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Flash Brighton/BANG Film Carnival O Fun December 5, 2007

Posted by animnation in BANG Meetings, Flash Brighton.
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The 11th of December sees the Carnival O Fun move festively into a brand spanking new venue and a merge of two of Brighton’s best groups – Flash Brighton & BANG!

We are leaving the red hot shores of Carnival Island (The Cricketers) and heading via sled dogs to the snowy peaked mountain range of Christmas Province…or in other words Lighthouse’s Digital Lounge complete with bar – so you can fill up on Mulled Wine…or beer!

Come and feast your eyes on a selection of funny festive themed films, YouTube clips and animations specially selected by Flash Brighton’s Carnival King, Richard Mitchelson!

We even have an extra treat in store for you – with a special guest appearance from Cyriak! He is coming along to show us a fine array of his favorite animations and talk about his quirky work.

So make sure you bring your Santa hats and a belly full of cheer for this big bad kick ass end to the Flash Brighton/BANG year. And, if you are lucky I’m sure Santa Seb from Flash Brighton will make an appearance with Adobe based gifts and prizes and a YO-HO-HO for all.

Tuesday 11th December, 6:30pm (screening starting just after 7pm) at the Lighthouse Digital Lounge, 1, Zone B, 28 Kensington Street, BN1 4AJ

Map

Be there or be Jack Frost (…left out in the cold)!

We have very kindly been sponsored by Unwrong and Littleloud – if it wasn’t for these guys, the evening wouldn’t be possible.

SPACES ARE LIMITED so please register at our page on upcoming to ensure your place.

I’m running a Flash Brighton group workshop on creating 3D in Maya! November 15, 2007

Posted by animnation in Animation Tutorials, Flash Brighton, General AnimNation News.
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I have been helping Flash guru Seb Lee-Delisle run the Flash Brighton group for a while now – but this is the first time I have actually held a workshop for the group!

There seems to be a bit of a growing interest in 3D within the group – so I thought I’d give them all an insight into the world of Maya and what the software is capable of doing. Plus a lot of the research and technology used for many years in the 3D industry is now making it’s way across to the Flash platform. News has it that the next version on Flash will have IK integrated into it (for those who aren’t “in-the-know” about IK – it basically is an amazing tool to assist character animators. It links a series of skeleton joints together in a chain – enabling you to simply pick up a handle in 3D space and move, for example, a limb around without having to manipulate a series of individual joints). So I thought it would be nice to show where that technology came from.

Seeing as Maya is such an immense piece of software & has quite a steep learning curve – I’m limiting my talk to demonstrating character modeling and animation, lighting, particles and dynamics, and also how to integrate 3D animation into Flash (a technique I have done a few times to bring in 3D character animation into online Flash games).

It’s beginning to remind me of the days when I was assisting Techex – demonstrating earlier versions of Maya to potential buyers!

When & where is it?

The Greene Room (upstairs in The Cricketers)
Tuesday 20th November, 6:30pm

Register to attend here – http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/319259

Flash On The Beach Update November 9, 2007

Posted by animnation in Brighton Digital Festival, Flash Brighton.
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Well I’ve just got back from the Flash On The Beach conference & feeling incredibly inspired! The conference guest speakers were amazing – & really opened my eyes up to the advances in the Flash world. I was very lucky to be given a ticket to this year’s festival through coming 1st in a competition to design a Flash banner to advertise the conference – so a big thanks to the Flash Brighton group and John Davey for making it all possible.

I’m off now to download a copy of the Papervison3D Collada Maya converter software to see what amazing 3D models I can drag into Flash!

And the best news of all – the next version of Flash is incorporating Inverse Kinematics! Now why they couldn’t include that technology into Flash years ago, I’ll never know! IK has been around in the world of 3D for donkeys years & revolutionised the way us 3D animators work. But it’s great news anyway for any Flash animator!

Out of all of the guest speakers, three stand out as being very inspirational to me:-

Chris Orwig – freelance interactive designer, photographer & lecturer at Brookes Institute of Photography. Chris gave an hour long talk on story, branding and visual design. A few things I took away from his talk are to keep things simple, how to explain my niche work in one sentence and how my work could tell a story (colour conveys emotion, typography a voice etc) & also complete admiration for his photography work.

GMUNK – an amazing Motion Graphics designer who combines Maya dynamics & modelling and design to create brilliant visuals. And very often his work has been produced to an extremely tight deadline – so I’m sure his tips and tricks will come in handy!

The Ronin – again, an amazing Motion Graphics designer & UK based! I recognised one of The Ronin’s animations “Black Day to Freedom” from the McLaren Award at Edinburgh Festival a few years ago – second time round watching it, I still found it incredibly moving. The Ronin combines photography and illustrations by his brother to make some very inspirational pieces. I would definitely like to try out some of his techniques to combine my photography work and get some motion into it!

As soon as the tickets become available for the 2008 Flash on the Beach – I’ll be getting my credit card out to book a bunch of tickets!

Brighton Digital Festival October 24, 2007

Posted by animnation in BANG Meetings, Brighton Digital Festival, Flash Brighton.
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The Brighton Digital Festival is coming up fast!

Flash on the Beach – 4th – 7th November

We’re only a week and half away until the start of the Flash On The Beach conference – which will be hosting talks and workshops by some of the world’s best Flash experts. I was very lucky enough to win my ticket to the conference this year by creating a Flash banner to advertise the conference. The entries to the competition were judged by the Flash Coders New York group and I was privileged to win 1st place!

Y-Design Awards – Peoples’ Choice Award – 5th November Brighton Pier

Brighton Pier has been opened up to digital artists to celebrate the Peoples’ Choice Award as part of the Y-Design Awards. The organisers of this event have very kindly opened up their invitations to the Brighton Animators Networking Group.

Portfolio Clinic – 13th November

I will be putting in an appearance at the DScape Portfolio Clinic as an industry representative. The evening is designed for students and freelancers to have a one-to-one meeting with the best local digital companies to show their portfolio in the hope of getting some expert advice and possibly some work!

Animation Night – 14th November

This is evening is being held to showcase English and Irish animation work with a political theme. Wired Sussex have very kindly offered a 20 minute slot that evening to show off the work produced by the Brighton Animators Networking Group (BANG) and the newly formed Hastings Animators Networking Group (HANG).

Flash Brighton VJ’ing project September 27, 2007

Posted by animnation in Flash Brighton.
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Next Tuesday’s Flash Brighton meeting will see a new project for the group! The previous group task to create a moving comic book was so successful that we have decided to expand our new brief to the creative and technical amoungst the group.

As Brighton is so full of fantastic DJ nights – we thought it would be a fabulous idea to set a brief to create short animations for a DJ set.  I’m sure we’ll see all amounts of amazing prgrammed fractal animations and traditional Flash animations at the end of the project – so watch this space!