Matt Aranha

Home Sheep Home 2

matt — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:09:34 +0000

Over the past several months I’ve been lucky enough to work on Aardman Digital’s (of Wallace and Gromit fame) sequel to their BAFTA nominated game Home Sheep Home.

Home Sheep Home 2 extends upon the original in which you solve platform based puzzles involving Shaun the Sheep and his two friends. The game features some sublime hand drawn graphics and over 60 levels. The game is currently available from the AppStore for your iPhone, iPod or iPad or on PC, with a Mac version in the pipeline.

There is also a limited version available to play for free online!

See No Evil, Bristol

matt — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:08:52 +0000

Last weekend, Bristol hosted, See No Evil, one of the most exciting art projects I’ve seen. Loads of world leading street artists took over one of the city centre’s grey, run down streets and decorated it with some fantastic graffiti. I work a couple of minutes walk away from where it took place so in the days leading up to it I popped up there to watch the street transform and photograph the artists at work.

Artists that took part included some brilliant guys like Aryz, Inkie and El Mac. It was actually quite a good idea to not have Banksy there, I think it would have been to easy for him to grab most of the media attention.

Morris Men

matt — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 16:26:07 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve really had a chance to take my camera out so when we stumbled across a troupe of Morris dancers who turned up at the Fox and Hounds in Farringdon, I got slightly carried away, taking a silly amount of photos. There were three groups performing including the Icknield Way Morris Men and a group from France. Here’s a collection of my favourite shots of the morris dancers.

My Star

matt — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:32:17 +0000

After several months of development Mobile Pie have just released our latest offering, My Star, into the wild.

In My Star, you play the roll of a musican’s manager and it’s your job to style, improve and promote them from nobody to the worldwide stardom. You do so by carrying out activities like getting your star to practice instruments, buy new instruments and recording records. The game also breaks from the screen into the real world, using your location to post virtual posters at real locations like your local takeaway or pub.

We’ve been working on it in partnership with Orange, which has been pretty exciting. We’ve also got some fun updates planned including receiving real calls and SMS from characters in the game as well as a set of neat mini-games.

It’s available for iPhones and iPod touches, from the iTunes App Store. The game is available for the bargain price of free, so stop hanging around and download it!

Christmas Cotswolds

matt — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:28:30 +0000

It’s usually pretty tricky taking good photos in the snow, usually it either comes out all bleached out or too grey – you easily lose any contrast in the scene. This time though, I went up Bredon Hill (Cotswolds) with snow and bright blue sky which made it easy to take some great shots.

Elan Valley Photos

matt — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:09:28 +0000

These are from a weekend break in the Elan Valley in mid-Wales. I’ve been here a few times, and the scenery has always been pretty amazing. This time though, during a short walk I managed to get some nice light and some great reflections to snap. The area is famous for its massive reservoirs which feed a large part of the West Midlands. When the water is low in one of the reservoirs apparently you can see the church spire from one of the flooded villages.

Islay Photos

matt — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:54:17 +0000

Fresh back from a trip to the Scottish island of Islay in the Inner Hebrides, famous for its eight whiskey distilleries (which we tried our best to sample) despite only having a population of 3.5k. As well as the beautiful single malts, there is some pretty stunning scenery. Here are a few of my favourite shots from the trip.

B-Boy Beats

matt — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:35:18 +0000

B-Boy Beats is the latest offering from Mobile Pie. Everyone I’ve seen play it seems to end up with a big grin on their face.

The concept of the game is to perform break dancing moves with your fingers in time to the music. We managed to get some really awesome artists to provide the tracks, including Nerdcore hip-hop legends like Optimus Rhyme, Id Obelus and MC Frontalot.

It’s available for iPhones and iPod touches, from the iTunes App Store. It’s currently available to download for the bargain price of £1.79. If you haven’t seen it already, here is a trailer for it. Before you get scared away – that is sped up!

10 Best Lunches in Bristol

matt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:17:38 +0000

When it comes to lunchtime, an apple, crisps and jam sandwich just doesn’t do it for me. In the past I’ve been slightly spoilt by working from home or having facilities to re-heat homemade lunches. Having ventured into the ‘real’ world and without time to prepare stuff at home, I’ve been forced to reassess my lunchtime eating. Working in Bristol is pretty good though, with it’s decent selection of restaurants, cafes, markets and other food places. Over the past few months I’ve tried my best to explore and taste my way through the various eating establishments open at lunchtime. I ended up putting together the my selection of the best lunch places in Bristol into an article on our food blog, What I Ate Today to inspire people into trying something new.

Oh, My Word! Mini

matt — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:15:40 +0000

Mobile Pie are currently storming the OSX Dashboard Widget charts with a lightweight version their addictive word puzzle game, Oh, My Word! We’re currently Apple’s featured widget and second in their download chart. If you’ve got a Mac running OSX, you can download Oh, My Word! Mini for free from the Apple site. The OMW! series is available on several platforms including iPhone, Android and Palm.