The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[Gare]

After all of our arrow wounds have healed from Valentine's Day, it's the 15th tomorrow as I write this, and that means a new monthly tutorial, a guest tutorial in the Tips and Tricks section provided by our own angelize, and new Giveaways—plural, there's two this month—provided by Big Frank and yours truly, Other Gary.

I think you'll have fun with the tute this month, it's a long one, and I think I cover Xara's animation features in the sort of depth that'll get you interested at very least, and productive if you have a hankering to create your own cottage animation studio.

Oh, and the name "PIXAR" is already taken, okay? I looked.



My Best,
Gary

[Big Frank]

For the time being all I'm seeing is the January stuff. I really do have a crap ISP!

I can't wait to watch whatever gems Gary has come up with this time. Roll on DNS replication!

[Gare]

Thanks, Frank.

Um, we all think our ISP is for crap, but that's not why you can only see January.

Fool Disclosure: to get a proper link up to this thread on the Feb edition of Xara Xone, this thread has to come first, premature as this might seem!



Get some rest, and then tip-toe down in the morning to see what's under the tree, okay?

My Best,

—Gary

[Gare]

It's 6:45am in New York, and February is up.

We need a nip and a tuck here and there, but all new content can be accessed.

Thanks angelize, Barbara, and Frank!

My Best,

Gary

[gracehjs]

I got notification on the video on Utube last night, so I got to watch it a day early. I loved it and I think you slowed down a bit and that made it perfect.
Thanks

[Gare]

Yeah, I made sure to pop at least half a dozen of those funny red pills you can buy in the park before reading the script, Grace.

Okay: if it's perfect, let's commence with the "what did I learn?" part of the process and start posting members example files and questions and such.

My Best,

—Gary

P.S. Frank, Javier? You folks up for the translations? Barbara will be negotiating it, so can you please get in touch with her? TIA!

[Scotty]

Hi Gary,
I just got the link to Xar tutorial for February here on west coast Canada. I watched the animation tutorial and got quite a lot of animation ideas from it. I am dabbling with Cyberlink Power director now and this
tutorial will add to my arsenal.
Great.
Jim
p.s As a comment of video tutorials I found the narration a bit fast but it could be cause I am hearing impaired...

[Gare]

Hi Scotty, and thanks—

Well, I guess I went from 400% speed on the first tutorial, to 150%, and still have to slow it down a little.

Happily, as soon as a couple of our members who are bi-lingual check in and as soon as Barbara is finished coding the cc on YouTube, you'll have subtitles, but right now, did you know you can download a transcript of the lecture in PDF file format?

The link is right there on the Tutorials page, down and to the left of the embedded video.



My Best,

Gary

[Scotty]

Hi Gary,
thanks for the quick response...yes i did know about the download but I watch the online version first to see if there is a new item I don't know, if so then I download the pdf for future reference. I mentioned the narration but I would see if other members have same thoughts. I am getting old and slow....
Jim

[Gare]

Scotty—

Um, do you see any spring chicken in that video?

None of us is getting younger, not even Dick Clark anymore.

For the record, what I did differently than the last video tutorial is I did not edit out any pauses in the voice-over.

Still, I had a lot to cover and the silly thing is more than 10 minutes long, and even on a good day with an announcer on barbiturates—not everyone is going to hear every word, and that's why the PDF, the cc, and translations to come.

Good luck with Power director...I'm not sure but I think it can handle alpha channels and if not, I do know for a fact that you can chromakey out a Xara animation background if you use solid green or other solid key color.

—Gary