2011 was the year which saw the phone answer back, the year it became possible to print fully-functional aircraft, the year which saw the customer become their own personal shopper and the year which saw the client go the to customer like never before.
But though Siri, 3D printers, apps and forward-thinking uses of social media still retain their sparkle, here at Milky Tea, we’re getting excited at the mind-blowing advancements 2012 will bring. As we pulled the last strands of tinsel from our monitors, our first port of call was to pick our top digital tips and trends for the coming year.
“At the beginning of every year the team at Milky Tea get together to reflect on the year before,” explains Director, Jonathan Holmes. “By analyzing this as a group of creatives, we can determine what will be the next big things in the year to come based on knowledge, research and general industry rumours. We use this info to align our business and ensure we are working in the key areas we expect to be big. Although this information is just our opinion and assumption and will never be 100% accurate, these creative sessions have kept us firmly at the forefront and on our toes for the past seven years.”
The Milky Tea Top Ten:
1. Television: 2012 is the year that television gets a major overhaul. One of the biggest things to hit the masses this year will be IP TV. Though it was touted as a big advance of 2011 and has suffered delay after delay, all we saw last year was lots of TV companies commissioning prototypes. This space will revolutionize TV, gaming and social interaction over the next five years. Ignore it at your peril. Our ears have also been drawn to the rumours of an Apple TV, not the console already available, we’re talking about the standalone set. Hinted at by Jobs before his demise, wireless capability and cloud storage systems as standard mean you could start watching a programme at home and pick up exactly where you left off with your iPhone on the train. And that’s just for starters. Rumours of 3D TV mean that the hologram no longer needs to be a happy memory from the eighties and instead could become a firm fixture in your living room.
2. Advertising: In 2011, brands spent vast sums on advertising via games. Be it an embedded flash game on your Facebook site through to Bjork releasing new material via an app game, digital agencies well and truly realised the benefits of games in social networks. Although this space has been growing for the past four years, we expect things to accelerate with the emergence of new game technologies and platforms and innovative new gaming companies now all very aware of the power of analytics and social networks.
3. Gaming: Siri and Microsoft Kinect technology changed the way that we interact with appliances, and 2012 will hold more of the same. Expect a greater emphasis on voice and movement control as gaming breaks new boundaries with the unveiling of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 successors. Mobile games will also take a leap forward with the expected release of the new iPhone and iPad. We’re expecting 3D stereoscopic gaming to become more widespread this year, with lots of technology platforms looking at 3D screen technology similar to that of the Nintendo 3DS.
4.Mobile: Expected new iPhone and iPads this year will keep the Apple machine rolling forward and a few steps ahead of the nearest competitors. There’s also major Android advances and quad-core to look forward to. Expect to see more free-to-play mobile apps and games as brands and developers look to get their messages and products to the masses. Mobile TV consumption looks likely to go through the roof this year. 2011 saw the massive success of apps like Sky Go, we feel this will only become more popular.
5.3D: 2012 is the year that businesses involved in 3D software, modeling and animation really could get left behind if they aren’t looking at Stereoscopic 3D and making this available to their clients. The space is growing and over the next few years, as technology consolidates into a standard, more and more content will be required to produce animation and games. This doesn’t just apply to the consol and television, but also to PC’s and the web. So if you’re not already embracing 3D, make sure this is the year you do.
6. Tech and Hardware: Get ready for a new box in your living room, IP TV will be here in a flash, This platform will have a massive impact on our consumption and interaction with the digital world. The rival SMART TV‘s, manufactured by the likes of Samsung, are slowly creating their own platforms with similar abilities to IP TV. With internet connectability and an increasing amount of standard mainstream apps and social media available, which will be embraced by the public first? Other advances which have sent us reeling include the Lytro Light Field Camera and the introduction of the ‘living picture’, the first camera which lets you continue the focussing process long after the shutter has closed and changing photography as we know it.
7. Social Networks: Every year we think the bubble will burst and one of the big platforms will go into vast decline, and so far we’ve been wrong. Though nobody has fallen prey to the same fate as MySpace as yet, what we have noticed is a massive shift to Twitter from Facebook users who are getting fed up and bored of the platform and making the leap. We predict this trend will continue to happen as Facebook’s brand and reputation keeps diminishing due to privacy issues, and don’t get us started on the new Timeline! There’s a growing sense of unease that Facebook isn’t protecting its users. It needs to build on the successful gaming empire it’s got and offer radical new and improved gaming experiences. Whether this will happen this year is anyone’s guess, but rumours persist that there will be a few new showcase games this year that will inject new impetus into the platform.
8. The Web: HTML 5 will show the world what it’s got this year. Like the fate which will befall our own website, the Flash site will be coming down and a shiny new, all singing, all dancing universal platform HTML 5 site will put in its place. Advances in HTML 5 and what you can do with it will grow as the seemingly limitless boundaries are pushed further and further. Average broadband speed also looks set to increase worldwide, with people consuming higher resolution content and demanding a higher quality experience..
9. Apple: It’s common knowledge that Apple is trying to purchase the Premiership Football rights to screen matches. Does this tell us that Apple is making a massive leap into IP TV or just expanding upon Apple TV and its capabilities with interconnected tablets and mobile devices? Watch this space closely as the Apple lounge experience goes full steam ahead.
10. Flash: As we’ve already mentioned, our Flash site is coming down fairly soon, but this is by no means the end for Flash and its uses. Our friends at Adobe are very smart cookies and think that Flash will re-invent itself this year. Look out for new next-gen style games, online produced and exported into Flash from Unity ( 3D Game engine). Flash action script will be the main programming language used on IP set top boxes. This is space where Flash will come into its own and see a massive resurgence. We’re expecting a lot of exciting things from the guys at Adobe this year.
What are you most looking forward to this year and how will the technology benefit your life or company? Here at Milky Tea, we can’t wait to get involved with all of it…
To discuss any of the points of areas of interest, email Milky Tea Director, Jon Holmes on: jholmes@milkytea.com
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Here’s an impressive new piece of work from Milky Tea designer, Pawel. The CGI piece utilises Realflow Software to create realistic splashes, foam and mist, which, coupled with Pawel’s imagination, serves to create the most breathtakingly realistic piece of fantasy. And here’s how he did it…
Concept stage. Each project begins with a colour concept to use as reference for the artist and to visualise how the finished piece will look.
The artist began by blocking out the scene with basic models and no textures. This is to setup the camera view, basic lighting and to create the composition of the piece.
The next step was to create the water splashes in Realflow (an excellent stand alone program that simulates liquids). The meshes where then exported from Realflow and imported into the scene – these can be seen here around the boat and at the base and on the blades of the turbines.
Once all the elements have been modelled the scene was then textured and a photograph of a stormy sky dropped into the background.
This is the same image after colour-correction.
The image was then rendered and taken into Photoshop, where the scene was completed. The lighthouse and cliffs where painted in and the spray of water was enhanced using stock photographs and by hand. The final stage in Photoshop was to colour correct the image, here using dark blues and greys to emphasize the stormy and dangerous environment.
The artist always works in layers in Photoshop, rendering 3D elements out separately and putting the pieces together so any aspect of the image can be altered at any time. In this case the perspective of the wind turbines was incorrect, but due to them being on a separate layer they could be re-rendered and comped back in. Which leads us back to the final image!
