Base14

Great news! “Ara” racked in another win at the Indiana University Iris Film Festival on Saturday! We received a nod for “Best Animation” and it has been added to the film’s growing list of honors. With this, “Ara” is now as successful as “Biological Warfare Ain’t Easy” was last year.

Uncork the champagne and get out the tiny cheese blocks; “Ara” is a success! Yesterday “Ara” premiered to an audience of over 180 people. Included were friends, family, students, faculty and even our former university president, Dr. Martin Jischke! We were honored to have such a noteworthy crowd. Our associated 411 group, appropriately entitled “Ara, LLC” went on to present our related research and development behind the movie. A full video of the presentation will be uploaded in the next few weeks!

And if that wasn’t enough, almost as soon as our first premiere was over, the crew headed off to the second premiere, down at the Wabash Landing 9 Theater for the Purdue Digital Cinema Contest. After arriving in limos, co-producer Shauvon McGill and I waltzed into the contest and accepted our award for Best Animation. The prize included $300 cash, an iPod Shuffle, 3ds Max 2008, Maya 2008, and best of all… an even better dry-erase clapperboard than we won last year! We all agreed, it was one busy day for all of us, and a very proud night for Base14. Stay turned for additional Ara-related news!

Wowzer! Today begins the 2007 Homecoming King and Queen Contest here at Purdue University. I was asked by the members of the Homecoming Committee to help them put together a little video for our local television network BoilerTV. Cool!

The video features factoids on all fourteen candidates. It’s a take on the “Brady Bunch” theme, was written by Joe Zerbo and was sung by Levi Riggs. It was a honor working with all the homecoming candidates and directors, not to mention lots of fun! Congratulations to all of them on getting this far and best of luck in the election! Boiler Up!

It’s a good day in the world of journalism education! Today I drove to Ball State University for Junior High J-Day, sponsored by the Ball State Journalism Department. I taught two seminars: “Where’d My Feet Go?” and “Dilbert Would Be Proud.” It was a ton of fun. Both slideshows can be found right here:

Where’d My Feet Go 2007

Dilbert Would Be Proud 2007

It’s an exciting day for Base14, because today’s post features our very first video release using the new blog format! This little number was just produced in the last two weeks for the Purdue Emily Mauzy Vogel Sophomore Leadership Conference. I’m one of the small group facilitators; but in addition to that, I like to snazz up the opening festivities with an exciting video introduction.

This year’s theme was going to be “Superheroes,” so I took it to the next level and based it on the “Heroes” television show. It’s not always we get to have so much fun making a video! Enjoy!

We here at Base14 like to dabble in a lot of things, including fashion design. In fact, one of our ideas is to eventually offer a few T-shirts for sale on the site. I mean, it just wouldn’t be a cool website without some cheesy T-shirts for sale.

Well I wanted to show my support for Free Hug Day, and after seeing the lackluster Free Hug shirts available online, Alysha and I saw an opportunity to produce our first prototype shirt. Introducing “Free Hugs.” Specs: 278 pt. Helvetica Rounded Black. 100% cotton. Made in Lesotho… and the USA.

Let us know what you think! Maybe someday it’ll be a real fashion line. And show support for the Free Hugs Campaign. Give someone a free hug today!