First Look at The Hub

[Darcie]

The Hub, a new center for creativity, encouraging interaction and collaborative working, recently opened in Glasgow's Digital Media Quarter. The DMQ - an initiative by Scottish Enterprise - located at Pacific Quay is the ideal place for creative collaboration and finds itself neighbors with companies such as BBC, Scottish Television, XFM and the newly refurbished Film City Glasgow.

Recently Transmedia Scotland and Scottish Enterprise hosted a "First Look" evening at The Hub. First Look is hopefully going to be a new irregular series coming from Transmedia Scotland showcasing what's new in leading Scottish digital projects from the digital network Transmedia Scotland - set up by people who are obsessed with digital content and want to share it. You can sign up for their site and get informed on, and only on, really cool stuff happening in the the world of digital.

Richard Scott, MD of Axis Animation, gave a sneak peek of two brilliantly animation trailers for two of their new video games: The Warrior which has been done in conjunction with AKQA Ad agency in the states and uses the voice of Mikey Rourke and Brink. Richard shared a bit of the process of how the game came to fruition and some of the process they go through. Both games launched at E3 in June and the trailers will be shared digitally around gaming sites.

Damien Smith, founding member of ISO, MC'd the event and also spoke about their new project, Central Station, their largest project to date, having worked on projects such as the new BBC iPlayer. Central station, a multi-user creative space, is one of the projects being funded by 4iP and is an ambitious cross-platform social media experiment that will benefit both users and contributors alike. Officially launching in September to the masses, so watch this space!

Simon Meek, head of multi-platform development and production at Tern spoke about the companies work in motion comics - literally computer aided comics. Showing examples from two very opposite genres, sci-fi and life in the American south during the times of slavery. Tern has recently been nomination for their fictitious country of Slabovia.

Colin Macdonald, Studio Manager of Realtime Worlds showed off the amazing body customisation they have for their new game APB - All Points Bulletin - which will hopefully be debuted later in the year.

Last, but far from least was Giles Lamb of Savalas, a top tier audio post production, sound design and music for TV, Film and digital media and owners of the UK's first Dolby Premier Theatre. They are located across from the Hub at Film City Glasgow and did the sound for The Warrior by Axis Animation. Having experienced the theatre first hand I can verify that it is truly an amazing studio and would blow anyone away, literally & figuratively!

The evening was a great experience with some phenomenal talent. I look forward to more of them and to see what the future brings.

UPDATE: Central Station is now up for interested/relevant parties to sign up for their pre launch mailing list. Please go to ThisIsCentralStation.com and follow them on Twitter at @CenSta

[George Falconer]

Thanks for writing this up so brilliantly Darcie - look forward to more of these events at The Hub :)