MileMarker 1: Cobwebs College Update

Production continues on the first part of “Cobwebs — The Animated Series.” The Crew is currently wrapping up production on “The Guardians” and “Strange Awakenings.” The initial idea was to release the work to date, however the earlier animations are now being integrated into the newer art so The Crew decided to extend their own deadline for refinements. The animators are getting quite proficient with their tools – the results are really creative … one might even say they are hypnotic!

We had a breakout session during Wednesday’s meetup to plan the Cobwebs website which will introduce the kids to some basic design and coding skills. The Crew came up with a lot of great ideas for the site, and we will be distilling these concepts down into a basic plan this week as we begin with the site structure.

MileMarker 2: Codes of the World Kickoff

We are deep in the mines organizing the art and breaking down our latest images into modular elements for reuse in other illustrations, plus identifying any art that has already been created. We’re leading off this summer with some simple line art diagrams of welded flanges that introduce basic concepts such as consistency in line weights and control of the bezier curve.

This year, we are looking for more ways to make production of the art simpler. In addition to continuing to break out repetitive components of the illustrations, we will see if there are steps in the workflow that can be scripted as much of our MathML workflow has become. We also have some groovy Extra Credit research in the pipeline to keep things interesting. This is going to be fun!

Stay tuned!

Badge designed by Nate Malamud of the Cobwebs Crew!  

Much was accomplished during our first open planning session and there are a lot of new faces at #rdcHQ. In addition to our two main tracks (Cobwebs College and CotW), we’ll be helping our friends at KPOZ-FM with a new logo and materials (TBD) for their radio station during deBUG Days this summer as well as brainstorm new directions for our Beta Book with author Scott Peden … Stay Tuned!

In the meantime, we would like to encourage you to “Buy Our Stuff” to support the Rural Design Collective in 2013. We just received an incredibly cool shipment of Cobwebs mousepads that will support development of “Cobwebs — The Animated Series” this summer! (Available in Cobwebs Ghostly White only.)

The Rural Design Collective Needs You! → Click Here To Buy Our Stuff!

“Open Life in the UK” Practice Tests featuring our new favorite web font — “Sansation”

We further enhanced the guide with content from some of the best open resources on the web, including Open Clipart (an incredible resource for scalable vector art), Open Library (the highest quality interactive public domain texts), Wikipedia (the ubiquitous free encyclopedia) and Flickr (our first stop for Creative Commons licensed imagery) along with original scalable vector graphics (SVGs) by the Rural Design Collective for maps and other study aids.

Cities of the UK as a scalable vector graphic

Our #rdcHQ beta-testers agree: the result is a far more interactive and engaging experience that facilitates learning! You can read more about our latest #rdcHQ Extra Credit endeavor here.

We’re just getting started at #rdcHQ! … Stay tuned!

“Today’s Cobwebs meetup was great. We taught our newest team member, Albert, how to edit footage in iMovie. He also learned how to add voices to characters in Anime Studio Pro. Last week, we learned about the lip sync feature in Anime Studio Pro, which is very useful in animating facial features of the characters.”

Future work on 3D wireframes is currently in R&D / Nate Malamud

“We are almost done with the first third of the movie and plan to release it on the web soon. On Wednesday, we begin work on Strange Awakenings, or the next chapter.”

It’s pretty exciting to see the crew’s progress since last season. Many of them now prefer specific tools and are creating their art directly on the computer instead of drawing it by hand and scanning it in as a template for artwork. Either technique is useful and completely acceptable, but being able to do both competently is important. We’ll begin introducing the animators to a drawing tablet next week.

Character development in Adobe Illustrator / Gabby McCutcheon

The goal is to publish the first part of the movie by the end of the month – this is all of the work that has been in production since last season as the crew made the switch from Pencil** to ToonBoom Studio + Anime Studio Pro. Then over the course of the summer, we will improve our techniques as we create more episodes, and have a final screening of the entire movie this Fall at our annual art show. In addition, look for development on some other aspects of the production, such as the score, the script and a Cobwebs website! We are also emphasizing the importance of developing a portfolio or reel of one’s work … Stay tuned!

Cobwebs College is now in session! The crew picked up work where we left off last meetup with a quick review of the script and a primer on what needs to be done to complete our animated series. Everyone received a new schedule that breaks down the rest of the script over the next four months. With much of the character development now completed, the emphasis is now on production which will involve a variety of animation, multimedia and graphic design programs. Our goal is to have our movie completed in time for our launch party! This week we are recording audio tracks for the scene, “Young House” … Stay tuned!

#rdcHQ News Update: Earth Day 2013

Elsewhere at #rdcHQ, the elves have been busy helping out where they can – they were last spotted at Pacific High School where a Champion Redwood was planted in celebration of Earth Day 2013. Nathan Malamud captured the event for posterity in his latest RDC Home Movie … Check it out!

You can read more about the event in an article by the Curry County Pilot entitled Redwoods Go Global and at POCSA (Beta) … Go #rdcHQ Go!

RDC-2013 Application [5.4 MB]

Greetings from #rdcHQ!
It is that time of the year to begin our search for new talent for the Rural Design Collective! We have a lot going on in our Project Pool this year, and we have several active tracks under development. Please note that the first deadline for application submissions is May 15.* Our project pool includes the opportunity to work with MathML, honing our illustration skills creating vector graphics for an international “Codes of the World” initiative, and working to build and promote a more sustainable world! There is a lot in store — a lot of great ways to actively make a difference in projects on a global and local scale — so much depends on YOU and how the #rdcHQ Project Teams shape up this summer!**

So, if you are interested — don’t delay — fill out an application today!

At long last, “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” WWW Premiere is here! This is our first full-length RDC Home Movie and we truly learned a lot about video editing and what is involved in organizing a community event such as this.

Click to launch “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” in #rdcHQ Theatre!

The presentation runs approximately two hours — view it in segments as time permits or make some popcorn and have a public screening in your area! Our goal was to capture the feel of what transpired that evening on December 21, 2012 to the best of our ability. Many folks involved with this event envision a full weekend with panels, tracks and other ways to educate and take action on matters of sustainability.

Behind The Scenes: Kudos and Credits

This premiere has been months in the making, and we would like to thank our performers, collaborators, audience and screeners who provided valuable feedback … and everyone else who made this a historic event!

We want to specifically thank PortOrford.TV, Sustainable Man, Green Fire Productions and The Seattle Channel for giving us permission to use the video on the web as it was presented at the event. We would also like to thank Port Orford Community Co-op who presented at our forum, and we will be working on a follow-up movie to highlight their efforts at a later date. And, of course, we couldn’t have done it without the crew at the Savoy Theatre, our editor, and the artists who shared their talents with us that evening.

Behind The Scenes: Navigation Hints

In the video player user interface, We have provided a menu to aid in navigation which lists all of the videos with their beginning time stamp so you can start watching at any point in a given segment. Unfortunately, we were unable to link the menu to the appropriate spot in the video due to limitations with the wonderful embeddable player at Vimeo. There is an API available for this and open source code at github, but we were unable to get it to work reliably cross-browser so we opted to launch without it. NOTE: When we or someone else finds a fix for this, we’ll update our codebase!

Download our event program with the video track listing [190 KB PDF]

If you want to access an individual segment with active timestamps, we have provided links to the video files on Vimeo below for your convenience.

Segment One
      “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” — 12.21.12 — Introduction
Segment Two
      “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” — 12.21.12 — Part One (Environment)
Segment Three
      “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” — 12.21.12 — Part Two (Society)
Segment Four
      “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” — 12.21.12 — Part Three (Economy)
Segment Five
      “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” — 12.21.12 — Tree Gifting

“Stay Tuned!”

We’ll be updating the Resource Library section of our web site with information and links on how you can start an event like this in your own community … Stay Tuned!

Watch our trailers in the meantime to get ready for the big event —

Behind The Scenes: About The Art

We thought it would be fun to take a look at the design thinking behind our two event posters. Each feature the photography of a different artist, Scott Peden and Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, and both photos have a bit of interesting history behind them.

“Washington Tree” by Scott Peden

Scott Peden / Washington Tree: Washington Tree is a Giant Redwood located in Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. As Scott explains, “the Tree we today call the Washington Tree was also once known as the Taft Tree. The earliest proof I can use to date it as the Taft Tree is an undated postcard by photographer AP Hill, designed in a particular style that was used between 1907 and 1914.

William Taft was President of the United States from 1909 to 1913. Taft easily carried California in the 1908 election as a progressive, but rapidly fell out of favor with his party. I recall hearing from one of the Rangers about 15 years back that it may have been fear of damage to the tree that the name was changed. There is a lot of myth as to how the trees were named, and who named them. AP Hill left Big Basin in 1920; by then the majority of the more interesting trees had names.”

“Salmon Cheek” by Rebecca Malamud

Rebecca Malamud / Salmon Cheek:
The mark for the “Sustainable World” poster is a digital illustration based on a photograph of Humbug Mountain by Rebecca Hargrave Malamud. The photograph was selected specifically for its unique perspective facing north as the tallest oceanfront mountain in Oregon juts out abruptly into the Pacific. The stewardship area encompasses the mountain [ POCSA Map, 416KB ], with the small community of Port Orford nestled yet further north. It was once known as “Sugar Loaf Mountain,” until it was renamed by explorers. Research during the production of “The Beginning of the Sustainable World” led to the discovery that the Chetco Indians originally called it Meepp’ush, literally, “cheek” from Thok’eh-meep’ush, “salmon cheek” … hence the name of the photo.

The final mark used on the poster is superimposed over another photograph of South Beach at Floras Lake, also by Rebecca Malamud.

“South Beach at Floras Lake” at the Memory Palace Project