News & Events

New Blood awards for Media School finalists
30 June 2007

D&AD recognise BU Interactive Media Production students with New Blood awards.

Two finalists from BU's BA Interactive Media Production programme have been awarded New Blood awards at this year's D&AD exhibition.

Chris Herring and Tom Schrimshaw were both selected from over 2000 exhibitors for their Major Projects in the Congress show at Old Billingsgate. The D&AD New Blood Exhibition uncovers the best new creative graduates from the UK and around the world, showcasing advertising, graphic design, digital media, illustration, photography, packaging, product design and communication arts.

'Douteki' by Tom Schrimshaw is a 3D game with a novel interaction design. The player controls the main character 'Oshi' through a fiendishly constructed obstacle course consisting of icy paths, hazardous jumps, falling giant acorns, speeding cars, and breakable walls. The object is to get Oshi home by using their voice to move him. They can shout to make Oshi move quickly or whisper to move slowly yet accurately.

On his project Tom said, "It's about exploring different forms and types of gestural control - it's great to break free from the mouse and keyboard and work with new kinds of interaction. I get a great reaction when people play it - it's just a new way of approaching the design."

The D&AD New Blood award is a great recognition of innovative projects: "I was pretty surprised," said Tom. "It's a great prospect to show off my work, and see what other people are doing and see the standard of production. Winning the award makes me realise I'm doing a good job and it'll push me to do more."

Chris Herring's project, 'Ruled by Secrecy', is an alternate reality game (ARG), for which he designed a series of mobile phone games and supporting websites, creating an espionage thriller and blurring the distinction between the game world and reality. The player has to solve puzzles, decode encryptions and piece together clues in order to uncover a conspiracy narrative.

Chris said: "It was out of the blue! It's a great way to end such a lot of hard work on my project. D&AD has been a great chance to make contacts in industry, meet loads of creative people from around the world, both visiting and exhibiting, and also to get new ideas. The quality of work here is mind-blowing, so it's really exciting to get an award."

The IMP students have already had great success with their iheartplay exhibition at Free Range, Brick Lane earlier in June and their work continues to impress visitors from industry.