Inspirational sites
MISATO TOWN
http://www.town.shimane-misato.lg.jp/misatoto
The second Japanese pick this month and one that is
a little mysterious. Truth be told, it’s very mysterious
but so beautifully executed it proves impossible to ignore.
Misato Town, it seems, is a richly illustrated virtual tour
created as part of a rebranding process for Misato City
in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Built by renowned locals
Shiftbrain, the agency has recently put its name to several
partner programmes for promoting the region. Unless
you speak and read Japanese however, the rest is difficult
to interpret but not impossible thanks to the gorgeously
charming SVG graphics.
The illustration work is truly wonderful and highly
stylised as you might expect, brimming with colour that
floods the viewport. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of a
Dream Car Collection project Shiftbrain produced for Toyota
in 2015, taking inspiration perhaps from the JRPG video
games the country is known for. This lavish visual work
and art direction is then paired with some of the most
impressive parallax scrolling you’ll find, powering that
explorative aspect of the experience. Zooming and flying
your perspective over Misato landmarks and through cute
town houses or markets is brilliantly smooth, with the
bonus of bidirectional control.
PHP, HTML5, SVG