Hand Turkey Studios

Happy Holidays from Hand Turkey Studios

Jason — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:36:10 +0000

Fall Internship 2011

Jason — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:52:58 +0000

Hand Turkey Studios is looking for a part-time intern for the fall of 2011. This position will be responsible for working with and assisting on real-world projects that utilize 3D computer graphics. Applicants should have moderate to good skills in 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, and texturing. Preferred software competencies are in Blender, GIMP, and Inkscape. Programming experience (particularly in Python) is a big plus.

Update: This fall’s internship application period is now closed. Thank you to everyone who applied.

Case Study with GreenButton

Jason — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:02:51 +0000

Recently, Hand Turkey Studios was the subject of a case study conducted by GreenButton and Microsoft. GreenButton is an on-demand high-performance computing solution built atop Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. Earlier in the year, Hand Turkey used GreenButton to render a whopping 1.25 million frames for one of its commercial projects; a render job that would have otherwise taken months to process on our in-house workstations.

You can read the case study on GreenButton’s website or download the case study PDF here.

2011 48 Hour Film Project – LIVE

Jason — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:38:26 +0000

For our fourth year in a row, Hand Turkey Studios is participating in the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project. Yes, yet again we’ll be producing 3D animation… because we’re crazy (and because we’ve proven that it can be done). Despite the incredible amount of work and even more incredible lack of sleep imparted upon our team, we keep coming back for more fun each year. It’s a ridiculous challenge, but it’s totally awesome to see how things come together in just a mere 2 days.

What’s even crazier is that each year, our team gets larger and larger. This year, we so far have 35 people on the Hand Turkey Studios team; 15 people will be working from Richmond, Virginia, while the remaining members of our crew will be joining at various points in time from locations all over the globe. In fact, here’s an alphabetical list of all the goofballs whom have so graciously agreed (and in some cases, actually asked!) to take part in this year’s shenanigans:

Team Richmond
- Benjamin Bailey (Banor)
- Bobby Craig
- Bob Holcomb (Bobalicious)
- Brandon Worthington
- Dave Kline (americandave)
- Grant Rutledge
- Hal Dowdy (brokenjack)
- Heather van Gumster (starla)
- Jason van Gumster (Fweeb)
- Jennida Chase (jumpcutjen)
- Roberto Rubet (bertodemus)
- Roland Hess (harkyman)
- Sam Brubaker (Rocketman)
- Thomas Vecchione (Seablade)
- Warren Belfield
Team International
- Andrew Wall (lumpycow)
- Anna Tisch (greenbutton)
- Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit)
- Beorn Leonard (freen)
- Derek McTavish Mounce (dmounce)
- Dolf Veenvliet (macouno)
- Dominic Agoro-Ombaka
- Jarred de Beer (Jarrhead)
- Jason Tyler (Spudster)
- Jean-Sébastien Guillemette (Ecks)
- Jonathan Williamson (carter2422)
- Kernon Dillon (kernond)
- Kevin Hays (Jeepster)
- Lee Salvemini (LohnS)
- Paula Decanini
- Reynante Martinez (reyn)
- Rob Cozzens
- Rogério Perdiz (rogper)
- Sebastian König (sebastian_k)
- Wray Bowling (bmud)

As you can see, we’ve got a team that’s jam-packed with talent. The event takes place this weekend (22-24 July) and like last year, we’re opening some doors and windows so you can watch the team working in a mad frenzy to finish by our deadline. Here’s a short run-down of where you can find us:

TinyChat – We have webcams set up at the Team Richmond home base and among our various team members around the globe. Drop on in and see how well we’re doing without sleep. There’s a little chatbox there, too, so you’re welcome to ask questions. We’ll be very busy, but we’ll try to answer.
Follow us on Twitter – Members of the team will be posting semi-regular updates during the course of the weekend. If they’re not posted directly on the Hand Turkey Studios twitter account, they’ll at least be retweeted there.
#ht48hfp on freenode – We use IRC as our main means of real-time communication. If you have a preferred IRC client (Chatzilla, Pidgin, 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.
Ustream – This is something new we’re adding this year. TinyChat is great, but the trouble there is we may have cross-talk among the various broadcasters… and it can be easy to miss important information that’s conveyed that way. Since Ustream allows for recording, we can give animation tips and story tips that can be viewed by team members after they wake up. This channel will give you a sneak peak at some of that process.

That’s pretty much it! Come watch us work and keep us from falling asleep! Also, good luck to all of the other Richmond teams! We’ll be thinking of you shooting outside in 100-degree weather while we’re sitting in an air conditioned room.

Summer Internship 2011

Jason — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:46:48 +0000

Hand Turkey Studios is looking for a 3D computer graphics intern for the summer of 2011. This position will be responsible for working with and assisting on real-world projects that utilize 3D computer graphics. Applicants should have moderate to good skills in 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, and texturing. Preferred software competencies are in Blender, GIMP, and Inkscape. Knowledge of Python is a plus.

This is a paid internship. Applicants should be local to the Richmond area.

Update: This summer’s internship application period is now closed. Thank you to everyone who applied.

VPA Presentation Slides – Storyboarding for Film

Jason — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:34:14 +0000

Two days ago, on November 29th, Hand Turkey’s Jason van Gumster gave a short talk on storyboarding for film at the monthly meeting of the Virginia Production Alliance as part of their ‘Reel Ed’ educational series. As promised in the presentation, we are happy to share the slides from that talk. You can retrieve them at the following link: VPA Storyboarding for Film slides. And as an additional bonus, we’re also providing the storyboard template (in PDF format) shown in the presentation so you can start putting together your own boards. Have fun!

Hand Turkey’s Jason van Gumster Interviewed

Jason — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:40:20 +0000

Hand Turkey’s Production Monkey, Jason van Gumster, was recently interviewed at the 2010 SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, California. In the interview, he speaks of his background with Blender, some the new developments coming in Blender’s next release, and his upcoming new book, Blender For Dummies, 2nd Edition. Watch the video on YouTube below.

Singularity – An Animated Short

Jason — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:54:45 +0000

Hand Turkey Studios recently completed an animated ‘microshort’ entitled Singularity. Watch it below!

TV Commercial – Entrust Federal Credit Union

Jason — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 22:08:14 +0000

Recently, Hand Turkey Studios worked with Silent Partner Media to complete a television commercial for Entrust Federal Credit Union, airing in the Richmond area. The commercial features Entrust’s mascot character, Gary, acting on screen as the narrator describes the benefits of banking with Entrust. The commercial is available for viewing on the Entrust YouTube channel and it’s embedded below for your convenience.

3D animation, compositing, and editing for this television spot was all done using Blender. GIMP and the GIMP Animation Package were used for the hand-drawn animation and cleaning up the masking on individual frames. We had a pretty quick turnaround time for this (about 2 weeks to produce the whole thing, including shooting the hand, recording audio, composing music, and creating the final animation and composite), but it was a ton of fun to produce and we’re quite happy with the results.

Hand Turkey in the 2010 48 Hour Film Project

Jason — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:43:08 +0000

Two weeks ago, Hand Turkey Studios participated in the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project for the 3rd year in a row. This year was a magnificent success! We had a 30-member team of talented artists help produce our entry, Grey Justice: Puncher of Men. And yes, we made an animation… again. Have a look below to see our short in all of its beautifully animated glory!

Last weekend, Grey Justice was screened at the Byrd Theatre with the other competing entries. With the ‘Best of Richmond’ screening held this weekend, we’re proud to announce that our work was recognized by winning two (TWO!) awards: Best Use of Character and Best Special Effects. Woohoo!