ARL Staff Blog

This Tuesday, I supported the Department of Information Science at the University of Otago as a judge and speaker at the Programming Challenge 4 Girls. The aim of this international one day event is to introduce junior high school girls to computer programming and to show them the fun and combination of logic, problem-solving and creativity that is involved in the process of programming. The task of the challenge was to program an animation telling the story of Aliens meeting Dragons in a 3D world. There were 30 teams from 9 different schools, with each team consisting of 2 girls. Some of them had no programming experience at all, whilst others have programming in their curriculum.

The other judges and I had a lot of fun in seeing the different outcomes of the programming skills of the girls. At the end of the day, I gave a talk about my work in the IT industry, and in particular at Animation Research Ltd, and the opportunities that the field of Information Technology has to offer. It is exciting so see so many girls in a programming contest and it is great that the Department of Information Science organized this day, since it is important to encourage more girls to work in IT.

This week Animation Research travelled to the little glacier town of Franz Josef on the West Coast of New Zealand. The mission was to capture the adventure and thrill of the Franz Josef Glacier Guide Ice Explorer hike in 360 video for use in the Samsung GearVR headset and Oculus. The day had been meticulously planned and sun shone for the first time in weeks so we were all go for the day of filming.

The day started with a welcome at the Franz Josef Glacier Guide base and a walk through the spectacular rainforests which surrounds the facility. An awe-inspiring helicopter flight up to the glacier was definitely a highlight of the shoot and then the hike up the ice to the first major ice structure 'Midnight Crux'.

Due to the rapid moving of the glacier these cracks and crevasses open and close week by week and it's the guides duty to make them safe and cut out steps and put in ropes for the hikers to use. Midnight Crux was a crevass about 100metres long and 20 metres high at points. A magical place to experience.

We had two amazing guides with us for the day, who will star in the 360video we will be producing for Ngai Tahu. Plus we had our plucky "helmet camera actress" Kerry and Marketing Coordinator turned actress Kate both from Ngai Tahu Tourism who will be featuring in the promotional video. The shoot was a success but it isn't till you get the footage back into the office can you be completely sure you have it all in the can. So fingers crossed. We look forward to showing you all the results.