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Scott Lew
Interactive Story Designer

Scott is not your traditional designer. He’s never had the “eye” for colors, graphics or even images – but what he does have is an obsession for story. A true believer that everyone can enjoy a good narrative, every project he’s ever worked on has told a story from beginning to end. Pictures, graphics, videos, websites and all interactive experiences need to bring users/viewers/readers on a journey, making the narrative design important to the process. Scott is our instigator of office water cooler discussions.

Whenever something awkward or strange happens in the office, if you immediately look over at the left corner of the room you will see Scott with a cup of tea in his hand looking slightly gob smacked. We believe this is why Scott has so many good stories and why he is such a great storyteller. Although sometimes deemed as high-maintenance (or in some cases a “princess”) Scott simply believes in being taken care of. If all of the parts in a machine are well-oiled, then a successful efficiency can always be achieved.

Specialties:
Web Writing, Ad Writing, Content Strategy, Interactive Narrative, Non-Linear Storytelling, Video Game Writing, Dialogue

View Scott’s complete profile at Linkedin

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Brett Forsyth
Technology Consultant & Developer

Brett Forsyth has spent the last 3 years teaching and developing curriculum to eventually moving into a Head of Department position for the Digital Design program at Vancouver Film School. He spearheads many internal projects, the latest being a homegrown multi-touch display. Nominated for “Best Instructor” at 3 different graduations, he finally brought home the bacon last year. Teaching keeps Brett pushing forwards staying ahead of the design curve.

Brett also works as a consultant for Tangible Interaction Design, Rouxbe.com, and the social-networking-slash-comic-fan site Zeros 2 Heroes. Recently, he was project manager and technical lead on the Adobe-sponsored Reel Ideas Studio web project, in which he collaborated with VFS colleagues, graduates, and current students. The site hosted a worldwide short film contest judged at the Cannes Film Festival.

Specialties:

Flash, Multi-touch, Flash Remoting, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Arduino, Processing, XML, MySQL, PHP, Usability, Interaction Design, Photoshop, Photography

View Brett’s complete profile at Linkedin

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Annika Newell
Visual Director & Installation Designer

Annika Newell’s background has many facets of “sensorial” design discipline. She arrived to the digital design field through the back door’s back door. Her undergraduate major started out as an Anthropology and Nutrition double major but midway coalesced into a Studio Art degree at UC Davis, Davis California. She then headed east, to focus her graduate studies in kinetic sculpture and installation art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. At CMU, cross disciplinary collaboration between different college departments was highly encouraged and was an integral part of the campus culture. This approach brought her immediate access to experts in all campus departments. By stepping outside of her previous ad-hock approach to problem solving opened up a whole new way of working and dramatically expanded her horizons of what was possible, and as a result became contagious way of working.

From CMU, she continued to migrate east to New York City and joined a number of high-end design firm teams including Pompei A.D. and and Desgrippes Gobé now Brand Image. She began with the architecture and design teams at PAD. They worked closely with clients to design the “experience rich” retail environments including Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters , exhibit design and display prototypes for Sony Wonder Technology Lab and in the new home for California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Later she consulted for the brand and design teams at DGA. Within the family-style culture, a collaborative work ethic was at the core of the company’s proven success and in small teams they worked together to design and produce multimedia presentations, “re-branding” strategy workshops and trend design packages for Estée Lauder and Travelocity among others.

Annika’s design approach began to expand and take new shape. She began to focus her artistic skills onto “real world” problems. She also found that the business world was hungry for alternative approaches to problem solving. Retail spaces and client presentations became canvases upon which to conceive compelling and unique user integrated experiences.

Due to her fine art training and background, her skills on the design side of the equation were largely self-taught and she decided to return to school and sharpen her knowledge in cutting-edge digital multimedia tools. She enrolled in the Digital Design program at Vancouver Film School (which is subsequently where she met the Liquid Adventures members Miles Nurse, Bun Lee and Brett Forsyth.) By far collaboration is her preferred way to work. Before VFS, as an artist she had never approached a project before that had a desired end result at the forefront to the process. She found developing projects focused on a set of “real world” user issues very satisfying. By the time graduation from VFS rolled around, to her honor she ended up walking away with two awards, one for best group project (two of her team projects had been nominated) and a second surprise the “Spirit of Collaboration” award, conceived and awarded to her by the neighboring VFS Writing Department, with whom she had interfaced with on a number of projects over the academic year. It was quite an accolade to be recognized twice for a process that she believes in so firmly.

“Collaboration” can manifest itself in many ways but Annika sees it as a commitment to embrace, discuss and challenge ideas within a group of multiple perspectives. This is not at times very easy, but she feels that strong results are much more likely to occur if collaboration is intrinsic to the culture of the group and to their process. Liquid Adventures creates projects and places where collaboration is revered; a freshly re-invented ecosystem that leverages our on-line office lifestyle.

Specialties:
Innovation in Product / Experience Design, Installations, Concept Development, Art Applications, Art Direction, Visual Direction, Presentation Design

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Edward Chin
Typography Nerd & GUI Specialist

Edward has diverse roots in design. He has a traditional design background that is complemented with years of print, interactive and game design. Edward’s mastery of the tools is uncanny, but it is his wealth of design experience and love of the arts that enables him to create visually stunning pieces of work. Ed does truly eat, sleep and live design. He is constantly reading new design books, exploring different visual techniques, sharing the latest tutorials in web 2.0, and exploring the latest tech trends on engadget. He prides himself on being bleeding edge, understanding current consumer mindshare and integrating this understanding into his design work.

Ed works experience includes Electronic Arts, Riptown Media, Backbone Entertainment, BigPark, and Microsoft Games Studio.

Specialties:

GUI Design, Game Front End Design & Flow, Typography, Colour Theory, Composition,
View Ed’s complete profile at Linkedin

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Vincent van Haaff
Audio Astronaut & Interactive Prototyper

Originally from California, Vincent is a new addition to the Vancouver design community. His background in music, physics, and culture jamming makes him an invaluable asset to any project. His past endeavours include producing mind-melding beats, founding a succesful record label, instantiating a Student Group responsible for the founding of the ESLP in the UC school system, and establishing an art collective in downtown Vancouver.

As a developer, his skills blur the line between science, art, and design. From sudo to CSS, Vincent is a one stop solution for RESTful APIs, data visualization, computational design, and user interaction. His prior projects include multitouch, computer vision, 3D modelling and compositing, and physical computing.

When not meeting spec for a client, Vincent fuels his passions in photography, cycling, climbing, algorist art, music, and localizing his resources. He is a contributor to various open source communities including the ever expanding Flare Data Visualization Library.

Specialties:

Physical Computing, Computer Vision, DOM Hacking, SaaS, Python, Processing, OpenFrameworks, OpenGL, ChucK, Max/MSP, PureData, OSC, Flex