Hoplite Media
Christos Savvides' Digital Portfolio
TGL Youtube reviews
Sep 7th
I came up with the concept of creating a Youtube channel for TheGamesList when I was in between client projects. My plan was that if we could create another portal for people to learn about TGL it would hopefully increase traffic to the site. Our creative director, 3d artist and myself got together and discussed what we would need to achieve this and decided on creating a nice 3d intro for all the movies. We put this together in about a week and designed the page pretty quickly. I have been creating content for this ever since. We have videos for game reviews, trailers and walkthrough’s and our videos have had over 21,000 views in total.
Formula 1™ 2011
Sep 6th
Bloc Media have worked with Codemasters on the Formula 1™ games from when they first launched in 2009. However, I had never worked on any of the previous sites. I was excited to work on this site from the initial concepts through to the build and it was great to see how it turned out. We went for a single page scrolling site which I had never done before so it was great to learn a new technique and put our ideas into practice. I really like this site and think it looks great. Scrolling sites are definitely not a new thing but I just think it works really well with this project. I built the site in WordPress Multisite (because of the number of territories) and am enjoying working with this more every time I use it. I like giving the client the control over the different elements that they want to update and the more I work with it the more new things I learn.
Another major learning curve for me on this project was the YouTube embed at the top of the site. I have used standard embeds before but never with the control and dynamics that the player in the F1™ site has. The player pulls in videos from the official Formula 1™ YouTube playlist and being able to access this information and style the player elements was very interesting for me. Overall, I am very happy with the outcome and look forward to working on Formula 1™ 2012! Hopefully 
You can view the work here: http://www.formula1-game.com
Brother 141
Nov 22nd
Brother 141 was a project commissioned to Bloc by Grey London. We had to create a European wide website (25 territories in total) to promote their brand new range of A3 printers. The websites would work alongside a television advertising campaign as a hub to find out more information about each printer in the range.
The website was built using a combination of xhtml, php, xml, javascript and flash. The site also benefits from a mysql database for user registration. Due to the large number of European territories that the website was deployed to, we developed a template xml file which we could duplicate and call depending on which site the user visits. This allowed us to carry out translations much more efficiently using Microsoft Excel to automatically export our translation files into the specific xml’s. The generated page content could then be called into the page using php.
The brief also called for the website to be fully functional on Apple’s mobile devices – the iPad, iPod and iPhone. As iOS does not support Flash, non-Flash content panels were also created to allow iOS users full access to the site content.
You can view the work here: http://www.Brother141.com
Unwanted blank space in Safari
Oct 4th
So, today I have been working on a WordPress site and come across a very odd and very annoying problem. After finishing the site I wanted to test it cross browser. It displayed fine in IE, Firefox and Chrome but when it came to Safari I was getting a very odd error.
The site used two style sheets. One for the WordPress part of the site (The news page) and the other for the html pages. Every single page displayed correctly in all browsers apart from the news page in Safari. The problem was that Safari would add 10px of unwanted blank space between the body tag and my first div!
It took me a while to figure out but basically the problem was in my CSS. The top of my CSS looked like this:
—————————————————
/*
Theme Name: Total
Description: Total theme for WordPress.
Author: Christos Savvides
Version: 1.0
*/
@charset “utf-8″;
/* CSS Document */
/* v1.0 | 20080212 */
html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, s …. (etc. etc.)
—————————————————————
…and all I needed to do was move the “@charset “utf-8″;” to the top of the document. What a stupid error! Also, considering how similar Safari and Chrome are it was weird that it only happened in Safari. That definitely should not be happening Safari… Sort it out! Anyway, hopefully this helps you if you come across the same stupid problem.
The Games List
Sep 13th
http://www.thegameslist.com/ is a website run by the CEO of Bloc Media. The website aims to be one of the best flash portals around linking to games from all corners of the web. I began working on TGL (TheGamesList) in my spare time at Bloc when I had no live projects mainly adding games and joining in as a member of the TGL community. The site is brilliant, allowing users to decide which games will be on the site. Users can add, rate, comment and favourite games as well as many other features.
After getting involved in TGL I was given the task of increasing traffic towards the site, building on the Social Networking sites we had already become a part of. I began tweeting from TGL’s twitter account giving links to the best games on the site and also interacted with the Facebook community. 6 months ago, when I begun working on these areas we had around 150 twitter followers and about 20 Facebook fans. We now have over 1550 Twitter followers and over 230 Facebook fans. I will go into detail about how we achieved these numbers in later posts but for now go over to http://www.thegameslist.com/ Game On!
Smokey Joe
Sep 13th
TIM & KYM Stub Out the Diabolical Smokey Joe was a game that Bloc were commissioned to make by the British Heart Foundation. The premise was that it would be to warn children the dangers of smoking. There would be a version for general play on the internet which children could play whenever they wanted and a version to be taught in schools to kids during key stage 2 and 3. We decided that we would make a platform game with 4 levels and a boss level. As the kids played through the levels they would collect tips about smoking whilst cleaning cigarette butts and jumping on the heads of smokers. They would then use the knowledge they had gained in a quiz at the end of each level. This would then lead to the final level in which you had to defeat the evil Smokey Joe.
Smokey Joe was a great project to work on. Coming up with ideas for this fun and educational game for children was very rewarding. My part in the project was brainstorming, creating levels, creating music, testing and building the holding page for the SWF to sit in.
You can play Smokey Joe over at http://www.stuboutjoe.com/index.html
Kent Uni Careers
Sep 13th
I have just found out that Kent University Careers website have featured my portfolio and my CV as an example for other students. My Portfolio has changed recently to WordPress and I am currently just using a wordpress theme. I planned on eventually creating my own theme but work has kept me busy lately and I haven’t found the time. Now that the site is receiving traffic from external links though I think I need to get a move on!
Here is what the Kent Careers site said about my work:
Very creative CV by Kent Multimedia graduate. Click on the CV at www.christos-savvides.co.uk
Very smart portfolio of Kent Multimedia graduate www.christos-savvides.co.uk with an extremely creative CV
Thanks Kent 
Skyn Phase 2
Sep 7th
After the client was happy with the outcome of the skyn website promotion we were commisioned to continue the project with the next phase of marketing. The client wanted to update the site content and add/ remove sections. The manifesto video was the key feature of phase one and they wanted something to be a key feature of phase 2 replacing the video. We suggested we make a flash game to promote the fun side of safe sex. In the game you control the main character (male and female characters are available to play as) and the object of the game is to complete 4 levels, collecting condoms and avoiding the inhabitants of Randyville to finally meet your partner for a night of passion. I project managed, performed the website updates and created music and levels (using a flash level edited) for the game. The game and updated skyn website can be found at http://www.matesskyn.co.uk/
Bloc Media & the top 100 digital agencies
Aug 19th
http://www.art-spire.com have posted a list with what they believe to be the top 100 digital agencies in the world. They have compiled it mainly using awards (notably FWA and Webby Award) and the list contains some really great agencies including Glue Isobar, North Kingdom and many more! Bloc Media are also on the list and lucky for me the screenshot is of the recent website I created for us. If you get a chance to check it out then I would definitely recommend it. A great selection of agencies with some truly inspiring work!
The entire list can be seen here: http://www.art-spire.com/en/webdesign/the-best-100-digital-agencies-in-the-world/
Bloc Media Website
Jul 2nd
The Bloc website is made entirely of WordPress. This makes it easier for us to update when we have completed new projects that we want to show to people. One of my first project working for Bloc Media was to expand on the layout and add some new sections. The original site had only 3 links: home, about and contact. I renamed the home page to work but left the design and functionality exactly the same. This page can be viewed here: http://www.blocmedia.com/work/
I then created a new home page as well as sections for news and games. The games section I designed and edited the functionality so that it would only display posts which had a category of “games”. Categories in WordPress are a great way of deciding which content should appear on each page. The “News” section was implemented in the same way pulling in new posts with the category of “News”.
The Home page was a complete re-design. I implemented a jQuery slide-show panel which scrolls through images of featured work, 3 large image links and two separate sections for the latest news and work. The home page works much better this way with instant access to the key features throughout the site.
You can view the site here: http://www.blocmedia.com/
