from Underscore Newsletter, December, 2004

UniqueTracks Customer Spotlight

Mark Divers is a freelance design consultant located in Corona California.
Click here to see this Flash animation	Click the image to see Mark's beautiful Flash-designed Winter/Holiday greeting created for search services firm AltaVista.  The card uses the song “Daybreak” from our Pianoscapes CD as its soundtrack.

What strikes me most about Mark’s work is the personality and charisma imbued in each piece he creates. There is a striking originality about his designs, a visual dynamism, and, often, a touch of humor. For an example of Mark’s unique personality, just visit his company’s web site Diverstudio. 

Diverstudio focuses on the creation of distinct and creative design packages providing companies with a sophisticated look to help them achieve a high level of success.

Services include…
• Corporate identity design
• Web site and interface design and creation
• Illustration
• Animated introductions and presentations
• Character creation and animation
• Print Design

Mark’s past clients include:
Toyota
Sprint PCS
EMI Records
AltaVista
Honda Motors
Boeing
Tickets.com

If you work with or outsource creative design for your company, take a look at Mark's portfolio at http://www.diverstudio.com.

Deborah Vancelette is an independent filmmaker and actress living in California.
A harried business woman rushes through her day without even taking  a moment to blink. She should have.	Her first film, an eight-minute short entitled "blink", first premiered in 2001. Since then it has received special recognition from over 35 international film festivals including the Zephyr Film Festival (Los Angeles), the Roma Independent Film Festival and the MethodFest Film Festival.

Not only did Deborah direct blink she did pretty much every job you can think of during the making of the film   - producer, editor (first time), casting director, director of photography, camera operator, sound design, grip, craft services… not to mention starring in the film.

For the film's soundtrack, Deborah chose the song From the Shadows from our Pianoscapes collection. From the Shadows evokes a haunting, ethereal quality. There is a tension to the track, like we are watching, waiting for something to happen.

Reviewers writing about the film on the International Movie Database have had this to say....

Like its title suggests, BLINK is a filmic meditation on a moment in time, a moment that will destroy one life and change another forever. With humbling simplicity and absolutely zero pretention, BLINK will knock you upside the head with the understated brutality of its quietude and leave you grieving for all those moments where you could have done something, SHOULD have done something, but didn't. Deborah Vancelette wrote, directed and shot the film and fulfills all her duties with grace and intelligence. See BLINK. It's wonderful. (review by Molly-2 imdb.com)

Deborah Vancelette has created a thoroughly engaging film with BLINK. By setting audiences up for a charming short about a harried woman's day from hell, and then smacking them upside the head with a surprise ending. Not only that, but Vancelette delivers a pitch-perfect, unselfconscious performance in the lead role. With an economy of image, action, and plot, Vancelette shows a mature control of the medium lacking in many veteran directors, let alone first-time filmmakers like herself. A favorite among audiences at the Chlotrudis Awards Short Film Festival in Boston, BLINK should be at the top of the list of any festival-goer.. (reviews - imdb.com)

Blink is now available on VHS and can be purchased at blinkthemovie.com

Awards for the film include:

• Winner Best Premiere Filmmaker Award 2002 New Bedford International Film Festival
• Winner 2002 Jury Award for Best Short Film Big Bear Lake International Film Festival
• Winner Second Prize Jury Award Winner for Best Live Action Short 2002 Chlotrudis Awards Film Festival
• Winner Specially Awarded Silver Diploma 2002 Cotsworld International Film and Video Festival
• Winner Grand Jury Platinum Award Winner for Best Live Action Short 2002 WorldFest Houston Film Festival 

Probably the strangest place Blink has been shown is right in the heart of New York City on the CBS JumboTron in the middle of Times Square during the OpenAir Shorts Festival.

As an actress, Deborah’s most recent appearances are in the Indy film   “Out of These Rooms” and on television’s  “Invisible Man” and “Martial Law”. You can check out more about her acting  career at www.deborahvancelette.com

InAlbum is a fun and easy-to-use software program for creating animated photo albums from your digital photos to share with friends and family.

You can publish your show as a Flash movie, HTML, AVI video, executable file (EXE), screensaver, or wallpaper or burn it to CD or VCD (playable on TVs).

inAlbum comes with some great Christmas and Hanukkah templates so you can easily create a memorable online family album this holiday.

Abracadabra by Phelios is a fun computer game that uses music from the Martini Sessions

ABRACADABRA by Phelios

Music from our lounge collection, The Martini Sessions, provides the soundtrack for Abracadabra, a clever update on classic computer games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers.

When playing Abracadabra, you find potions, keys,
bags of gold while taking a wand-waving wizard on a spellbinding journey.

The feeling is playful, light-hearted, creating a
breezy atmosphere as you play the game. There is
also a campy, tongue-in-cheek element which is
amplified by the "retro=lounge" soundtrack.

Download a complete working demo (first 9 levels)
(You can also hear a trailer for the game that
includes the Martini Sessions soundtrack on this
page).

Phelios, Inc. is an independent video game developer creating entertaining games for the MAC and PC platforms. With very small kids to the brightest adults in mind, Phelios strives to create quality video games to provide people of all ages and backgrounds with engaging game play.

All the Phelios games I sampled were crafty and entertaining.

My favorites...
Abracadabra
Lua Lua - my 3 year old daughter is in love with this game!
Bongo Boogie - variation on the classic Breakout game

All games have a fully-working demo for download in either PC or MAC OSX format.

Have some fun and check out these addictive games by Phelios.