Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Ball Hitting Animation

Your Lovable Baby...



Sound wave properties and characteristics

Sound waves are characterized by the generic properties of waves, which are frequency, wavelength, period, amplitude, intensity, speed, and direction (sometimes speed and direction are combined as a velocity vector, or wavelength and direction are combined as a wave vector).

Transverse waves, also known as shear waves, have an additional property of polarization.

Sound characteristics can depend on the type of sound waves (longitudinal versus transverse) as well as on the physical properties of the transmission medium.
Whenever the pitch of the soundwave is affected by some kind of change, the distance between the sound wave maxima also changes, resulting in a change of frequency. When the loudness of a soundwave changes, so does the amount of compression in airwave that is travelling through it, which in turn can be defined as amplitude.
Speed of sound:
The speed of sound depends on the medium through which the waves are passing, and is often quoted as a fundamental property of the material. In general, the speed of sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio of the elastic modulus (stiffness) of the medium to its density. Those physical properties and the speed of sound change with ambient conditions. For example, the speed of sound in gases depends on temperature. In 20°C (68°F) air at sea level, the speed of sound is approximately 343 m/s (767.3 mph). In fresh water, also at 20°C, the speed of sound is approximately 1482 m/s (3,315.1 mph). In steel the speed of sound is about 5960 m/s (13,332.1 mph).[2] The speed of sound is also slightly sensitive (a second-order effect) to the sound amplitude, which means that there are nonlinear propagation effects, such as the production of harmonics and mixed tones not present in the original sound (see parametric array).

Who invented the camera?

Many would say that George Eastmann invented the camera(roll-film camera) in 1888.( But actually, somebody else made the camera first--that is, first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography was built by Johann Zahn in 1685.)

Some say the first 'camera' was designed before Columbus. It was by simple deduction that an artist noticed a faint image on the opposing wall of a small building where a small hole was in the lighted side of the building. He worked on a lens that could be placed in a similar hole of another building and he noticed that the image on the opposite wall was rather clear, color and all, although upside down. He then proceeded to use oil paints that were in use to paint portaits at the time. He simply mixed the oils to match the colors and painted directly onto the image he was looking at. Todays cameras do the same thing minus the oil paint. Film cameras have replaced the oils with both silver halide salts and dyes. Digital cameras simply use super miniature diodes that are photo etched onto silicone slices (chips)and translates different ranges of the color spectrum into binary or machine language digital code.

Here is more of the camera's complication history of invention:
5th-4th Centuries B.C.�Chinese and Greek philosophers describe the basic principles of optics and the camera.
1664-1666 Isaac Newton discovers that white light is composed of different colors.
1727 Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light. 1794 First Panorama opens, the forerunner of the movie house invented by Robert Barker.
1814 Joseph Nic�phore Ni�pce achieves first photographic image with camera obscura - however, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded.
1837 Daguerre�s first daguerreotype - the first image that was fixed and did not fade and needed under thirty minutes of light exposure.
1840 First American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera.
1841 William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype process - the first negative-positive process making possible the first multiple copies.
1843 First advertisement with a photograph made in Philadelphia.
1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process - images required only two or three seconds of light exposure.
1859 Panoramic camera patented - the Sutton.
1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer.
1865 Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright.
1871 Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.
1880 Eastman Dry Plate Company founded.
1884 Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film.
1888 Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera.
1898 Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.
1900 First mass-marketed camera�the Browning.
1913/1914 First 35mm still camera developed.
1927 General Electric invents the modern flash bulb.
1932 First light meter with photoelectric cell introduced.
1935 Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome film.
1941 Eastman Kodak introduces Kodacolor negative film.
1942 Chester Carlson receives patent for electric photography (xerography).
1948 Edwin Land markets the Polaroid camera.
1954 Eastman Kodak introduces high speed Tri-X film.
1960 EG&G develops extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy.
1963 Polaroid introduces instant color film.
1968 Photograph of the Earth from the moon.
1973 Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera.
1977 George Eastman and Edwin Land inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
1978 Konica introduces first point-and-shoot, autofocus camera.
1980 Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder.
1984 Canon demonstrates first electronic still camera.
1985 Pixar introduces digital imaging processor.
1990 Eastman Kodak announces Photo CD as a digital image storage medium.

Monday, July 28, 2008

History of Comics

Comic books are, at least, as old as movies. Their first steps were set in the beginning of XXth Century, in the search of new ways of graphic and visual communication and expression. Usually, comic books are also associated with the prehistoric paintings in caves and Egyptian hieroglyphics, all of them visual narratives of juxtaposed images. The existence of words was not mandatory, but with the adoption of symbols to represent them -- letters --, they were soon added to give more information and boost the narrative flow. The improvement of press and printing technology were strong factors to the development of the medium.

Among the precursors can be mentioned Swiss Rudolph Töpffer, German Wilhelm Bush, French Georges ("Christophe") Colomb and brazilian Angelo Agostini, but it is usual to associate the first comic book to Richard Fenton Outcalt's creation, The Yellow Kid, in 1896. Outcalt essentially synthesized what had been made before him and introduced a new element: the balloon, a space where he wrote what the characters said, and that pointed to their mouth with a kind of tail.

The bases for a brand new kind of art were set, and the adventure begun. In the first decades of its life, comic books were essentially humoristic, and this is the explanation for the name they carry to date in English language. Some of those days' creations can be read until today, and are among the best stories in comic book's History: Little Nemo in Slumberland (by Winsor McCay), Mutt & Jeff (by Bud Fisher), Popeye (by E. Segar) and Krazy Kat (by George Herriman). However, comic books have other denominations, such as Italian fumetti (smoke, an allusion to the shape of the balloon), French bande dessiné; (drawn strip), Japanese manga and Portuguese história em quadradinhos (story in little squares), much more comprehensive.

Stories' themes were mostly about children and pet's frolics, and from that age comes the designations kid strips, animal strips, family strips, boy-dog strips, boy-family-dog strips and whatever else could be created. Such designations still apply, even to more intellectualized strips, such as Calvin and Hobbes.
Calvin dances!Hobbes too!

Online Advertising

The Internet is one of the most important media for advertising. It not only complements your other forms of advertising, but also reaches a unique, distinctive class of audience. Consumers on the Internet are generally the most sought after because of their purchasing power.

Here's why: National Internet Demographics
  • The average age of Internet users is 35.1 years.
  • The average income is $52,500.
  • 63% of Internet users have attended or graduated from college
  • 13.7% have attained Master's degrees, and 5.3% hold Phds, MDs, or law degrees.

For an Average Internet user:
  • Has 19 sessions per month
  • Visits 10 unique Web sites per month
  • Spends approximately 1 hour per site
  • Spends 10 hours on the Net each month
  • Spends 10 hours on the Net each month --Nielsen/Net Ratings Internet Growth
  • Internet traffic is doubling every 100 days
  • Internet Transactions surpass $300 billion by 2002.

"The Internet's pace of adoption eclipses all other technologies that preceded it. Radio was in existence for 38 years before 50 million people tuned in; TV took 13 years to reach that benchmark. The Internet crossed that line in 4 years." --From The Emerging Digital Economy Report, US Department of Commerce "

(In 1992), there were only 50 Web sites. Now 65,000 are being added--every hour." --US Secretary of Commerce William Daley

Online Ads Get Noticed!

  1. Internet users are 34% more likely to be aware of a brand after only a single banner ad exposure and 44% more likely after two exposures than those who have not seen the banner ad.1
  2. Studies show that consumers who visit a retailers Web site spend 33% more annually at the same retailers store.8
  3. Online advertising increases off-line sales, with consumer loyalty increasing an average of 4% toward advertised brands after only a single banner ad exposure.1
  4. 63% of Internet users believe that companies advertising on the Web are "more forward thinking than other brands."1
  5. Online advertising ranks higher than TV in ability to create a brand-linked impression.1
  6. Television audiences are migrating to the Internet. Twelve percent of PC users admit to giving up outdoor activities, 17% give up reading magazines, books or household chores, 24% give up eating or sleeping, but 78% admit giving up television watching time to "surf the Web." 3
  7. Internet Demographics are an advertiser's dream: Internet users are young, well educated and earn high incomes. The average Internet user is almost 35 years old, and have a household income of more than $60k. 4
  8. Internet traffic doubles every 100 days. 5
  9. Approaching the popularity of magazine reading, 20% of Americans go online for news once a week or more, up from 6% in 1996.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Video Graphics Array

The term Video Graphics Array (VGA) refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987[1] , but through its widespread adoption has also come to mean either an analog computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector, or the 640×480 resolution itself. While this resolution has been superseded in the personal computer market, it is becoming a popular resolution on mobile devices.

VGA was the last graphical standard introduced by IBM that the majority of PC clone manufacturers conformed to, making it today (as of 2008) the lowest common denominator that all PC graphics hardware supports before a device-specific driver is loaded into the computer. For example, the Microsoft Windows splash screen appears while the machine is still operating in VGA mode, which is the reason that this screen always appears in reduced resolution and color depth.

VGA was officially superseded by IBM's XGA standard, but in reality it was superseded by numerous slightly different extensions to VGA made by clone manufacturers that came to be known collectively as "Super VGA".

Technical Details:

VGA is referred to as an "array" instead of an "adapter" because it was implemented from the start as a single chip, replacing the Motorola 6845 and dozens of discrete logic chips covering a full-length ISA board that the MDA, CGA, and EGA used. This also allowed it to be placed directly on a PC's motherboard with a minimum of difficulty (it only required video memory, timing crystals and an external RAMDAC), and the first IBM PS/2 models were equipped with VGA on the motherboard.

The VGA specifications are as follows:

  • 256 KB Video RAM
  • 16-color and 256-color modes
  • 262,144-value color palette (six bits each for red, green, and blue)
  • Selectable 25.175 MHz [3] or 28.3 MHz master clock
  • Maximum of 720 horizontal pixels[4]
  • Maximum of 480 lines[5]
  • Refresh rates at up to 70 Hz [6]
  • Vertical Blanking interrupt (Not all clone cards support this.)
  • Planar mode: up to 16 colors (4 bit planes)
  • Packed-pixel mode: 256 colors (Mode 13h)
  • Hardware smooth scrolling support
  • Some "Raster Ops" support
  • Barrel shifter
  • Split screen support
  • 0.7 V peak-to-peak
  • 75 ohm double-terminated impedance (18.7mA - 13mW)

The VGA supports both All Points Addressable graphics modes, and alphanumeric text modes. Standard graphics modes are

  • 640×480 in 16 colors
  • 640×350 in 16 colors
  • 320×200 in 16 colors
  • 320×200 in 256 colors (Mode 13h)

As well as the standard modes, VGA can be configured to emulate many of the modes of its predecessors (EGA, CGA, and MDA).


Basics of Live Sound

Getting Started

In most situations common for smaller bands, you'll be in a club with a less than stellar PA system. That's not to say you won't find a club that'll surprise you. In this tutorial, we're going to be taking a look at mixing live sound from the angle of an aspiring engineer, not necessarily a band who's bringing their own PA system with them.

When you're faced with mixing sound, the first thing to take into account is the room itself. It's easy to overdo it; you really need to only reinforce what isn't easily heard in the room. When you're in a small room, amplifiers and drums are very easily heard naturally, especially in a very small space. Putting them through the PA will do nothing but make it sound messy in the room. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to keep it simple.

Mixing Vocals

The vocals are the most important part of any small-room mix. Making sure that they're loud and able to be heard clearly throughout the room is of utmost importance because they're no competition for loud guitar amps and drums. The biggest factor you're going to have to compete against is monitor feedback. Check out the guide to mixing monitors for information on killing feedback before it starts.

One technique I prefer to use is subgrouping. On a lot of boards, you'll have the option to group channels together to one fader, with the ability to insert a compressor across the whole group. This way, you can compress the vocals all at once (saving you valuable compressor room if you're limited in the number of comps you've got), and you can also double-bus - meaning, put the vocal in the subgroup as well as the channel itself - to get some extra gain.

Drums

Drums are a difficult thing to mix live. In order to deliver the best-sounding mix, you need to take stock of what you can hear in th room naturally, without amplification. Most drum kits, in a small room, won't need any amplification past the kick drum.

For a good small room, I prefer to mic the kick drum, as well as the snare. Toms generally don't need any amplification, as they're generally not played enough to warrant dedicated channels. If you're in a club that holds, say, between 250 and 500 people, you may need to mic them. If you're low on microphones, you can put one microphone for every two toms, placing them in between. Depending on the quality of the kit, you'll need to compress.

Overheads and cymbal microphones are of low priority. Even some small clubs that hold less than 1,000 people may not need amplification on the overheads. Sometimes, I'll mic the high-hat in a small room if the drummer plays it softly, but generally, it's not necessary.

I prefer to compress the kick drum separately, and EQ with a boost in the mid frequencies. I also, as usual with most channels, cut out everything below 80Hz.

Here's another tip: if you've got a loud snare, but still want to add reverb to it, you can switch the reverb send on that channel to pre-fader instead of post-fader. That way you can still send the snare signal to the reverb unit while not actually putting any in the house!

Bass & Guitars

Quite simply, in most small rooms, you won't need to mics the guitar amps and bass cabinets. In fact, I'm almost always finding myself having to ask the players to turn them down because they're too loud in the house. Sometimes you'll find you need more definition in the bass guitar, or your drummer will want more in their monitors. In this case, I'll put a DI box between the guitar itself and the amplifier. That way, you're in total control of the tone, and the amplifier on stage can still do its job as the player wishes.

Acoustic guitars are a different matter. Sometimes, you'll find players with an acoustic amp, but those generally don't cut through the mix well. Putting a DI box out for the acoustic is the best way to get the best sound; you'll need to carefully EQ it to avoid feedback. I always keep a Feedback Buster - a specially-designed round disk of rubber sold in most music stores - to lend to guitarists who don't have one. These block the majority of the frequencies from entering the guitar's soundhole, which prevents the major feedback problems you usually get.

In Closing

Mixing live sound isn't easy, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be doing fine. Of course, mixing in a large club is completely a different deal - you have much more flexibility and you're fighting less with the loudness of the instruments in the room.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

How to Become a Cameraman

Cameraman is a choice of career that people land in by various ways. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to preparation, education and guidance. But there are some concrete steps that you can follow to become a cameraman and enjoy this exciting, interesting and lucrative career.

Instructions:
Step1 - Start your education by learning the fundamentals of the craft. A good film/video school can put you ahead of the competition. Video and computer graphics courses at a technical school can be helpful. If you go to college, major in film and television production.

Step
2 - Look for hands-on opportunities to get some experience. Make videos for family and friends of special occasions. Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and graduations are excellent chances to practice your skills. As your skills increase, your contacts will increase. You'll begin to establish a reputation. Skills and contacts are essential if you want to become a cameraman.

Step
3 - Use your natural abilities and do what you enjoy. If you've always enjoyed taking still pictures, learn all you can about photography and the best camera brands. If you enjoy taking home videos, leverage that interest and increase your skills.

Step
4 - Keep track of every bit of experience that you get while you are on the road to becoming a cameraman. The more work you have to put on your resume, the better. Every video you make for free and every part-time paid work experience looks good on a resume.

Step
5 - Look for part-time jobs that have anything to do with cameras, lighting or editing. Your local TV station can be a possibility for work as an intern. Even assisting the cameraman's assistant can put you in contact with people who can help you.

Step6 - Develop your communication and people skills. These are vital for a good cameraman.

A Brief History of Animation

Animation is a graphic representation of drawings to show movement within those drawings. A series of drawings are linked together and usually photographed by a camera. The drawings have been slightly changed between individualized frames so when they are played back in rapid succession (24 frames per second) there appears to be seamless movement within the drawings.

Pioneers of animation include Winsor McCay of the United States and Emile Cohl and Georges Melies of France. Some consider McCay's Sinking of the Lusitania from 1918 as the first animated feature film.
Early animations, which started appearing before 1910, consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. It was extremely labor intensive as there were literally hundreds of drawings per minute of film. The development of celluloid around 1913 quickly made animation easier to manage. Instead of numerous drawings, the animator now could make a complex background and/or foreground and sandwich moving characters in between several other pieces of celluloid, which is transparent except for where drawings are painted on it. This made it unnecessary to repeatedly draw the background as it remained static and only the characters moved. It also created an illusion of depth, especially if foreground elements were placed in the frames.

Walt Disney took animation to a new level. He was the first animator to add sound to his movie cartoons with the premiere of Steamboat Willie in 1928. In 1937, he produced the first full length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
With the introduction of computers, animation took on a whole new meaning. Many feature films of today had animation incorporated into them for special effects. A film like Star Wars by George Lucas would rely heavily on computer animation for many of its special effects. Toy Story, produced by Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios, became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers when it was released in 1995.
With the advent of personal computers, it has now become possible for the average person to create animations.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

10 Tips on designing a fast loading web site

The Number 1 rule that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.

Minimize the use of images - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.

Optimize images for the web - Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.

Use Tables creatively - You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively . Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like. Check out our homepage and our menus to see how we have used tables in our site.
Cut down the use of animated gifs - Don't use animated gifs unless it is necessary. Animated gifs take a long time to load and can also be very irritating. But since they catch your attention you could use small animated gifs to draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site.

Design simple icons - Instead of using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor. We have used small icons in our homepage to highlight the main sections of our site.

Use background images instead of big images whenever possible - Use background images whenever possible. This is usually a very useful tip for headers and footers. Instead of using an image of width 580 which is a uniform design you can use just a part of that as a background fill. This reduces the size of the web page as the image is small. The code will look like this :

Try out CSS Styles - Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles. Rollover the text on the right menu to see how we have used CSS Styles to get a simple but nice text effect.
Use Flash sparingly - There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don't make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.

Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.

Keep checking your load time - Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site, check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful. We kept using it to improve our site till we got a report that said good loading time!

We learnt these tips while building our web site. We've enjoyed sharing them with you and hope that you found them useful.

Advertising Ideas for Small Businesses

Word of mouth is excellent small business advertising – but it’s slow, and may be practically non-existent for new businesses. If you want to grow your customer base more quickly, you have to advertise.
This collection of small business advertising ideas presents both the tried and true and advertising ideas you may not have tried yet – advertising ideas for your small business to effectively reach your target market and attract new customers.
Tried and True Small Business Advertising Ideas:
1. The Yellow Pages -
There’s still a lot of people who use the yellow pages to find the businesses they’re looking for – and they won’t find you if your small business isn’t listed there. Get the biggest yellow page ad you can afford; the more visibility the better.
2. Newspaper advertising - Besides box ads and advertising inserts, local newspapers also often offer special advertising features showcasing particular businesses – all powerful small business advertising opportunities. Don’t overlook special interest newspapers as an advertising idea if they exist in your area. They may be delivered to exactly the audience you want to reach.
3. Direct mail - Direct mail can be very effective small business advertising – and is much more favourably received than other direct marketing media, such as email or telemarketing. And even if you don’t have a mailing list, you can still geographically target your mail.
4. Magazine advertising - This advertising idea can be a very effective way of reaching a target market. The trick is to choose the magazines or e-zines that best match the market you’re targeting.
5. Business cards - Sure, they’re advertising. Every time you hand one out to a prospective client or customer, you’re advertising your small business.
6. Joining professional/business organizations - Every professional or business organization offers exclusive advertising opportunities for their members, ranging from free promotion on the organization’s website through special section newspaper advertising. And being a member can be good small business advertising in itself.
7. Vehicle advertising - The reason you see so many vehicles emblazoned with advertising is that it works; vehicle advertising is very visible small business advertising. If you’re not ready for custom graphics or a magnet quad sign that sit atop your vehicle, go for a magnetic sign that you can take off when you want.
Advertising Ideas You May Not Have Tried Yet
8. Sending promos with invoices -
Little advertising ideas can be powerful, too. If you’re sending out an invoice, why not take the opportunity to include some small business advertising? To draw new customers, try something such as a “bring-a-friend” promotion.
9. Cable TV advertising - So you can’t afford to advertise your business during the Super Bowl. That doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the household reach of TV. Cable TV companies offer advertising ideas within the budget of small businesses, from advertising on the TV Guide Listings or Real Estate channels through running infomercials.

Friday, July 18, 2008

A Closer Look at Multimedia Designer Careers

As a multimedia designer, you will produce sketches, scale models, plans or drawings that will be reviewed by a director or production manager. You may design props, sets and costumes; direct set assistants on design interpretations, and advise on other areas of technical production such as lighting and sound in order to make sure that production sets resemble your designs and meet requirements.

Training
Jobs in multimedia design can be found in such career fields as television or film production, animation, audio production, and set design, as well as several other multimedia, and production design fields. Earning a degree in multimedia design can provide you with the knowledge and skills you will need to pursue a career in multimedia design. Through a degree program in multimedia design, you will gain training in digital media, design, visual effects and motion graphics, animation, production development, computer-aided design and drafting, production, and communication and information technology. You will also learn about production and editing, layout design, and other details that are involved in multimedia design.

Jobs
With a degree in multimedia design you will be prepared to pursue entry-level positions with film studios, television stations, advertising agencies, and video production houses. You may also be able to work with live productions such as live theater and live concerts. Jobs in multi-media design can be competitive. Employers are seeking designers who are well trained, open to new ideas, and can adapt well to changing trends.

The average salary for multimedia designers is between $35,000 and $60,000 a year.

Movie & Television Production

The full spectrum of animation in these areas is quite large. Jobs may include character animation in the form of a cartoon, logo, special effect and more. In case you haven't noticed, 3D really has taken off in the realm of computer animation and animation in general.Movies such as Lord of the Rings, Finding Nemo, the latest Star Wars prequels are all relying extensively on 3D computer animation. What would have looked fake and rigid a mere 6-7 years ago now looks photo realistic and seamless for 3D rendering and animation. A program like Maya can spit out amazingly detailed and convincing characters like Gollum (seen below), Ring Wraiths, and an insane amount of fighting, screaming Orcs. Exciting techniques involving motion capture can really add to the realism of characters. It really is an exciting time to be in the industry. Texture mapping, lighting effects, collision detection and special effects also need to be covered.

TV also offers a fair amount of opportunity in computer animation. Commercials are littered with animated logos, cats that sing, and bottles that dance. Local News always has an animator of some kind doing the logo fly in or that kind of thing. There are also TV movies, and obviously shows that rely on a computer artist to do some digital special effects. Some may start their animation career this way.

Tips and tools for your animations, education, and career

It doesn't matter if you're a traditional animator or a digital animator; over the course of your animation career, you'll accumulate a wealth of tips and tricks to help you save time, save money, and safely cut corners to produce the best product most efficiently. You'll also build up a storehouse of education and career know-how, until you're a veteran in the animation industry. Try these tips on for size - or write in and contribute a few of your own.

To know more, click here...


Special Effects Animation

Special effects animators help motion picture, television, advertising, and game producers to achieve stunning visual action sequences or backdrops while saving money. Special effects were added to Hollywood movies as early as in the 1920s as directors attempted to portray the world of the imagination that could otherwise not be photographed. Today, special effects animation is a commonplace element in films, videos, and games -- often becoming the centerpiece of the project, replacing live actors.

more...

Preparing Images and Photos for the Web

Here are some guidelines for making your images download quickly and display correctly.

Preparing Images

To prepare images for presentation on the Web, follow these steps:

  1. Begin a new file. If it’s a photo or original artwork, use 300 dpi as the resolution. If you are creating something simple, set the resolution to 72 dpi.
  2. Use the drawing, text, shape and other tools provided in the graphics program to create your image. Can you explain more what the Drawing tool would do?

How to Take Pictures for Online Use

Whenever you can, take photographs with a digital still camera, as opposed to a digital video camera or a regular camera. You will be able to turn the image into a Web-ready format more quickly and you’ll get a better quality picture than if you used a digital video camera or took screenshots from a digital video. or a camera phone?

Don’t despair if you don’t have a digital camera. With good-quality prints and a scanner, you can still create photos for the Web – just be prepared to spend some time getting prints made and then scanning them into your computer. more...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Digital Video Editing

Digital video camcorders are getting cheaper and cheaper while the video quality is getting better and better. Almost everyone I know has piles and piles of video tapes at home. Actually, it's hard to see any travellers that do not carry a video camcorder nowadays.

Yet, very, very few people make full use of their hours and hours of videos they shoot over the years!

With today's affordable video capture cards, easy-to-use digital video editing software and equipment , cheap and fast computer hardware, there's no reason one cannot edit his own Hollywood-like videos at home and show off to friends!

Thinking of digital video editing (or call it desktop video editing or computer video editing if you like)? You've landed at the right place! This site is all about digital video editing. For more...

Dumbest Secret Identities


One thing that always gets to people who have never read comics before is the superhero genre’s use of the secret identity. They are used to secret identities for spies, a profession that specifically requires the need to be in the shadows and out of the limelight, but for superheroes, who constantly find themselves at the center of the public’s attention, the idea of a secret identity defies their expectations. This is especially true of those heroes who wear little to no mask.

Yet the secret identity is a staple, and one that was created to help suspend disbelief for another staple, vigilantism. The secret identity has been under attack for a while now from within the comic world. Heroes are revealing themselves to the world (and we will no longer accept the extreme, note absurd, lengths writers will go to reverse the outing), but there are a few superheroes who have only hurt the cause of the secret identity over the years. These few, that have done so much to push away those unimaginative masses unable to suspend their disbelief any farther, are now named here...

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Women in Refridgerators


The 10 Worst Women in Refrigerators (i.e., Cases of Violence Against Women in Comics)
Superhero comics are often seen as the purest form of escapism. In them, men can fly and fight and do heroic things and meet girls and have a secret identity—you know, all the stuff men secretly want to do. Women…not so much. In fact, outside of comic books specifically written for women, female characters in superhero books have a pretty tough time of it. And by “tough time,” I mean horrible, horrible things happen to them—so much so that the term "Women in Refrigerators" has been coined to describe the phenomenon (Curious why? Wait until you get to #2). Granted, in most comics violence is the norm and people get hurt, but these aren’t just superheroine fights gone bad—these are ten of the most egregious examples of female characters (many of them not super at all) being hunted down and violated, especially by the men writing them. (Note: If it's not a superhero book, it's not in here. Otherwise most of this list would be all R. Crumb and Sin City comics.) ...more

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The 10 Manliest Superheroes - Animation



It seems these Top Tens might become a weekly affair here for the foreseeable future or until we ‘jump the shark’ and do a Top Ten with something about ‘babes’ in comics. God, I’m dreading the day I ever do it, but we aren’t above making other, very important and very serious, Top Tens that are formed with an exacting science, applied to rigorous tests, and made from only the finest ingredients.

Keeping that in mind, we’ve decided to bring you the Top Ten Manliest Superheroes. Now what makes a superhero manly? I like to think a ‘manly’ man is best known for his lack of knowledge on fashion, his chauvinist attitude toward feelings (marked by a great emotional dysfunction), and his general willingness to fight at the drop of a hat. Taking this all into consideration, we give you the Top Ten Manliest Superheroes:


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Monday, July 7, 2008

Aishwarya Rai at Flash Lights - Animation



Cool Movie & Animation



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