Hector: Fat Arse of the Law is in Cannes this week for the international content market MIPTV.

Straandlooper Animation are part of the UK Indies Pavilion at MIPTV again and this time we are coming armed with the Hector: Fat Arse of the Law ‘Badge of Carnage’ game so that we can show it off and be all smug about how great it is.

So if you fancy an exclusive preview of the Hector point and click adventure game for the iPhone and iPod Touch can and visit us and you can have a sneek peek and maybe even share an overpriced coffee with Richard Morss, the voice of Hector, and Lambert, and Meeks, and Filthy Rich and the Terrorist and….well you get the idea.

To find out more about Hector: Fat Arse of the Law visit www.thehectorfiles.tv and keep watching the blog for news about the launch of the game and news about how we got on at MIPTV.

Last Friday, Straandlooper were invited to present at the INGAGE – INnovation, GAminG, Education – Dev Day organised by the good people at the Digital Circle. The event served to highlight the work undertaken by the students in the ‘l33t Creations’ club as well as highlighting some work being done by creatives in the games industry in Northern Ireland.

Suffice to say, Kevin Beimers, the mind, the man, the myth, jumped at the chance to share with people his love of gaming. And it also served as a great opportunity to show off some of the work that has been keeping him busy for the last 6 months. Kevin, gave a very informative talk on story-telling in gaming, citing many examples of good and bad storytelling that he has encountered over the years. My paticular favourite was the use of a cat, some masking tape and a sachet of maple syrup in a game in order to fashion yourself a disguise to dupe a moped salesperson. That almsot sounds as contrived as some of the puzzles in the Hector ‘We Negotiate with Terrorists’ iApp. Just joshing. Our puzzles are much more contrived than that.

Kevin seized the opportunity of having a captive audience and unleashed the Hector ‘Badge of Carnage’ Trailer on an unsuspected crowd at the end of his presentation. To view the trailer yourself, you can click here. The feedback was very positive and Kevin even hung around after the event to showcase a working prototype of the game to a few lucky punters. Now that Kevin has a taste for this sort of event it is only a matter of time before he is strutting his stuff in an auditorium near you, so watch this space.

Thanks to the Digital Circle for organising the vent and thanks to Matt Johnston for the photos.

Back in October of last year, Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister Gregory Campbell, MP MLA along with Roisín McDonough, Chief Executive the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and other funders, launched the Creative Industries Innovation Fund (CIIF). The Northern Ireland Department for Culture and Leisure (DCAL) had successfully secured £5m to establish the CIIF to contribute to the growth of Northern Ireland’s cultural capital by supporting creativity and creative talents in their business activities.

The proposed fund would be open to all creative businesses in Northern Ireland, so at the start of the year when Straandlooper finally heard about he fund, we busied ourselves submitting an application that would see the company commit to creating a slate of new products to further exploit our slate of intellectual properties. In February we submitted our ambitious application which included the creation of a number of innovative and exciting products across three of our current slate of properties – Lifeboat Luke, Small Tragedies and Hector: Fat Arse of the Law.

So today I am delighted to announce that we finally received a letter of acceptance from the Arts Council approving our application for CIIF funding.

I will not dwell on the fact that it took over 6 months for this decision to be made and I will also not dwell on the impact this has had on the company and its cashflow as were in fact hoping to start production on these products a number of months ago but  while I am extremely grateful for the support we have received I will be making it abundantly clear to the evaluators of this fund that businesses in the creative industries need decisive and immediate support to help them survive in these tough economic times.

But while I may come across as bitter and twisted as a lemon in a knot, I will reiterate how grateful I am for the support from the Arts Council and I am looking forward to working with them and delivering a slate of products that will help both Straandlooper and the Arts Council achieve their strategic goals.