There’s an interesting article on the Cartoon Brew website that starts off with a tongue-in-cheek poke at the title of my book. This touched a sensitive nerve between the traditional animators and those that use Flash for animation. Seems that the purist pencil-hugging animators are blaming Flash for “cheapening” the entire animation industry due to its low budget nature and clean line quality. What started as an alleged light-hearted point of view turned bitter quickly for the traditional animators who felt the need to voice complaints that Flash is causing too many self-proclaimed “animators” the ability to create “moving crap”. Sure, there will always be a balance between good and bad with everything, whether it’s an animation made with Flash, a novel, the latest block-buster film, cuisine or dare I say it…traditional animation! I have seen plenty of horrible animation as well as inspirational animation regardless of the tool used to create it. Flash is arguably a more accessible product than the traditional animation process which requires exponentially more time and tens of thousands of dollars for cameras and post production equipment. With the worldwide emergence of Flash as an animation tool, it is only natural and expected that we see more animation around us everyday - good and bad. And as Martha says, isn’t that a good thing?
Is Flash the red-headed stepchild of the animation world? Has it become the “F” word of our industry? Or is this really the tool of the future when we think of animation for the web, television, film, mobile, desktop…ummm, ,oh yeah, it already is
I have never been more excited as a Flash user than I have right now. Richard Galvan, Flash Product Manager, announced at Adobe MAX and the Best in the South West conferences some of the new features they are working on for the next release of Flash (Flash CS4?). As promising as these new features look, keep in mind this is no guarantee they will make it into the final release. It is still too early to predict with any degree of certainty the success of implementing such robust animation tools - but it is sure nice knowing that the Flash engineers understand the needs of animators and is working hard to make us happy. more »
I didn’t attend Adobe MAX in Chicago this last week but my monkey did. He has appeared in more conferences that I have. Justin Everett-Church (Sr. product Manager, Flash Player, Adobe Systems, Inc.) used the monkey to demo some very cool new customizable filters for the next generation of Flash. Photo by Todd Sanders.
Here’s a peek at 2 such filters (Flash 9 required):
I met Shawn Linehan, the Sr Graphics Specialist for Lensbaby last week at the Flash Forward Conference - and she showed me the coolest lens ever! It is called Lensbaby 3G and I think they should change the name to the “Holy-Crap-This-Is-The-Most-Fun-Lens-Ever!” lens. Words will not do it justice because it has to be seen and used in person to appreciate it’s inventiveness and beauty. My SLR is a bottomless well of fun to begin with, but now it has become something above and beyond what it has been. I can only compare it to Flash and a Wacom tablet - I couldn’t use one without the other - now I can same the same for my Nikon D80 and my Lensbaby 3G. Shawn even sent 2 wide angle lenses to go with it (pictured). I highly recommend checking out the Lensbaby website and sticking one on your own SLR. It’s easy to learn and you’ll be taking cool photos instantly. Here are my first few attempts.
I just got back from Flash Forward (Boston) and it was easily one of the most successful and fun conferences ever! Pictured here is my daughter Andrea who made a guest appearance during my sold out session (standing room only and people were lined up even outside the hall doorway into the hall). I opened the session with an animation of my daughter introducing me - and then she rode down the center aisle in person on a tricycle (art imitating life). I have uploaded images to flickr and a full blog review of the conference will come once I settle down, get back on track with some client projects and take a long nap.
I can’t believe how well my book is doing on amazon.com! First of all, it has been the #1 book in the “animation” category for several weeks and now it is the #1 book in the “Web & Multimedia” category to boot! Not to toot my own horn again, but the current overall ranking as of this blog is 1,853 out of 2.5 million in the general “Books” category. *Pop!* of the cork to all Flash designers and animators everywhere!
It’s Christmas here in my little hole in the world. My copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection has arrived. Huge thanks to Adobe and the Adobe Certified Experts managers, I now have all the latest versions of InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, Dreameaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth, Encore, Bridge, Version Cue, Device Central, Adobe Stock Photos, Acrobat Connect and Dynamic Link. Whew!
To install the entire suite of tools requires over 22GB of hard drive space - huge yes, but these days it is hard to get a new CPU with less than 100GB. Unfortunately this particular desktop I wish to install the Master Collection on has a wee-little hard drive capacity of 38GB. What’s worse is that only 20GB of space is currently free. Time to upgrade. Since the processor, RAM and video card are still up-to-snuff technology-wise I may simply upgrade the hard drive to a 350GB Seagate or similar. This will require backing up and transferring the entire OS and all currently installed programs. Not exactly how i would want to spend several precious hours on any given Sunday but, it is what it is.
Once installed, my biggest plan is to experiment with animation techniques involving Flash, After Effects and Photoshop. There so much I want to do and so little time to actually do it - more to come…
This is my cell phone. It is over 1 year old and I can guarantee, it is cleaner than yours. How? Because I put it through the wash 2 weeks ago. No, not on purpose. I forgot it was in the pocket of my shorts which went through the entire wash cycle and an entire 60 minutes in the dryer. I remembered where it was just as the dryer cycle ended. it was too late.
Or was it?
I ran down to the laundry room hoping I didn’t do what I just did. When I pulled the shorts out of the dryer I could feel the extra weight of the phone inside. I reached into the pocket to grab it and felt an instantaneous pain from the heat that the RAZR’s metal body was conducting. I nearly suffered 2nd degree burns and had to run my hand under cold water for a few minutes. The best part of this story is, I plugged the charger into the phone and started it up. Everything works! I mean EVRYTHING works. The display is fine, the network is detected, incoming calls are connecting and outgoing calls can be made. People I call tell me my voice sounds fine. It has been 2 weeks and the phone is still in perfect working condition. I would file this under “Do not attempt at home”, but in the event you drop your cell phone in a pool or the toilet (a friend did once at a local bar), do not give up on it. Let it dry out for a few days after taking off the battery plate and battery or…place it in the dryer during your next load of laundry.
My moo cards just arrived! I followed the link to moo from my flickr photo site and decided to give them a try. The printing is great, colors are true and the card stock is nice and heavy. The flip side has my head shot photo and information (name, url, phone). I highly recommend moo!
It’s all a blur. The writing of the book that is. It seems almost impossible that I got it done last winter and to be totally honest, I’m ready to jump back on to the author train. I have to admit, the writing, design and layout from cover to cover was as much fun as it was hard work. The best part of all is how well the book is doing on amazon.com. When I checked this morning it was ranked just over 3,000 out of 2.5 million books. It is currently the #1 book in both Graphics and Web & Multimedia categories. So far the 5 unsolicited reviews on amazon are all extremely positive with 5 stars each! Thanks to all of you for buying this book - now I have to figure out how to top my own act
My publisher told me that the book is available in the UK and will be available any day now in the US. In fact, UPS just plopped my copies on my doorstep an hour ago! They have that new car smell
-c
As advertised, yesterday was the official release date for my book. I emailed the publisher to find out how things were going and this was their response:
“Hi Chris,
We got advance copies in yesterday and they look
fabulous! Some copies were sent direct from the printer to SIGGRAPH
so they are available there this week.
The overall publication date has slipped back slightly to August 20th
because the number of pre-ordered copies meant that we needed to
increase our initial print run (which obviously takes a little longer).
We currently have 2,500 copies pre-ordered which is very promising for
the success of the book.”
So, if the book has to be delayed a little longer, having too many pre-orders is a pretty damn good reason. I’ll take it. Thanks everyone for the incredible support. I think this book may already be a success!
New DVD with approximately 80 min of Flash video tutorials by yours truly. Produced in association with Photoshop Cafe, you will learn about;
Custom workspaces: Learn how to set up your workspace for a more efficient workflow
Creating your own keyboard shortcuts
How to nest animations
Copy Motion and Paste Motion
Animated cast and drop shadows
How to sync sounds to animation
Motion blur
Panning and zooming camera effects
Seamless looping backgrounds
Lip syncing
Walk cycle tricks
Fire
Steam
Rain
This DVD is targeted for newcomers to Flash. We are already talking about future training videos that will be more focused and in-depth in terms of animation techniques.
I haven’t blogged much lately (in case you didn’t notice). I have been slightly distracted by the smell of the ocean, sounds of the tide rolling in to meet the warm sand, the rope whipping ever so gently against the flag pole outside my window, the occasional squawk from sea gulls surfing over the warm breeze overhead, the striking of drivers to golf balls, laughter of children at play and the popping of bottle caps from their ice cold beer bottles. Yup, it’s summer on Cape Cod and I wouldn’t miss this for all the tea in China. July and August are the months I spend down here with my family as a working vacation. Have laptop will travel, the single greatest perk of my career is having not only the ability to work from any location, but the luxury of spending almost the entire summer in Brewster. You can have a sneak peek into our wonderful world if you are the least bit curious, but these photos only tell half the story - the other half will be kept secret in order to maintain a necessary amount of anonymity about the exact location of this place - selfish? You bet I am and you would be to
Chris Georgenes (jor-JEE-ness), started life like most humans, covered in placenta and with minimal motor skills. It was not long before he learned how to use both hands and feet as a groove-oriented drummer in a variety of rock bands. Upon standing fully erect, Chris attended a fine art school and received his B.F.A. Years later someone invented the Internet and then another person invented Flash. Riding on the coat tails of these two individuals, Chris was able to carve a unique niche for himself using both tools. His self-taught animation experiments were the stepping stones of what has become a regular source of income.
