J&B Scotch Whisky (2001)

Flash Coding, Design, Illustration

Back when the internet was barely a thing, J&B Scotch Whisky wanted to build an online audience. We developed a plan that involved the creation of an HTML email program. It consisted of games, recipes, jokes -- engagement touchpoints that would resonate with the 30-something audience J&B wanted to connect with.

Dogs Playing Poker?

One of the game ideas I came up with was "Pooch Poker", where you are the 4th dog at the table of the famous "Dogs Playing Poker" painting. I hand drew each dog and all of their expressions. Then converted them to vector in Illustrator. In addition, I illustrated the room elements and all of the face cards with dogs featured in the game. All of the artwork was brought into Flash and I created the animation in there.

“Pooch Poker” ranks as my all-time favorite project, and the most well rounded. There were so many different pieces of programming that needed to be weaved together – artificial intelligence for the dogs, ranking system to determine the winning hand, choreographed playing sequence, and more. It became more complicated because I had to program it in Flash 5 – denying me the use of arrays and functions.

Unconventional Programming

Instead, an intricate system of more than 100 variables and a crazy pseudo-function method was implemented to make the whole thing work. Add in a honky-tonk theme song and lots of custom artwork and the result is kinda cool.

In addition, I also built a banner ad in Flash that users could play Blackjack in and a fly fishing game. Plus a few interstitial ads based on cards and outdoor activities that were aligned with target audience preferences.

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