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It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for! The online premiere of “The Girl and the Fox” has been set for June 4th, 2012. Look for it on Vimeo and YouTube.

A lot is going into preparations for the online premiere. The entire film is being remastered in 32-bit color, animating and compositing are getting some touch-ups, and an entirely new musical score has been written just for this version! We’ll also be releasing some “Behind the Scenes” tutorials on YouTube to give fans a better idea of how the film was made.

So mark your calendars! It’s going to be an exciting month!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Base14! As a special gift to our Internet friends, I’ve created something special for anyone stuck at home this season in need of something to do. Why not brush up on your After Effects skills? Presenting the latest Base14 Tutorial: “2D Animation Compositing in After Effects.”

» Download the tutorial files right here.

This is a popular tutorial I have done for some workshops at SCAD and I have been getting requests on my YouTube Channel for some sort of follow-up to my 2D Character Animation tutorials. This video goes into detail on how to properly export character animation from Flash and import it into After Effects to combine with background and foreground elements. It also gives a handy trick of how to duplicate a character animation clip to make a convincing shadow.

Anyone who’s interested in digital animation should find it useful. Enjoy!

Tonight was the first Adobe Mentor Workshop sponsored by SCAD’s Contemporary Animation Society and taught by yours truly! It went really well and I want to thank everyone who attended! Look for more Adobe Mentor Workshops in the future! Thanks again everyone!

» Download the Basic Tutorial Files
» Download the Advanced Tutorial Files

In the third installment of our character animation series, I walk you through the basics of using onion skinning to create frame by frame animation in Adobe Flash. I also touch on my personal workspace setup preferences and how I use guide layers to help develop key poses. Oh, and you can download the .fla right here. Enjoy!

In what might be a weekly series, I present part 2 of “2D Character Animation in Adobe Flash.” Today’s lesson takes our 2D character we rigged last time and demonstrates how to apply some basic principles of animation via tweening techniques. This includes easing, squash & stretch, anticipation and overlapping action. Most of these methods I developed while animating Biological Warfare Ain’t Easy and Ara, and effectively standardized during production of Duck ♥ Teslacoil. I think this tutorial comes off better than the last one. And since I can’t seem to get the HD to work on YouTube, In addition to the HD video stream available on YouTube, I’ve packaged a high-res version of the video along with the .fla tutorial file. Download it right here.

Today’s tutorial was brought to you by Base14 apparel. Why not pre-order one of our lovely new kite shirts today? Made from 100% shirt.

Hey everybody, quick update and some new videos!

First off, the tutorial posted earlier this week, “Character Animation Tutorial – Part 1,” is now not available in HD, since I discovered YouTube’s strict requirements for HD video the video rendered 6 minutes too short. Maybe I’ll switch to Vimeo for future tutorials?

Second, I’ve tossed out into cyberspace two more animation projects from my principles of animation class. We did a weighted sack assignment to practice weight and tension and a sliding seaweed assignment to practice anticipation, elasticity, waveforms and overlap. They both came out pretty well. I feel like I’m learning fast but never quite fast enough.

I’ve been wanting to get into the free tutorial business for a while now, and while my well-documented robot instructions were a nice beginning, our company is probably better suited toward software tutorials. So today we get our feet wet with Part 1 of “2D Character Animation in Adobe Flash,” featuring the lovable Duck from our upcoming animated short film Duck ♥ Teslacoil. The tutorial assumes the user has basic operating knowledge of Flash symbols and tweening. And even if you’re still new to how Flash works, I keep it pretty straightforward. If you’d like to follow along at home or in the lab, you can download the corresponding .fla right here.

I’m wrestling with YouTube right now to get an HD version of the tutorial up and running. The site is mysteriously vague on how to feature HD videos… probably to keep their servers from being swamped with five thousand HD videos of cats sneezing. Update: HD version is now live!

And please take a look below at the wonderful apparel Alysha has been designing for our merch store. These shirts are gonna be all the rage in a year’s time, and you want to be able to say “I wore the shirt before it was popular!”