to explore the habitats you are in (coral reef,open ocean etc…) and you can use your mouse to “look” up, down right and left. After swimming around for a tad I was directed to tag (click on ) the fish swimming around. Every habitat has several fish you need to find and tag. each time you learn about the fish itself and the person that created it. For some reason the bio of the person that designed the fish/habitat I swam with never showed up, apparently a lot of social network is part of the experience but I missed out since I never saw bio which include facebook page etc….
Which lead me to the best part of the Blu, it is a coop of graphic designers/animators from around the world working together. Inspired by the open source software development, the blu is growing as we speak (getting all sorts of new habitats and fishes). My best time so far as been hanging out in the bottom checking out the hammer sharks gliding by in sunlight rays coming from the surface. The music theme is pretty cool and was quite relaxing, the blu is a true multimedia world, part entertainment part educational and I have to admit 100% fun! I still have tons of exploring to do and lots to learn so for more info check out www.theblu.com