We tweaked our website. Overall, it might look about the same, but we’ve packed it with quite a few new features and niceties. For instance, this news page now generates an RSS feed which you can Live Bookmark in Firefox or add to your feed reader/aggregator of choice. And speaking of feeds, you can now catch the latest headlines from sheep-dot and Blender Nation in our sidebar. Also in our sidebar, you might notice that we have an event calendar, showing upcoming dates and times for events that we will be attending (or presenting), including our Workshops.

We’ve also reorganized our animation and print portfolios to be more attractive and easy to use, as well as incorporating the more ubiquitous Flash video codec for showing our animations (rather than storing 3 different formats). You may also notice that we have a new section on our site for training, too. There you can get information on the various workshops we offer, training DVDs, and even individualized training/consultation services.

As you can see, there’s all kinds of interesting new things going on here. Have a look around and check out all the fun stuff!

If you’ve been following sheep-dot, you may know that two Turkeys went to Boston for this year’s SIGGRAPH conference. In the course of this, we were fortunate enough to be able to demonstrate the fluid simulation capabilities of Blender on the exhibition floor. A video of one of these demos was recorded and has been posted to Blender Nation, an excellent news portal for Blender users. Big thanks to Bart, Eugene, Spiderworm, and the rest of the BN team for doing all of the recording and reporting they’ve done.

Also, more information and links regarding the SIGGRAPH trip can be found on sheep-dot, our side projects blog.

Richmond, Virginia - July 16, 2006 - Hand Turkey Studios today announced its participation in Red Hat High, a summer technology camp for rising eighth and ninth graders created and sponsored by Red Hat, Inc, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise. Running from July 9-15, the camp was free of cost to students and took place at the North Carolina State Centennial Campus and Red Hat’s world headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. Students had the option of learning audio creation, video production, 3D modeling & animation, or web design using freely available open source software.

Among the companies that worked with Red Hat to bring this camp to life is Hand Turkey Studios, a Richmond-based animation and print design company. Co-owner and Lead Animator, Jason van Gumster (nicknamed ‘Groo’), taught the students in the 3D modeling & animation track.

“It’s really quite excellent,” said van Gumster. “Not only are the students able to create something really cool this week, but because they’re doing it with free software, they can work even more with their newly found tools and skills after the camp is over.”

Unfortunately, many groups are underrepresented in the technology fields today. Red Hat High was created by Red Hat to bring together 50 students for one week to experience the power of technology and creativity through collaboration. Technology innovation depends on joining people of diverse backgrounds with broad and valuable perspectives within a safe, creative environment. Eighth and ninth graders from a range of backgrounds were nominated by their educators and/or other adult mentors who believe they have a promising interest in technology for Red Hat High. To learn more, please visit: http://www.redhathigh.org.

For those of you not following the goings-on over at sheep-dot, Hand Turkey Studios is proud to announce that we will be offering a full-NTSC resolution version of our Firefox animated logo tag to all those who are interested in using it for their Firefox Flicks Ad Contest submissions.

We will be offering it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License, so it’s very easy. For bandwidth considerations, though, we can’t just post a link to the file. So, if anyone is interested in using this animation, we simply ask that you send an email to firefoxlogo {at} handturkeystudios(.)com. We’ll take care of everything from there and get you everything you need.

Update: Thanks for all the interest we’ve gotten for this! As a point of clarification, this gift is not limited to those entering the Firefox Flicks contest. Anyone who wishes to use this animation for their own purposes is welcome to do it. Simply drop us an email and we’ll get you the file. Again, thanks so much for the kind words and interest.

Hello all. Quick announcement for those interested. As the Studio has begun working on more and more commercial accounts, we’ve had to make the tough decision to turn the Hand Turkey Studios main page into a more business oriented place. Which means there have been less and less public entries, with more and more happening behind the scenes.

We’ve decided we needed a place to let our hair down a bit. So we’ve cobbled together a blog based site for our side/personal projects. When you get the chance check us out at sheep.handturkeystudios.com, or if typing’s not really your thing, click the sheep at the bottom of this page. He’ll get you there as well.

The site has been open for just a few days, most of which were part of a holiday weekend here in the states, so let us know of any bugs, fixes, or suggestions you may have. As time goes on, there should be more and more reason for you to check it out.