"Multimedia Family Album" was the best the marketers could think up by the time Echo Lake was released in 1995. Users of Echo Lake create multimedia scrapbooks that can include video and audio. The whole program is contained within a 3D log cabin interface, where you can look out at the lake through the window. The main desktop of Echo Lake is a close up view of a desk in that cabin.

The bookshelves and desk and the items on the desk are magic machines. A "New Book Machine" creates a book from a slot in the desk with a mechanical noise. Books are stored on magic scrolling book shelves, (each shelf marked by a different animated toy -- top, globe) or in a safe behind the picture on the wall.

Echo Lake was the brain child of Greg Long. A team at Mackerel led by Karl Borst, Jeramy Cooke and myself, created most of the additional ideas in collaboration with Greg. Jeramy created the 3D models and was responsible for the 3D views.

From here the user zooms to the desktop interface to add stories and pictures to their books, and to add to the database of events. The toolbox, snowglobe and calendar across the top and the idea machine and the clip-o-matic (scrapbook) along the side are all features and tools to help create the books.

Jeramy provided a 3D rendering of what the desktop looked like in the cabin. This was then stripped back to key information... the shape and shadows of the machines and the drawers. I created the rest of the items in 2D programs. This is the tool box and a drawer/menu that's filled with objects that can be dragged onto a page. (The wedding pic and baby pic are really Greg's. The ear is mine.)

The book was created entirely in Photoshop. A panel in the front cover of the book would slide sideways to reveal this control panel.

If you click on the coffee cup in the library/file system view you grab your coffee to take a break and look out the window. The coffee cup hovers in the foreground like a weapon from a first-person shooter. The screensaver company that was building Echo Lake really embraced this feature, and made it so quite a few things swam or flew by the window.

When you click on the little desktop machine with the red button and the light bulb, it calls up a window with randomish facts to get you thinking. Here you can see some of the themes created for this feature.

Even though we could get no comfirmation from the development team that standard Windows dialog art could be customized for Echo Lake, Greg insisted that we create artwork. There was actually a bit of yelling involved. This artwork did not make it into the release.