News
Here we go again.
Creative Week is back for its fourth year, proving once again that a little structured chaos is the perfect fuel for creativity (and a great excuse to continue ignoring the gym memberships we swore we’d use by now).
Our annual tradition is to spend the first week back after Christmas on side projects, while we all remember what our jobs are. Over the years, we’ve made games, traced family trees, done some drone photography, and even confronted our own mortality (thanks, death clock). Here’s a peek at some of our favourites from this year:
Food from Travels
Our Ops Lead, Adele, loves spreadsheets and planning—but what she loves even more is taking a holiday from both. As our resident globetrotter, she set herself the challenge of visiting 33 countries before she turned 33 (which she not only achieved, but surpassed), and sampled all of the local delicacies along the way.This year, she turned her hand to creating some of her favourite dishes from South East Asia, including coconut sticky rice, mother butter chicken, peanut chicken satay and a selection of naan breads. Everything turned out amazing, but she’s pretty sure they’d taste even better if they came with a beach view—and someone else doing all the washing up.
The 2 Gun Saloon
Ben is passionate about illustration, so when Creative Week rolled around it was no surprise his project would involve it in one way or another. But after a challenge from our developer, Conor, he figured he’d step out of his comfort zone and also try a creative coding experiment— with that, Ben’s hourly web comic “The 2 Gun Saloon” was born.After getting his head around the dev environment and Terminal, he started learning the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript—which was a surprisingly fun detour from his day-to-day job. By the end of the week (and after re-doing his sketches so many times it became a full project in itself), he created a web comic that, much like a combination padlock, generates a new three-panel comic every hour.
Trad Metronome
Conor, one of our senior developers, has been immersing himself in the Irish Traditional music community for the past year–going to weekly music lessons and playing at festivals all over the country. So when he walked into the room with his Banjo case in hand, we knew his Creative Week presentation was going to be a good ‘un.He wanted to create something that would be useful not just for him, but for the entire Trad music community. He set out to build a fully accessible Trad Metronome–a tool for keeping in time while playing music. Although, Irish traditional music often has flexible rhythms and beats that can make timing tricky. Conor’s version of the Metronome has those nuances in mind, making it easier for Trad musicians to stay in sync.
Growing a digital garden
Only Chris (our founder) could turn Creative Week into a product demo. He completely rebuilt his personal website in Niice 4, turning it into a digital garden where ideas grow and evolve. Unlike a traditional blog, a digital garden encourages exploration, with each post treated as “living content” that’s continuously updated over time.He also added a new section to his website, highlighting the books he’s read and the games he grew up with–a digital bookshelf of sorts, which turned out to be a real nostalgia hit.
Landscape Photography
This year, Emma decided to do something a little more offline–a 10-mile walk along the North Coast, that took just over 3-hours to complete. (The promise of some good Italian food at the finish point made it almost worth it). The goal was to see things from a different perspective. Since she’s always wanted to try landscape photography, the day turned into a photo walk, taking in all the main points of interest from Runkerry beach to Dunluce castle and Magheracross viewpoint.
This summer, she’s hoping to squeeze in more walks around the Mourne Mountains–maybe with less hailstones and more sun–and the ultimate goal is to photograph the northern lights at Dunluce Castle. Fingers crossed for clear skies!
Patchwork Quilt
Deciding to stitch a full patchwork quilt in one week? Bold move, Sam. She began by meticulously cutting 237 fabric squares then stitching them together before adding the wadding layer, the backing, and finally, binding the edges with her own bias tape. It was no easy feat, but she had her two assistants, Pesto and Luna, to keep her company throughout, and offer moral support–mainly by sitting on the fabric.The finished quilt measures an impressive 6ft x 4ft, and she’s planning on adding a decorative border to finish it off nicely.
Sheepish Tactics
William, our Lead Developer, has a tradition of building a multiplayer game for Creative Week. Mainly because the rest of the team insists on having something to play at the end (he’s pretty much not allowed to do anything else now).
This year, he started his project a little late, having spent the first half of the week living the dream in Disneyland. With only two days (plus a weekend) to build something, he still managed to pull it off, and Sheepish Tactics was born! In this 2 1/2D tactile game, you’re a magical shepherd and the aim of the game is to protect your flock of sheep from attacking goblins.
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Aaaand that’s a wrap on another Creative Week—see you next year!
Made in sunny Belfast, Northern Ireland
