Artist Profile: Juergen Frey and his thoughts on Flash CS4′s IK

Is it fair to call someone the best Flash animator in all of Germany if I’m only familiar with one?… Uh sure. Juergen Frey takes the top spot in my opinion. If you haven’t seen his not-so-short film about the release of Halo 3, check it out. Its incredibly well-animated (all in Flash too), creatively [...]

Haunted Mansion Art by Shag

Next time someone says “Are you familiar with Shag?”, you can smartly reply  ”the rug or the artist?” Up until I started blogging and actively searching out artists to mention here, I hadn’t heard of JoSH AGle, but this guy keeps popping up, so its time to bring a few others into the know.  I [...]

List of Animated TV Openings

Here’s a YouTube compilation thanks to Fanboy.com about the golden age of animated TV openings. Maybe we’ll see a resurgence in animated openings because of Mad Men.

That Flex Builder tutorial is finally available!!!

Youch. I think I said this lesson would be available sometime last week. Anytime I announce my intentions like that, just add on another week.  ANYWAY. So yes! The Flex Builder 3 tutorial is here.  So lets talk about it. Casually, please, because yesterday I had to write all the nerdy sales page stuff about it, [...]

Dumb business expenses & other freelancer tax tips…

I woke up this morning at 5Am and decided ” its time to do my taxes!!!” . Actually my wife wasn’t sleeping well either, and there’s nothing worse than two people in the same bed who can’t fall back asleep.  And my one brilliant solution got turned down, so here I am.  So since taxes [...]

Light on Dark Design…

Here’s a good list of sites with dark backgrounds. Obviously, I’m a big fan of black backgrounds, CartoonSmart.com has always had a dark look. Want some color theory as to why?….  Black is the absence of color,  white is all colors combined. See the totally original illustration I made below as proof (yeah right).  So [...]

Lots of Free Lessons Added to CartoonSmart!

Its Inauguration Day, and in honor of cleaning house, I’ve updated quite a few things on CartoonSmart today.  First off, the index of free flash tutorials has a much longer, drawing tutorial (and features some artwork from an upcoming mystery project I’m working on)  Next change, that same page also has two links to download [...]

Some very fine art by Kim Keever

Its rare we see some real “arteests” here at the CS blog, but I couldn’t pass by Kim Keever’s work and not want to show it off.  Here’s a bio taken from elsewhere, and give it a quick read so the bottom two pics make more sense…  Kim Keever‘s large-scale photographs are created by meticulously [...]

Neat Audi commercial with 3D plus 2D animation…

Wow, I got 3 emails about this one ad recently, so that sure makes it blog-worthy… Very worth watching. And how was this 5D coolness done (anyone get that, 2D plus 3D)?  Here’s some details.

Toon Boom Animate Discount Code

Good news for anyone thinking about getting Toon Boom Animate, here’s a promo code… ANIMATEAWN … valid until Feb 13, which will get the price down to $599.99 . Which I know is still a few bills, but the regular price is $999, so that’ll shave off quite a bit. Also, I don’t like to drop promo [...]