Earlier this year I was in a motion media theory class where, for a final project, I decided to examine the way that digital tools are designed to emulate old-fashioned physical tools. For example, Microsoft Word is a typewriter emulator. iTunes is a jukebox emulator. Skype is a telephone emulator, etc.

So I set my sights on Adobe Photoshop, which is an emulator of a darkroom and an art table, and ended up with the above video art piece. You can view the YouTube page for the full description and theory discussion, but just to summarize, I used a combination live-action video and stop motion animation to simulate Photoshop occurring in the physical world. Whereas the digital usually imitates the physical, by inverting the process I call attention to its strengths and weakness as a user interface design methodology.

Heavy stuff, huh? Well, if you don’t like all the theory you can just watch it and laugh at how funny looking Windows 95 is by today’s standards. Haha! Look at that copy of Norton.

Ah, there’s nothing quite like a bit of a makeover when things are beginning to feel stagnant. And thanks for the fine folks over at WordPress, the Base14 Blog got just that sort of new infusion with a fresh installation of WordPress 3.0! (We had been running on 2.6 for some time.) Of course, you folks on the outside won’t notice much of a change just yet, but the tools we use to publish blog posts and manage content just got a lot slicker.

June was a relatively quiet time for Base14, I realize. We were recouping from production on “The Girl and the Fox” and have been preparing for the launch of the Base14 Store later this year. This upgrade to our content management system is just the first step in making a new, full-fledged storefront that will finally make our lovely creative products easily accessible and available to purchase!

Since Tyler has started to release character designs, I can finally post pictures of my favorite new ring.  Based on a character from The Girl and the Fox, this clay figurine is a loveable little scamp that is sure to charm his way into your heart and attract attention. Seriously, what’s better than having a little snow fox friend with you all day?

What do you think? Want to see him for sale on Base14 merch?

This was the question everyone was asking me last night. Well, in a pretty tragic turn of events, “The Girl and the Fox” was not screened last night at the SCAD Animation Graduate Show. There were so many submission that the programmers had to limit it to only graduating filmmakers, and thus TGTF got axed. This is sad since we lost that opportunity to see how a large audience responds to the film, which might of helped prioritizing production retakes next month.

Still, we did get the film finished to a presentable degree, and soon I’ll be sending out a test screener to people I know and trust to give me valuable feedback before the final cut of the film is sent to festivals. It’s good to have the extra time to finesse.

Next week I’ll give a run-down of all the films I work on this quarter. It was a pretty interesting variety!

Over the past month, Base14 has been deeply immersed in the final stages of production for “The Girl and the Fox,” and I would say it’s just about time to finally show the fruits of all our labor! So I’m taking a short break from my work schedule to inform everyone that exactly ONE WEEK from today there will be a sneak peek test screening for “The Girl and the Fox.”  It will be showing as a part of the SCAD Animation Graduation Show on Thursday, May 27th at 8pm in the Lucas Theatre in Savannah, GA. I’ve included another film still to further whet your appetites. Check out that full HD picture quality! Nice.

Here are the two main model sheets our animators and painters used during production:

Ilona’s character design was inspired by a number of sources, most notably Alysha’s concept designs for her fashion line this year, but also by the work of the Australian artist Ghost Patrol. The original idea and story was driven by this theme of children and woodland creatures in cold weather, with a flair of mystical qualities interwoven throughout. Her clothing and features had to be a perfect balance of an old-fashioned hunter/trader society while still making it apparent she was a girl, especially with that hood on for most the time. The tiny skirt helps a lot.

The design style also is an evolution of some of the elements used in Duck Heart Teslacoil, specifically the simplistic facial features, such as black dot eyes and single-line mouth. Much of this was adapted to keep the character design simple, since we needed to make it easier for a larger pool of animators to draw her. Still, Ilona can show a wide range of emotions and poses. She was certainly the most difficult character I’ve ever had to design for a film, but I’ve been happy with the results and hopefully our audiences will be, too.

So somehow, by the time we had reached the end of March, I went from having one animated short film in production to having three. Not only am I directing “The Girl and the Fox,” which is going through animation retakes and post-production, but I’m also co-producing a 2D Flash film called “Coyote Dinner” and semi-directing a CG 3D film with the working title “Cube Dog.” More on all these… eventually. Considering all three must be done by the end of May, I figure there will be time for reflection once they’re all finished.

So in the meantime, here’s a new promo still from “The Girl and the Fox,” this time showing off the full HD detail we can achieve with our digital production system. This particular shot features layout by Lyle Nagy, background paint by Andrew Miller and character animation by yours truly.

Well that was easy. What should I print next?

Since July, anyone trying to access my online portfolio at www.tylerkupferer.com probably noticed that the URL would redirect them to the Base14 Blog. This is because what was a stunning accomplishment of amateur web design and development when it was launched in 2005 had long outlasted its welcome and needed to be replaced. The site was a pit of stagnation, featuring videos and illustrations way below my current abilities and being far too much trouble to update. What was needed was a complete redesign, and while I had been toying with some fancy flash interfaces since 2008, it was all asking for more trouble than it was worth.

But with my name getting around in the festival circuit and employment opportunities looming, I realized that I needed something that could at the very least show my demo reel and link to my resume. So I went back to the drawing board and designed something that would be clean, neat and super, super simple. Presenting: TJK Homepage 3.0.

While designing the mockup took a few days, coding the site itself only took one evening. The entire site is very simple, but effective. And it was actually pretty fun to make. I may be out of the professional web development industry, but few things make me happier than some sharp, clean and efficient CSS code.

P.S. The first item in my reel is a piece of rough animation from The Girl and the Fox. Be excited!