If you read our newsletter (or have met any of us) you know we are a tad bit competitive. We've always got some kind of office rivalry happening. This time we've started a new competition we may live to regret—a chili cookoff. Thankfully all the men sit downstairs, while my desk is upstairs with Chandra, so I'm thinking I'm fairly safe from any repercussions caused by chili ingestion.

Every Friday for the next couple of months each of us will bring a home made pot of chili for lunch, which we will rank. The winner will have bragging rights, and a prize of some sort....if we can think of something.

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with, and I'll keep you updated about our results. Rob went first last week, and faced the pressure of cooking his first ever chili. It was pretty yummy, not sure how Mike is going to top it this week....I'll try to remember to post photos....may the hottest chef win!!

Adobe Flash livens up websites with eye-catching animation, and adds a new level of user enjoyment with interactive interfaces and games (like the pong game on the new Studiothink website), but it doesn’t usually come to mind as a way to animate an entire feature film.

But that's what director Ari Folman used with his 2009 Golden Globe-winning film, Waltz with Bashir. A documentary about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the film was shot with three DVCAMs, then painstakingly transformed into animation by a team of eight animators, four illustrators, one After Effects artist, and one editor, thus creating a very artistic, original and creative production from a very limited budget.

I managed to catch the film shortly after its appearance at the Vancouver Film Festival, and was blown away; It's great to see the same tool we use to give your website a competitive edge on the web can be used in such a powerful way. It's out of theaters now, but set to be released on DVD on Jun 23, 2009. So if you're a fan of foreign films, documentaries, or creative animation, I highly recommend taking a look.

We thought we'd try offering a promotion (for the first time ever), and for a limited time we are including all of the copywriting when you purchase the graphic design of a brochure. Or, if you purchase a logo design, we are throwing in free design of the business card, letterhead and envelope.

If you are interested in taking advantage of either of these two promotions, just let us know by contacting Debbie at debbie@studiothink.com. As with all good things, this is a limited time offer, so get in on it while you can!

This has been a fun site to work on because our graphic designer and resident Flash expert, Dave, was able to implement some new programming techniques that allowed us to have a Flash site that would also be fully searchable by search engines. We were also able to add some pretty cool graphics and features.

On a side note, I'd like to thank Bob Fugger for coming in one evening to take all of our great new team photos, we had a blast doing them, and Bob was his typical charming self, bringing out the best in each of us.

One of the features of our new site is this blog. We found that although we sent out regular news in our monthly newsletter, Brainwaves, often things were happening with our clients, and within our office that we would like to share. Thus our new blog was born.

It will be updated every week with gossip, promotions, client news, projects, and even some useful info on marketing and design, so we hope you come back and read it on a regular basis. You never know what kind of fun gossip you'll come across!