Irene Vandertop
Irene Vandertop is a Dutch designer, art director and interactive producer based in Toronto.Rebranding to Expanding Media
I’ve started a new company called Expanding Media! In the future I will be producing interactive media and artwork for web, mobile and television under this name. Currently I am working on branding my company and creating the website.
Expanding Media’s first production is the site www.guantanamotrap.com, created for the feature documentary The Guantanamo Trap, a Canadian – German – Swiss co-production about four people whose lives intersect at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. It’s running at Hotdocs, Toronto this year.
Road to Justice
A website dedicated to create awareness of the historical injustices imposed on Chinese people by governments in Canada.
Road to Justice is a trilingual website (English, French, Chinese) that celebrates the role of lawyers and community activists in bringing justice to the minority group. The website features interviews and biographies of some of the first Chinese -Canadian lawyers and key activists in the Redress Campaign, who lobbied the Government of Canada for an apology for more than 60 years of legislated discrimination against the Chinese-Canadian community.
Flashpoint Training Day – Xenophile Media
Interactive Video Game
This online enhancement of CTV’s television series Flashpoint enables players, as police recruits, to learn negotiating skills, rifle marksmanship and other techniques employed by the fictional Toronto SRU unit on the popular drama. The training module game, with five missions as part of its role-playing scenarios, aims to help engage Flashpoint fans during and between TV season runs.
I was part of the development of the game, created the look and feel, designed initial stages of the game’s user interface and provided pitching materials for broadcasters and media funds.
Empire of the Word
A four part television series for TVO about the history of the written word.
Opening sequence
The story of Gilgamesh
Upon arrival in Toronto, I was approached by production company Nomad Films to art direct their ambitious series ‘Empire of the Word’. I storyboarded the opening sequence, delivered all the graphic assets for animation, and storyboarded and designed several animated scenes within the episodes. All graphic design of the series including poster, DVD design and title layout were my responsibilities. In addition to the series, I designed the artwork for the series’ online counterpart produced by Xenophile Media.
aired on TVO and Knowledge 2009
Loveletters to the Future – Xenophile Media
Cross-Platform Campaign and Game Experience created for Greenpeace International
Launched at the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the site is designed to send a message to the world leaders of today. On Loveletterstothefuture.com, visitors can send a video, image or text message to be seen by future generations, expressing their hopes and fears for the future planet. The 100 most popular messages are stored in a time capsule and sealed during a live event at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
From development phase to deployment, which took over 1,5 years, I was the main researcher and worked closely together with our collaborator Greenpeace International on obtaining climate change knowledge, footage, and establishing contacts with offices over the world to work together on the international game experience.
Being part of the core production team, I was responsible for the production and design of the time capsule, which would store our loveletters, and be opened in the year 2109. To make sure our loveletters will still be readable in 100 years time, I worked together with the University of Basel Media Lab to develop and design Microfiche cards on which the digital data could be saved for the next generations.
www.loveletterstothefuture.com
Loveletters to the Future walkthrough
Promotional video
