tweenOut

The Basement Design + Motion decided to put together a little Christmas greeting to show how much we care. You can view it here AR Christmas.

We learned a lot about how 3D animation to Flash works not to mention the hard work from Joseph Cross (3D models and animation), all the graphic work from Amy Kingman, and myself for the ActionScript 3 development and all The Basement team for their help and support. I would also like to give props to the PV3D team for an outstanding job with their AS3 library, Jack Doyle for GreenSock and all of its tweening abilities, and last but not least Saqoosha for the AS3 FlarToolKit library.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and I plan on posting some of my findings on Papervision3D here in the next couple of days.

Happy Holidays
Todd

Let me tell you about an issue I have had with the Adobe Media Encoder.  I have to encode a lot of videos for clients at work and I have been using Adobe Media Encoder for the job, but one day it just stopped working. Well I shouldn’t say stopped working it just stopped  importing .mov’s into the Media Encode and Premiere.

I tried Googling it but to no avail and then today it hit me what the problem might be. I knew that in the past I had to change the codec to QT settings and thought I would try that. That is when I found the issue.

There was recently an update to the Quicktime player on my machine. I did not think anything about it, I just thought it was just another update. Now, I’m not sure if it reinstalled it or I didn’t check the right box but when I went to try to play a .mov in QT it had to re-install itself. After it re-installed the settings for my codec was there and I was able to import .mov’s again into Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere.

So if you are having trouble importing .mov’s into Adobe Media Encoder or Premiere then try updating to the newest version of QuickTime or installing it period.

I hope this helps some of you.

I’m going to get on my soap box here for a little bit and talk about what you should be doing as a Freshman in a New Media or any Media University program.

I know the first few months of going to college can be a little hairy and make a student a little nervous and sometimes even want to go home, but for those people that feel that way hang in there it will get better. So while your settling in and getting to know people around you start thinking about what is going to happen after college. I know, you just started right, but let me tell you there will be an end to all the mayhem and you need to be prepared for what is next.

I see so many students wait until their senior year to start preparing themselves for graduation but, that is going to be way to late if you want to be prepared for reality. I would say that by the end of your Freshman year you should have an online portfolio of some sort. I know what you saying, “I don’t have the money for that”, well most schools have web space for you to use so check it out. If not get some free space from Yahoo or your IP service provider. Employers in this industry want to goto a url to view portfolios. They do not want to grab your CD or DVD and try to get it to work on their computer to view your work. One click should get them to your work and let them see what you have been doing. That is not to say that an employer will not want a CD to look at code or some detail of work to evaluate what they see on your portfolio so be prepared for that, and if that happens they will usually tell you.

Now during your Sophomore year every project you create should be a portfolio piece, and you should add it to the portfolio that you created in your Freshman year. That being said, we all know not every project will be a portfolio piece but if you think it has potential then you need to make sure it does make it into your portfolio.

Once you have a few pieces in your portfolio don’t be afraid to ask your instructors to look at it and tell you what they think of it. I would even tell you to find some employers that are in the industry to look at your portfolio and give you some feedback. Once you have found an employer to just review your portfolio and they give you their feedback then make sure you ask to keep in contact with them. That way when you graduate you have a lead for a job.

Now that you have your portfolio built, start doing some freelance jobs. This will give you some experience and some more work to add to your portfolio. Now if you can get paid for it that is great, and since you are a new comer you can not get full price. So don’t try, but after you get a few under your belt start raising the price.

By the time you are ready to graduate you should have a very worthy portfolio and be proud to show them and get the dream job you have been wanting. If your school has a night for seniors to show off their work don’t be afraid to invite employers to come see your work. That will show them that you are outgoing and willing to work. Plus I’m sure your work will be good enough to get you that job offer.

Good Luck and I hope this little piece of wisdom helped.

One of the first projects that I worked on with The Basement won an AIGA Prime design award and rather than writing the entire blog post out I thought I would post what was said on The Basement’s Website. This project was a learning experience for me. Coming to a new company and learning their ways is always a time consuming process and a learning curve is always expected so that being said, read the post and Congrats to all the Dwellers on their hard work.

“The Basement Design + Motion and client Miles Design have been awarded an AIGA Prime design award for our work on the www.knozone.com website. The winning entries will be on display Friday, November 6 at the Dean Johnson Gallery, and will be published in a book early next year, celebrating Indianapolis design. The team from The Basement Design + Motion would love to see you there. For more info, please visit: http://indianapolis.aiga.org/events/2009/11/35311049

AIGA, the professional association for design, stimulates thinking about design, demonstrates the value of design and empowers the success of designers at each stage of their careers. AIGA’s mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force. Founded in 1914, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design, and is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational institution.

The Basement Design + Motion is a digital design studio specializing in concept, design and production of contemporary interface design, motion graphics, Flash games, and animation for the web and TV.”

As normal The Basement keeps cranking out projects and here is one for KFC and the Madden 10 game. It is a code entry micro site built KFC. All the graphics were done by the The Basement’s graphic department and I was the lead Flash developer. PrizeLogic handled the backend data handling and everything seem to flow seamlessly to launch date.

Try the site out and feel free to tell me what you think.

KFC Micro-site