We love the web - Mr Scruff

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We love Mr Scruff

How many websites do you know that have elvis, dinosaurs, sea monsters, a pet shop and partially-trained motorcycle stunt-riders?

Taking inspiration from both games design and a misspent youth wandering around music festivals, we wanted to make the experience of finding out about scruff to feel like, umm, wandering around a music festival and playing a game (but without the getting muddy bit). So did Mr Scruff. It's a place you can wander round for hours and still discover new stuff. It also changes every time you come back because Mr Scruff and the Office Gibbon at Scruff HQ can update most of the site themselves. It really pushes the limits of what is possible with Flash: we were reporting new bugs to Macromedia (makers of flash) that no-one else had yet discovered, that's how deep we were digging into the software.

Screenshot of Mr Scruff website

Mr Scruff did hundreds of drawings, then we did nearly 400 hours of graphics & animation and over 200 hours of programming. It's got a cast of thousands: well, if you include buttons, sea monsters, cars and the like. So yeah, it took forever to do and we worked like dogs to get it out on a very tight deadline, but it was worth every drop of blood we sweated putting it together.

Technical Notes:

Database and XML driven flash world incorporating external news feeds and updates input by Mr Scruff and the office gibbon. HTML-based accessible version of the site driven from same dynamic data sources.
ASP.net administrative site auto-generates XML for consumption by the flash front.

Name: Frank Fenten

Mr Scruff drawn Frank

Special Skills:

Using only the powers of his mind and a highly trained dialling finger he makes information flow between places and people.
Making flash and databases play nicely together.