Base14

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!”

It is the distant future. The year 2000… Things are very different since the robotic uprising of the mid-nineties…
– Flight of the Conchords

Halloween is almost here, folks. And here at Base14 we couldn’t help but salute the much-loved HBO comedy show, Flight of the Conchords. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last two years, you’ll know that FotC made robots cool again with their aptly titled song and music video: Robots. So of course, just as many other FotC fans are doing this season, I had to make my own Robo-Boogie Costume. The best part is: I’ve documented the entire process below, so everyone at home can follow along!

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