Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. – Maya Angelou

Mr. Walker's Classroom Blog

  • 20 years ago, the World Wide Web was born – SiliconValley.com

    By Elise Ackerman

    Mercury News
    Posted: 03/12/2009 01:24:59 PM PDT

    It all began 20 years ago today with a frustrated 29-year-old programmer who had a passion for order.

    Tim Berners-Lee, now famous as the founder of the World Wide Web, was working as an obscure consultant at Cern, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in the suburbs of Geneva. Berners-Lee loved the laboratory. It was full of stimulating projects and creative people, but his work, and the work of his colleagues, was stymied by the lack of institutional knowledge.

    So Berners-Lee proposed adding “hypertext” to the Cern network, basically embedding software in documents that would point to other related documents. And thus was born the Web, a global communications network that has shaken up industries, created enormous wealth and transformed the way ordinary people live their lives.

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  • Mr. Walker (I am into the third person speak today).

    I started with the example you gave in class last time of Googling “animation storyboards” and remembering how you push everyone to read the first ten pages and not just the first link I found the following for research.

    Animation Careers – sounds dull but a GREAT READ

    About.com Animation – A great section on animation, especially sketching in flash, but also the poll, this was a great jumping off place. The blog entry with the template to put into a sketchbook is an example of the work.

    Proving History isn’t dull, I found this example of an actual Stimpy’s Storyboard

    I like this person’s work as an example of what a professional does in a workshop about storyboards and how to lay them out, short YouTube video was useful, if slightly out of focus.

    A professional YouTube example of a storyboard and how much detail to LEAVE OUT.

    Everyone has to put in an example from Wikipedia, here is Storyboards, just so I know what is due on Friday.

    Blah, blah, blah, I wasn’t into Storyboards, so I researched How to Draw Animations and came up with this book on Google Books so I could see some of it, I wasn’t going to read all of it, in any event.

    This list is reprinted on http://mrwalker.clevelandhighschool.org.

  • Top 36 Cool Backgrounds and Patterns Resources for all Designers

    Searching for that perfect background for your design can be pretty difficult, from these resources you can browse through 1000s upon 1000s of backgrounds and patterns. Hopefully this will make your search that little bit easier, mind you with this number of resources it may make it harder. Happy browsing!!!

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  • Big Buck Bunny is an animated short, released under the Creative Common Attribution license.

    The film is about “a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.”

    The film is a project of the Blender Foundation. Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite.This “open movie” project had as main targets:

    • Developing tools in Blender for editing and rendering hair, fur or grass
    • Improve character animation tools for cartoonish motion and deformation
    • Test Blender with giant outdoor environments, with large grassy fields and many trees with leaves
    • Further validate Blender as a professional animation creation suite

    And secondary:

    • Create a great and good looking animation short, licensed freely as open content
    • Provide content for other artists to learn from or to re-use, including documentation and tutorials

    It’s a cool project – and it’s an animated flick that’s free for you to remix and reuse!

  • Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch

    In Interface by Collis

    In this tutorial we’ll put together a high-end web design using a crisp, thin font, gorgeous background images and clever use of space and layout. You can easily use the technique to create your own unique designs.

    Then when you’re finished reading this tutorial, you can cross over to our sister site NETTUTS and follow along as we build the design into clean and simple HTML. OK let’s rock’n’roll!
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