Hand Turkey Studios is going to allow live public access to our production as we compete this coming weekend (17-19 July) in this year’s 48 Hour Film Project in Richmond, Virginia. We assembled a team and competed last year with the ambitious goal of completing an animation as our submitted work. Due to some technical difficulties last year (discussed in more detail in a presentation at the 2008 Blender Conference), we missed the deadline. However, the entire international team of talent from last year (plus some new additions!) has returned to do it again! And we’re amped to make this thing awesome.

As part of that goal, we are allowing public access to our work environment during the weekend of our production. Since our team is located throughout the world, we collaborate on our project through the Internet. We’ve opened some windows to that process so anyone can follow along as we make our animated short… four of them, to be exact:

• The Hand Turkey 48 Hour Film Project Wiki – This is our central collaborative tool. Brainstorms, sketches, designs, task lists and workflow descriptions all live here. Check out the Recent changes page to see the latest updates.
• #ht48hfp on freenode – We use IRC as our main means of real-time communication. If you have a preferred IRC client (Chatzilla, mIRC, Xchat, etc.), point it to the #ht48hfp channel on freenode.net. If you don’t have a client, you can use freenode’s web interface.
• Follow us on Twitter – The entire team has access to update that account, so any of us can let you know what’s going on.
• Streaming webcam footage – We are actually going to stream footage from webcams at the locations of some of our international team members so you can watch the craziness that ensues. We’re still hammering out the kinks on this, but we’ll have a direct link set up by Friday.

That’s it! Come watch us slave away this weekend and wish us luck!

The Connecticut Film Festival will be taking place from the 2nd to the 7th of June in Danbury, Connecticut. The festival features not only live-action filmmaking, but also animation, music, and interactive media like video games. Hand Turkey’s Jason van Gumster will be speaking on using Blender to produce animations on Friday, June 6th at 4:00 PM as well as sitting on a panel the following day entitled ABCs of CGI.

If you’re in or around Connecticut (and even if you’re not!), come on out. It’s sure to be a great event!

Hand Turkey Studios will be offering two Training Workshops on Blender in June. Details on each workshop are listed below:

Blender Basics
Date: Saturday, 9 June 2007
Time: 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: Apex Digital (900 West Broad St., Richmond, VA 23221 – map)
Cost: $50, payable via Cash, Check or Credit Card via Paypal

Basics II: Organic Modeling & Materials
Date: Saturday, 16 June 2007
Time: 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: Apex Digital (900 West Broad St., Richmond, VA 23221 – map)
Cost: $50, payable via Cash, Check or Credit Card via Paypal

Also, we are offering a $10 discount if you attend both workshops!

If you’re interested in attending, please send an email to info@handturkeystudios.com.

Descriptions of each of these workshops can be found on the Workshops page of this site. Copies of Blender for all modern computing platforms and all files used in the workshop will be made available on DVD for course participants.

There is limited space available, so please confirm your attendance early.

You may notice that we’re holding our workshop at a new location. This location has computers on-site, so bringing your own computer or laptop is not necessary. However, you are more than welcome to bring your own machine if you’d like. If you have any questions please do not hesitate in contacting us.

Hand Turkey’s Jason van Gumster will be at the Defrag Ohio Conference April 12th until the 14th at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio (just west of Cleveland). He will be exhibiting some student work from last year’s Red Hat High summer technology camp and at 2:00 PM on Friday, the 13th of April, there will be a more in-depth presentation on what was done during last year’s program, as well as some of the plans for this year’s camp.

On the last day of the conference, attendees will be able to participate in a small presentation on “Connecting Families, Kids and Students Through Digital Media”. Jason will be doing a short run-though on modeling with Blender while Steve Simmons of EDR Media will be discussing audio gaming and Ted Jordon of Funutation LLC will give a session on computer game creation.

The Defrag conference is held quarterly around Ohio and is geared toward offering “an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to address our innovation imperative in rich media, with a focus on education and workforce development.” They’re really interested in open source software as being a part of that equation.

Due to the success and the amount of interest created by the Blender Basics Workshop we held in January, Hand Turkey Studios will be offering another Training Workshop on Blender in February. Details on the workshop are listed below:

Date: Friday, 23 February 2007
Time: 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: The Work Factory (1113 West Main St., Richmond, VA 23220 – map)
Cost: $45, payable via Cash, Check or Credit Card via Paypal

If you’re interested in attending, please send an email to info@handturkeystudios.com.

We will cover the basics of using Blender; becoming familiar with its interface and creating a 3D model and a small animation. Copies of Blender for all modern computing platforms and all files used in the workshop will be made available on DVD for course participants.

There is limited space available, so please confirm your attendance early.

We will have a very limited number of computers on hand, so if you have laptop, it is highly recommended that you bring it with you. If you have any questions please do not hesitate in contacting us.