Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle

Benjamin Tollady Design helped Madman Entertainment promote the hugely successful theatrical release of Howl’s Moving Castle across Australia.

Madman is one of Australia’s leading independent entertainment distribution and rights management companies. They specialise in the wholesale distribution of video and DVD movies into retail and rental stores throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Working directly for Madman Entertainment, I developed several ‘mini sites’ to promote the launch of various titles, helping build anticipation amongst their customers for the impending release.

The Howl’s Moving Castle website was subtly different to most other Madman ‘mini sites’ in that it was to provide information regarding upcoming cinema times, recent reviews and movie details rather than promoting an impending DVD release. As such, (X)HTML was chosen over Flash as the development language to ensure the site was be accessible to all and easy to update.

Interface design that reflects the animation style

Using artwork from the film, the site design reflects the drawing style used in the animation. Key elements were used to give visitors to the site a feel for the film prior to watching it.

Flash elements were implemented across the site to add dynamism and further support the animated nature of the show. In particular, the ‘Wheel of time’, which plays a major part in the film, was mimicked across the site to denote page sections.

Accessible flash implementation

Flash was also used for the site navigation and implemented as the media player within the site to deliver movie trailers. Careful consideration was applied around the implementation of a flash navigation, resulting in the site maintaining accessibility through the use of graceful degradation techniques, otherwise known as progressive enhancement. You can find out more about this technique by reading this Wikipedia article about progressive enhancement, or better still why not contact me directly?