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This week Ben and Ian are joined by Doug Russell of the CrushCast. Harkening back to last week’s chat about the robofuture, Ian mentions news written by robots. This leads to a conversation about the next generation of blu ray and 4K. Going down the nostalgia rabbit hole they discuss the upcoming book, Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age.  This leads them to the question of what happened to the time capsule at Nickelodeon Studios. They move on to John K’s recent collaboration with Miley Cyrus and Universal’s decision to build Springfield. Ben tells us of his latest purchase of the Animator’s Survival Kit app for the iPad. There’s also talk about the Short Circuit remake currently in pre-production and Arnold Schwarzenegger on QVC: “Get to the Chopper!”

Finally they discuss Why Did CG Hub Shut Down Without Warning Its Users?

Since Ian didn’t have any trivia for us this week, please enjoy this video of voice actor Jim Cummings reading Darth Vader’s lines from Star Wars as Winnie the Pooh with a bonus appearance from Darkwing Duck.

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This week Ben and Ian, inspired by Ian’s recent viewing of the new Robocop, discuss the philosophical concepts of robotics in the future. This leads to the question of if we’ll ever see a movie about the journey of a super villain, and whether it’s a good thing if characters are all good/all evil or if it’s better when they’re shades of grey.

Ian tells us of Tanshumanism while Ben warns us about the Heartbleed bug. Continuing the movie conversation, Ian also tells us about The Machine.

Ben brings up the films Robot & Frank and Her.

Ian then shares Changing the Hivemind – How Social Media Manipulation Affects Everything: Tim Weninger at TEDxUND

Conversing about head transplants the conversation turns more social as Ben brings up the film It’s a Girl

There’s also talk of the new Mac Pro design and this leads to the concept of Phonebloks. Ian tells us about Mozilla’s Lightbeam for Firefox and Ben mentions how it reminds me of the old design for Musicovery.

Finally, Ian brings us 51 Pieces of Movie Trivia You May Not Know.

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This week Ben and Ian discuss what to do when a project goes off the rails. This includes Ben telling us about the challenges he faced in his failed entry attempt for Stencyl Jam #14. But first there’s some trailer talk as they look at a number of new movies coming out.

First up is the CGI Peanuts 2015 teaser

Then there’s a nostalgic walk down memory lane with the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer

Followed up by some talk on The Giver

There’s also some quick talk about the new Godzilla

Disney’s Maleficent

And finally Guardians of the Galaxy and it’s awesome Rocket Raccoon

Ian also points us to some discussion about the new Hercules movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. He then points us to Blender Guru’s podcast on stealing like an artist, referencing the book by Austin Kleon.

You may also notice this week Ian’s using a new audio setup.

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Hardware

Audio-Technica AT2020 USB Condenser Microphone

Studio Microphone Pop Filter

Griffin Studio Microphone Scissor Arm

Software

VB-Audio Voicemeeter

VB-Audio Virtual Cable Driver

Virtual Audio Cable

Lastly, this week Ian brings us some trivia. Try them out yourself.

Film quiz: From Toy Story to Coraline, who voiced these animated characters?

The Disney, Warner Bros And Dreamworks Movies Quiz

Disney movie quiz: 25 quotes from animated favorites

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This week Ben and Ian discuss a full range of topics, from the theoretical implications of time travel and parallel dimensions, to photographing fractions of time, to thoughts on horror movies, to the ergonomics of vertical mice, to the Pomodoro Technique and the various timers for it,  to a thorough conversation on masking. There are many programs out there for masking. You can use Chroma Key Live and Camtwist to achieve live video chroma key and make single image composites with Decompose as well as standard tools like Photoshop and Final Cut.

Useful Tools in Photoshop

• Lasso Selection Tool – Polygonal and Magnetic Lasso tools help a lot with areas that have a hard edge.
• Magic Wand Tool – Quick Selection and Magic Wand Tool – Helpful with areas that have rough and complex hard edges.
• Blur Tool – Useful in blurring parts of your mask in specific areas.
• Smudge Tool – Useful in softening, pushing, and pulling parts of your mask in specific areas.
• Dodge and Burn Tools – Useful in lightening or darkening the brighter and darker areas of your mask.
• Pen and Brush Tools – useful for manual painting areas of your mask, especially while holding shift to paint a straight line.
• Rectangle Tool – Useful for filling in your entire selection, to add to your mask.
• Selecting By Color Range – Useful for keying out specific colors.
• Selection Refine Edge – Very useful in selecting complex areas such as hair and foilage, especially using the Refine Edge Tool. You can add to your layer mask, to your selection or to a new layer.
• Channel and Image Desaturion – Desaturing and inverting parts of your image and your image channels can also help in masking.
• Blending Modes and Layer Blending Options – Can help in mixing your masks together.

Tutorials 

Advanced Hair Selections with Masks

How to Quickly Select Images

Complex Selections Made Easy

Different Methods for Making Selections

Using Calculations to Make a Difficult Selection

Selection Trick for adding New Sky

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This week Ben tells us about his progress on making a game for Stencyl Jam #14. He also tells us about a documentary he helped fund, Stripped.

Then the conversation turns to discuss the troubled history behind the movie Kingdom of the Sun that became The Emperor’s New Groove and the documentary about it, The Sweatbox.

Ian catches us up on his progress with his panoramas before tell us about the science of colors.

Electromagnetic Spectrum

Introduction

Electro Magnetic Spectrum and Light

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Ultra Violet and Infra Red

New Database Shows the World Through Ultraviolet

Color Temperature

How the Insects See Things Around Them

See the World Through the Eyes of a Cat

Hue – Personal Wireless Lighting

Full Spectrum Bulbs

Photography –

Image Sensor

Spectral Response

Full Spectrum Photography

Filters

Infrared and Ultraviolet Photography

Near IR Photography

Daguerreotype View of Cincinnati

The Lion King 3D: in-depth with Disney

And to round out the discussion, there’s the announcement that Keurig coffee makers are looking to add DRM to deal with generic K-Cups.

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This week Ben catches us up on his progress on a project for Stencyl Jam #14, Ian talks about finishing up his panorama edits, and then they have a conversation on lawsuits. Ian shares this video about a man suing McDonald’s for 1.5 million dollars over only getting one napkin.

Ben talks about the title case in the Hot Coffee documentary, where an elderly woman suing for medical expenses after suffering 3rd degree burns was made into a punchline.

They also discuss the history of Walt Disney Studios, from the early days at Laugh-o-grams to the recent layoffs at Disney Interactive.

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This week Ben and Ian discuss a number of topics. Ian’s editing panoramas he’s photographed. He plans to sell them for people to use as assets in doing things, such environment rendering like in this piece by Mario Merino. Ben’s busy learning the ins and outs of Toon Boom Harmony. He also shares a short doc he’s caught online, Life After Pi, about the recent bankruptcy of Rhythm & Hues.

This leads on to other VFX talk over the topics Robocop and the General Case Against Digital Doubles and PLEASE TEACH ME THE PROCESS Creating 3D / CGI FILM. That’s followed up by a look at Michel Gagné’s The Saga of Rex and how some people on the internet can have overly high demands for a one man project team.

Finally we cover the topic of image filetypes. This includes compression, color space, color depth, and color profiles.

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This week Ben tells us about a lovely French film he watched on Netflix, The Painting.

Ian tells us about learning to use Virtual Audio Cable. The two of them share their different views of fundraising online when talking about David Di Franco’s Mac Pro Campaign on Indiegogo. This leads to many tangents including the topic of the famous American melting pot, whether someone can really be self made or if everybody in some way gets assistance or help from their situation, (Ben brings up Ryan Estrada’s Learn Korean in 15 Minutes, the movie Chaplin,

and Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success) and the interesting story of Flappy Bird. Plus there’s the excitement of Stencyl Jam #14 hosted by Newgrounds. All that is followed up by a discussion on character rigging.

Skeletal Animation
What is Rigging?

Types of Rigs

Open Rig – None of the parts are connected to each other
Hierarchical Rig – All the parts of a rig are linked together in parent-child hierarchies so moving one forces the others to move
Mixed Rig – A combination of open elements and hierarchies

3D Rigs and Software

messiahStudio

Blender

Blender Guru

Blender Tutorial: Basics of Character Rigging

Google SketchUp

SketchUp Rigging Hack

2D Rigs and Software

Flash

Draw with Jazza – How to make a flash cartoon!

Draw with Jazza – Bone Tool Animation (Adobe Flash Tutorial)

Draw with Jazza – How to Animate Mouths (Lip Syncing) – Flash Tutorial

Toon Boom
Toon Boom Video Tutorials

Toon Boom Tips

Types of Movement

Forward Kinematics (FK) – Any given joint can only affect parts of the skeleton that fall below it on the joint hierarchy
Inverse Kinematics (IK) – The reverse process from forward kinematics and is often used an efficient solution for rigging a character’s arms and legs

Types of Tweeining

None
Steps
Classic Tween
Shape Tween
Motion Tween

Flash Tip: Motion Tweening Expanded: Easing

What’s The Difference Between Shape, Motion, and Classic Tweens?

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This week Ben and Ian discuss finding what you’re passionate about in life; the philosophy of the workforce in Star Trek; people doing things starting at $5 on Fiverr; Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators, and Gamers; Ian watches Battlefield: Earth

And of course they talk about The Lego Movie