Greetings from #rdcHQ! In our Cobwebs College Meetup last Wednesday, the Crew wrote their first lines of code! We started with the framework of the site from last week, and compared it to the structure of a simple HTML and CSS site that is similar to how the Cobwebs site will be. We went through the code line-by-line to get a basic understanding of all of the elements.

MileMarker 5: A Basic HTML + CSS Example

Viewing the source of YouGood to understand basic HTML and CSS*

At first, we plan to build a single page simply to announce the launch of the movie release, however the Crew already has a lot of ideas for interactive features of the site, like games similar to YouGood Tetris and an interactive timeline that shows the work on each episode in progress.

Play a little YouGood Tetris while you wait for the release of “Cobwebs — The Animated Series”

EXTRA CREDIT BONUS ROUND: An Original Musical Score Composed Entirely in Open Source Software!

Whew! It looks like we have a lot to do this summer, and the Cobwebs Crew is certainly up to the task! Original creative work is springing out of every aspect of the production – we even have a new musical score for the series that will debut at our art show this Fall when the next installment of the movie launches — it’s called “The Mist” and Director Nathan Malamud is using an open source tool called musescore to write his composition. It’s cool!

“The Mist” – a new composition by Nathan Malamud debuts this Fall!

Stay tuned!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! This week in our “Codes of the World” Track, we began coding our first set of MathML equations and are off to a great start … we have roughly 25% of all of the equations for our summer track coded using Amaya! We even have a couple of cool videos showing what we have learned to date.

MileMarker 3: Installing Amaya

The first video tells you everything you need to know about downloading and installing Amaya -

MileMarker 4: Coding in MathML

The second video shows how to code a basic equation – complete with a Rock-n-Roll soundtrack

We’ll be checking the MathML in a web browser next to be certain that all of the equations render properly and to make sure the code is valid. Next week, we’ll be learning more about the mathematical symbols and what they mean, as well as getting into the source and understanding the presentation elements of MathML. We’re pretty excited at the progress!

RDC Veteran Jasper Shumaker-Pruitt is pitching in this summer doing some preliminary research on ways to automate steps in our workflow. We’ll be exploring some pretty cool new tools in the process. We’ll report our findings here.

GO #rdcHQ Go!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! We are pleased to report that all summer tracks are now officially underway! Yesterday also marked the first day in the whirlwind “Around The Web in 80 Days” race against time to complete our projects before summer’s end … watch for Phineas Phogg’s Top Hat for news and milestone updates!

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!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! We’re pleased to announce our project tracks for 2013! Our primary focus this summer will be standards documents from around the globe as part of our “Codes of the World” Track following a successful season in EuroCode. We even have our very own infographic badge to kickoff our whirlwind tour! … COOL!

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!