With the tech-savy youth of today, getting a child to read can be a challenge. But publishers and authors now endorse high-end, entertaining sites to promote book releases to children and their parents. Dale E. Basye (a Random House Children’s Book Author) wanted to intrigue and capture the attention of potential readers with an online destination site—and Ascentium was up for the challenge. Wherethebadkidsgo.com is a highly animated, otherworldly Web site designed to reveal the world of HECK: Where The Bad Kids Go,the first book in a series of novels by Basye. Working closely with Basye and Random House, the Ascentium team conceptualized and designed a fun, interactive destination to generate excitement and provide an immersive experience into Heck, a sort of purgatory for ”bad kids”.

Falling through a wormhole modeled and animated in Cinema 4d and mapped with After Effects, the user enters the cavernous portals of Heck—an eerily fun children’s underworld. The Acentium team used Flash 9, CS3, and Papervision 3d 2.0 to design a runtime 3d environment with scripted motion. We also created unique landscapes for the navigation and pages of the site by randomly distorting several native primitives textured in Flash. All these pieces came together to present a seamless, topsy-turvy voyage through Heck’s many site features.

The content in the site is as entertaining as the visuals. Users can find out which circle of Heck they’re headed for with the “Which Circle” quiz or click on “Heckstras” for downloadable screensavers and desktops. They can also check out Dale E. Basye’s author’s blog and get inside the writer’s head. Fans of HECK have everything they want to find with this visually unique and entertaining experience.

Our creative process resulted in a fun, edgy site that appeals to the targeted preteen audience (9-13 year-olds) and adults alike, giving them the hip and happening features of all things HECK—an experience that’s much more than an “About the Book” blurb.

Want to see for yourself? Go to Heck!

See all success stories