Gage asked us to build this site where people can go to support the National Marrow Donor Program.

So please go upload your photo and share a story, and pick a default flower image and make your mark...then send it along to some friends. Maybe some of them will go on to save a life. You don't have to get involved with anything to upload your photo..it's just a crowd of support for this cause.

http://www.donorgarden.com

We did a quick web search for a regular expression to verify URLs entered in a form in Flash (Action Script 3.) We didn't find any so Master wrote one up, feel free to use it or improve it. He'll be running more test cases against it but for now it gets the job done on the project we're working on.

^http(s)?:\/\/((\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)|(([\w-]+\.)+([a-z,A-Z][\w-]*)))(:[1-9][0-9]*)?(\/([\w-
.\/:%+@&=]+[\w- .\/?:%+@&=]*)?)?$

Labels: action script 3, development, open source, regular expressions, source code

Local proprietor of fantastic meat, Brasa, delights Dave on an afternoon outing.

Here's a video showing that 50% of men used to have mustaches.

Dave, Tim, Mitch, and Ashley paused during a recent commercial photoshoot:



Oh...I was there too:



More more more after project launch.

Here's a recent project for http://www.healthsimple.com/

Body Buddy helps you learn about...your body. We did this for Hartung Kemp, who were incredibly great to work with and sent us a bottle of champagne for a conference call happy hour...in the morning. We love this little guy and expect to see more of him.

There are a bunch of fashion and design/music related things to do: http://www.voltagefashionamplified.com/

If you're not in Minneapolis, there is only one fashion related thing you need to do...Get a Yo Gabba Gabba shirt from Hot Topic:

I love love love process drawings and sketches but now that a lot of our drawing is done directly into the computer you don't see a lot of it around. Here's a paper process drawing of the Quik Bunny that shows how to break up his pieces so that he can be drawn and animated into a banner ad.

Mike Owens often uses different colored lines for storyboards, animatics, or to distinguish bits like this. A good trick..especially if you're not using a lot of detail otherwise.

Here's the final art in context (banner ad demo)

http://www.punyentertainment.com/clients/MRM/index.html

There have been a lot of late nights around here lately. Most of the team has been working hard on a multi player site for a toy/doll line. It's pretty huge, with chat, games, and all that jazz.

While preparing some screen tonight I caught Tim sewing something that I hope everyone is curious about. What IS that red thing behind Tim? It's a part of the ultimate PUNY plan that we've been developing over the last year as time permits. It rhymes with "winteractive peegee." We're dying to show it to people and are hoping to have some demos by San Diego Comic-Con to show the Hollywood types.

Last Friday, MCAD opened a comic art show featuring work by Ivan Brunetti, Lilli Carré, John Hankiewicz, Onsmith, Zak Sally, and Dan Zettwoch. There was a really good turnout to meet and greet with some of the featured artists, and a lot of great local cartoonists came out to show their support.



Onsmith speaking about his work and inspiration.


John Hankiewicz speaks about his process.


Zak Sally being awesome.


Ivan Brunetti shows off some of his GIANT pages.


The dudes field general questions from curious MCAD students. Lilli Carré was there a little later, but I didn't get a photo.


Tom K was there.


As was Kevin Cannon.


Cartoonist Jesse Haller and awesomest illustrator Isa Gagarin.


Zander Cannon of course.


Brett VonSchlosser and Isa strike some mighty poses.


Awesome show MCAD! We want more.

The Akon calls T-Pain video is really getting around and is popular so we'll milk it a bit on the blog. Tons of sites are featuring it but it was especially bizarre seeing it on the New Yorker.com A lot of people are using it to demonstrate how auto-tune has killed hip-hop. Hurray social commentary angle!



Then here comes a video of T-Pain watching it...and laughing...which is a relief because drew him fat:



And here are some process bits:


The pencil characature of Snoop Dogg that pinned down how he was going to be drawn.

...and here is a link to the storyboard. We do our storyboards direcly in Flash so that they're almost an animatic. It's also good because you can make some character/background a symbol and quickly re-use it again and again.

http://www.punyentertainment.com/clients/olde_english/boards.html

We sent this to Olde English for notes, and then drew and animated over the top of it directly in Flash like so:



The process for "how do I make a cartoon?" people (welcome!) was:

Olde English wrote a script and recorded the songs.
Jesse Novak (whom may or may not have a brother...good luck geneologists!) did the auto-tune and mixed the song. Then he passed the file off to us.
Mike made the storyboard animatic to the audio track.
Mitch then did the character and prop art directly in Flash (Dave did some assists and Snoop typography)
Vincent did the backgrounds in Adobe Illustrator.
Amanda then animated in Flash
Ashley composited and made the effects (like the lime and smoke) in After Effects and then rendered the .mov for Super-Deluxe.

Thomas is giving a workshop/presentation on Papervision 3D next Monday April 7th at Flashbelts SWFCAMP. Here's the skinny from the SWFCAMP site (MNSWF logo by Yui.)http://www.mnswf.org/camp/

Getting Started with Papervision3D 2.0
This session will cover the basics of getting started with the latest version of the Papervision3D rendering engine. I'll be covering everything from setting up a basic scene and using simple primitive objects and materials, to more advanced topics such as using 3D models, working with the new light and shade materials, and teaming this engine up with the WOW 3D physics engine.

Thomas Saunders, Interactive Developer, PUNY Entertainment

Thomas is a Actionscript 3.0, Papervison3D, Drupal, and general open source enthusiast. He is interested in bringing a more 3 dimensional experience to the web, and in trying to figure out how to do this without destroying a user's processor (however fun that may be!).

Another recent project was Cartipede, a game we made for Target with SevnthSin.

First came the basic level design.


And then next day we made it bigger.
From that point, enemies started going into production. First up - cars. Some cars are based on real life PUNY cars and some early stabs at biological enemies like a Swamp Monster. Take a gander ~





Then, after many incarnations and redrawing, came the pick-up items, and a mock-up of what we thought a big Cartipede would look like:



Then we focused on the background again... here's the start:



A lot of little details got put in, pixel by pixel. We probably drew ten different types of trees and wasted tons of time doing it ~ and eventually it got to this state, which was almost where we wanted it:



And, after changing a lot of things to fit changing mechanics of things, it got to its final state!


More fierce enemies:


With the game nearly completed, the addition of transition screens and such to complement the Sevnthsin main game frame were all that was left!