Side Project: The Fix Helpline Video

Just completed a freelance animation project to introduce The Fix‘s new treatment helpline. Take a look:

Animation Test: Kinect MoCap with After Effects

I’ve been doing a lot of work with rigging Kinect-controlled digital puppets for After Effects animation. I’m using a combination of Nick Fox-Gieg’s KinectToPin for Processing and a bunch of expressions to smooth things out and make connecting pins to their source tracks a little less painful. I’m hoping to put together a tutorial soon, but in the meantime here’s a test render of a puppet created from a very old engraving:

TDG on TV

The Documentary Group has had several projects on the air in recent weeks:

America in Primetime is our four-part series that traces the history of television through different character archetypes. Here’s the trailer:

The entire series is now available in streaming form at pbs.org, along with tons of bonus clips and material.

Angle of Attack: How Naval Aviation Changed the Face of War was released in November through American Public Television and is now available on DVD. I did some snazzy opening titles for this one that I’m pretty proud of. Check out the trailer:

And if you’re a Dish Network or DIRECTV subscriber, be sure to catch Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, airing tonight on the Documentary Channel as part of their “Best of Doc” series.

Silly side project: The Song of Newt

So Newt Gingrich’s spokesman sent out a really nutty press release last week, one that was far closer to epic poetry than political discourse. Turning it into an overdramatic German opera was the obvious thing to do.

Kevin Clark set it to music, Jason Buckwalter and Andrew Stewart performed it, and I did some quick color FX and titles. Super-fast turnaround! Here it is:

Great News: AEFlame for CS5!

Hooray! The fine folks over at AEScripts are now hosting a beta release of AEFlame for CS4/CS5. Best of all: it’s still free, so there’s nothing stopping you from spending the afternoon making big swirly fractal designs.

If you need a refresher on how exactly this (admittedly rather baffling at first glance) plugin works, take a look at my tutorial.

Off topic: Corn Pudding is AWESOME.

I made corn pudding last night. Oh man. Amazing. It’s, as you’d expect, somewhere between cornbread and pudding, and it would go well with many different dishes both sweet and savory. It’s super-easy, too — one of those “throw it all in a pan and bake” recipes. You end up with a ton of the stuff (original recipe I started with claims 12 servings), so it’s nice and shareable. And frying up a leftover slice in a pan for breakfast? So good.

Ingredients:

• 1 can corn, drained and rinsed
• 1 can cream style corn
• 1 (8.5 ounce) package dry cornbread mix (I used Jiffy — if you don’t have mix here’s a substitute)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

Instructions:
Mix everything together. Pour into a big greased casserole dish. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees. That’s it. Don’t expect it to turn golden brown… my batch came out a very pale yellow but was definitely baked through.

Go Go Gadget Brass Knuckles!

Our new video is up and making its way around the intertubes. It’s a trailer for an imagined film noir reboot of classic 80′s cartoon Inspector Gadget. Give it a look:

We’ve been featured on Urlesque and The Daily What. It’s all very exciting.

This Trailer Will Self-Destruct.

I’m working on something fun. We’re hoping to have it finished in the next couple days, but here’s a sneak preview:

It’s very noir-y. And there’s a scene in the film where I have pigtails…

Bowlive DVD: Check out the Trailer

The title graphics for this were a fun side project for me. I got to do some motion tracking and playing with type made out of lights. I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished product!

New site layout update: 90% of the way there…

Looks like everything’s up and running on my shiny new theme, but now I need your help: I’ve put the same widget (recent portfolio images) on the front page twice. Which one should I keep, and what should I add in place of the one I remove?

Also, do let me know if anything on the site is broken — I’ve only tested it in Firefox and Safari.