… probably gonna be cool. Check out this beautiful animation by Eric Power, done for the band, Fictionist. Good tune too.  Read More →

America’s only Blender Foundation Certified trainer, John Nyquist has returned to teach another Blender basics lesson . The main topics this time are … Cloth Physics Force Fields Fur Particles Sequencer Compositing Nodes Render Layers Approximate Ambient Occlusion Subsurface Scattering UV Mapping Appending Actions and Objects Linking Between Scenes Shrinkwrap Mesh Modifier Childof Object Constraint You can see some of that good learnin’... 

Alright, session 4 of my iPhone Game Development course is now available for download (if you already bought it, new dl links should have just arrived). The two big things taught this session were NSUserDefaults and NSPickerViews. The defaults let you save the state of your game in numbers, strings, or arrays, and use them immediately when the game relaunches. So in this case, the character in the image below got his previously-earned armor... 

Chris at Keyframer.com has glimmer of hope… As most of us know, Adobe introduced Bones (inverse kinematics) to Flash CS4. What most of us may not know is that the IK span (created when using the Bones tool) supports the control of graphic symbols containing nested animations. Why would you not know that? Because there seems to be a legit bug in Flash CS4 that doesn’t update the symbols on the stage when changing the frame that you want... 

Unlike most of the Vimeo animations I post here, I can’t post this one here. You’ll see why once the video plays. Tostitos must be practicing their commercials for when 3D Tv finally hits….  Read More →

I should have posted this Sunday night, but I’m like a kid that finishes his homework and leaves a cartoon smoke cloud shaped like myself to evaporate while I’m already skipping down the street to play elsewhere…. But I have realized the fun of selling these release-over-time courses, since  I can basically teach, upload, and go. Hopefully you all are enjoying this new format. Feedback anyone? Anyway, below is a final summary... 

Mike from Beeple sent me an email today to check out his latest animation. Check out the epic audio timing below. Embiggen for more sweetness. Also you might remember Mike from this blog a year or so ago with his piece “Subprime”. If not, check it out too… Also between these two piece he’s added a TON to Vimeo. Lots of experimental stuff.  Read More →

Here’s the REAL parallel reality…  Read More →

If you bought the iPhone Game Development course already, your download link from last week should still be active and have the updated link. Also I’ll upload part 2 of session 3 tonight and email everyone a brand new download link again. Last night’s update teaches using the accelerometer in the iPhone to make a virtual table to roll a ball on. So if you tilt the phone, a ball will roll until it collides with the edge of the plane.... 

New stuff hath arrived! One course is taught by me, the Animated Stills tutorial, which will help you transform your illustration or photos into moving pictures. Tons of realistic atmospheric FX are taught, and if you haven’t mastered animating in Flash yet, all the basic to advanced techniques are taught. And Manuel has returned with a lesson on 3D Game Art, which goes over every step in designing a very …  Read More →

….But I did with this piece. Mostly because it had subtitles, but after reading them I did get invested enough in the concept that I wanted to really watch it. Check it out, its surprisingly interesting. ;  Read More →

Since some of you will hopefully be developing apps over the next few weeks, this is relevant news. Apple chucked out 5000 apps recently for racy content like bikinis, tight shorts, cleavage, or anything sexy that you might regularly see in a movie, TV ad, supermarket magazine stand, billboard, or in “real life” like on vacation or at school or the mall or looking out the window while in the car… Anything a boy’s eye... 

Okay, dragging URL’s to my desktop is the worst way of reminding myself to feature something on this blog. This Aniboom contest ended months ago, and I just now clicked on the “reminder icon” on my desktop. The good news though is had I mentioned it, I doubt anyone would have toppled the guy who won it (and is $10,000 richer for it). He went beyond what I’d consider a motion comic. Check it out… Sorry, misleading... 

Just heard from my friends at Toon Boom that they’ve got a new code for all you budding animators. This one is only good until the 28th, and it gets the price of Animate down to $399.99 (instead of $699.99) Here it is… ANIFEB10 Great deal!  And I swear, I got some new Animate tutorials on the way.  Read More →

Here’s another kick. This time coming from Adobe aimed at the shins, so its more like a sweep than a real high kick, as AIR is set to arrive on Android and Blackberry phones . AIR is that handy-dandy format that Flash or Flex can export out to, basically its an application, you just need to have the AIR program to run AIR apps. And calling an AIR file an application is often times a stretch. If you wanted to launch Flash, draw a square...