This year I’ve been working with a couple friends on an animation project. It will be released free online as a series of shorts. It’s dialog-oriented, with the art supporting the voice acting in economical ways. The closest thing to compare it to is Dr. Katz.

We’re looking for someone to help with part of the art production, so I can move into a more direction/planning/supervisory role, and we can crank out a 4-minute episode every other week. I will be doing storyboards, painting the backgrounds, and drawing some guide character poses, and you will be drawing many of the characters, and arranging assets on the timeline.

Drawing: As you can see, the style of the characters is not elaborate, but please be able to imitate this look, and have a good sense of humor and comic timing. The characters switch from pose to pose, so you don’t need to be an expert at animating fluid, lifelike motion. It’s more important to be able to listen to some dialog and come up with a pose or gesture, often something simple and understated, that makes it a little more real. Like I said, I’ll be doing the backgrounds.

Timeline: Are you familiar with layers, keyframes, tweening, and stuff like that? Under my jealous and domineering supervision, you will be tasked with combining all the assets in Toon Boom Animate (if you have experience with Flash, it’s broadly similar to that).

Big points if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, like me! That way we can meet up in person. Smaller points if you’re in Seattle or Kirkland, WA (where Jeff and Casey are).

It’s a paid position. More info available over e-mail.

Please send us a link to your portfolio: jobs “at” jeffandcaseytime.com. Or attach a couple reasonably-sized graphics.

David Hellman Industries proudly announces its long awaited gardening sequel, Hedge Master: Gardener’s Pledge, Volume 5: Edging. All the pledgeful promises and hardening appendages you recall from Gardener’s Den: Gate of Ardin: Co-Ed Dorm Edition returns, refueled and faintly flavored with intelligent restraint.

Indolent upon the lawn, your hardy gardener detects danger and springs into dangerous attire. Follow him through seventeen layers of redolent foliage, enslave the world!

Related:
Fez becomes Fedge
Eliss follow-up Edgeliss
Closure becomes Closure on the Edge of Reality
Ledge Dismount
Edward McEdgington
Critter Crunch becomes Critter Credge
Canabalt becomes Canabedge
Edgeform: On the Edge of Insanity
And Yet it Moves becomes And Edge It Moves
Edgeless
Space Edge: Edge of Space
EeeEEEEeeEeEEEEeeeEdge!
Aztedge
and,

An explanation may be warranted:
Overview by Boing Boing
More background by TIG Source
And more from Chaos Edge

This Thursday, October 22, I’ll be at Columbia College in Chicago, giving a lecture about my work on Braid. They say it’s open to the public!

The info is this: 916 S. Wabash Ave, Room 150. 6:00 pm.

Here is Columbia College’s page about it.

TIG Jam has run its course and I’m back in San Francisco. (The weather is blessedly gray and cool.) The jam was terrific, such a great creative shot in the arm. The indie community is truly talented and supportive.

On the last night, some of us gave 5-minute talks about whatever happened to be on our minds, indie-wise. Matthew Wegner, CEO of Flashbang (who hosts the jam) encouraged us to eschew the angry ranting format and talk about constructive things. A video of the talks has just been posted, presumably by Matthew. Keep in mind these are highly informal and somewhat off-the-cuff, coming at the end of 3 days of 30 people hanging out together in a medium-sized room.

I come in at 21:00. Other speakers include Danny Baranowsky, Derek Yu, Chris DeLeon, Adam Saltzman, Alec Holowka, and Tommy Refenes.

Update: Here’s the video of everyone showing their projects, later in the evening. Unfortunately, for much of the running time there’s no view of the screen where the work is actually displayed…