Tom Hapgood

Ten Career Tips

I recently got a copy of the new edition of The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects. There’s a nice little summary of “ten career tips for computer animators and digital artists,” and here they are:

1. Be prepared for change
2. Focus on a realistic goal
3. Know your digital craft
4. Update and customize your reel and portfolio
5. Be prepared to work as a member of a team
6. Develop an appreciation for preproduction
7. Focus on issues that may impact your health
8. Learn about the history of digital creation
9. Learn about the business aspects of your career
10. Continue to develop your artistic vision

The Buffalo Flows site launch

To coincide with the airing of The Buffalo Flows on AETN TV, we launched the film’s new site. I had some decisions to make in terms of browser support (Internet Explorer 6 Windows, of course, and iPhone Safari) and ultimately decided to push iPhone users to the old site and just alert IE6 users that the site is accessible (wrong word) to them but that it isn’t going to look nice. The problem in question for the IE6 users is mainly the use of the transparent PNG graphics that enabled me to lay the main site content over a Google maps iframe. Other technologies used are xhtml/css and ThickBox and jQuery.

New Master Chorale Web site

The final project of the Fall 2008 Web 1 course consisted of working with a “real-world” client. We were fortunate to work with the UA Master Chorale, specifically with Web copy writer and Search Engine Management expert Rebecca Haden and with the director and School of Music professor Graeme Langager. All 16 students planned, designed and coded a treatment of the site, with the “winning” project going to Joel McCourt. Thanks also to Shane Richey of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences for moving the site files into place.

The Cost of an Animation Final

Oh, the irony of “bringing life” to something through animation, and appearing to lose your own through the process. This poor student worked so hard in all of his courses at the end of this semester that it (seemingly) nearly finished him off. He eventually fell off in a dramatic way, but didn’t seem to bounce or kick up a puff of dust, nor did we see any little birds or stars circling around his head.

Film Festival Screenings Friday, Saturday

Buffalo Flows will be shown Friday, November 14th, at 7:00 p.m. in Theatre 1, or JBHT 216
‘Free, If Only,’ my motion short film, will show just before Buffalo Flows on Saturday, November 15th, at 1:50 p.m. in Theatre 2, or JBHT 266
Details here

The Buffalo Flows Screenings

View The Buffalo Flows web site here
According to Writer/Producer Larry Foley in the Department of Journalism, the screening of The Buffalo Flows documentary was standing-room-only at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival recently. My contribution to the film, which was photographed by Trey Marley of the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History and edited by Dale Carpenter in the Department of Journalism, is some animation and the packaging design, a piece of which is shown above. The image on the front of the packaging is by Tim Ernst, the famed Arkansas photographer.

The next screening of the film is at 7:00 p.m. on November 14th, in the JB Hunt building as part of the 2008 Northwest Arkansas Documentary Film Festival. Everyone is welcome to come and view (and even volunteer).

‘Elements of Animation’ course’s stop-motions posted

Take a look at the Elements of Animation course’s stop-motion projects, such as this one by Jacob Bain.

Is The Office real?

I’ve had two students in two days come in and, with some surprise and consternation, relate their new work situations to either Office Space or The Office. Apparently, there is some belief out there among the younger crowd that those shows (movie) are somehow fantasy. It’s fun to think back on all of my work experiences and the people with whom I’ve shared a cubicle farm as I confirm to the students that those shows are based completely on reality and the characters are all based on real people all around us. I have absolutely worked with an Angela, a nightmare secretary who refused to do anything to help me with my job and was outright witch-ish, with a Phyllis, a mad Pagan woman who insisted on saying “God Bless You!” every time I sneezed and thought that changing the file extension was the same as converting a file, with a Michael in the form of a boss who would follow me into the bathroom and stand behind me whilst at the urinal, and flat out reject my (good) ideas to save the business, and it goes on an on. If you get into talking about office romances or client stories, they’re just as nuts.

So to my students who are headed out into the workplace, remember: do not take these people seriously, have fun with them, get to know them and do things for them, don’t talk about them behind their backs, don’t get involved in the office gossip, and if the people are just inaccessible and you’re way too stressed out, find another job.

New Motion Design course

If you’re looking for my new Motion Design course for the Spring 2009 semester, you’ll need to look in ISIS for “ARTS 4663-001 Advanced Animation.” The paperwork for the name-change didn’t go through as quickly as I’d hoped. If you want to sign up, send me an E-mail and I’ll get you in (as long as you have the prerequisites).

Anchor Links Bug in Internet Explorer 7

Recently, I had to make a big decision: to have a web page validate or to function correctly.

We had just launched the University of Arkansas Community Design Center project and began receiving messages that some in-page anchor links weren’t working correctly only in IE 7. If the user was viewing a project page and clicked on the “Project Awards and Publications” link (or the list of awards links below the big image) more than two times it stopped functioning. What’s supposed to happen is that when one of those links is clicked (all links going to the same place), the viewer should be brought to a specific point on the awards page. Well, on the third time clicking one of those links, IE would just send the user to the top of the awards page, or in essence, the wrong place. After much troubleshooting and research on the web, I eventually tried a deprecated (discontinued) anchor format and it worked! So, instead of sending the link on the project page to (basically) awards.php#projectname, which was an id attribute of the h4 tag on the awards page, we added an older style a name tag/attribute combination to the awards page, just below the h4 tag. Therefore, we’ve got a lot of id designations duplicated on the page, while each id should be used uniquely. But it works for all the browsers now.

Thanks to Cathy Haring with her Internet Explorer testing lab and Cynthia Barlow for the expert programming.