I just got a copy of The Animation Bible, a book by Maureen Furniss (Ph.D) of the Animation Faculty at CalArts in Los Angeles.This very lenghty book touches about every topic there is on animation. From conception, pre-production, making a pitch, budgeting, actual development, history, techniques … the list goes on.

He recibido una copia de The Animation Bible, un libro por Maureen Furniss (Ph.D) de la Facultad de Animación en CalArts de Los Angeles. Este bastante extenso libro toca mas o menos todos los temas que hay acerca de la animación. Desde la concepción y conceptualización, presentación inicial, presupuestos, desarollo, historia, tecnicas… la lista de temas continua.

I had the great honor of being referenced under the chapter titled “Digital Media and Computer Animation” as one of the many case studies covered troughout the book, for my participation on the Flipbook! project, developed for Fabrica‘s Interactive department.

Tuve el gran honor de aparecer referenciado como uno de los muchos casos de estudios mencionados en el libro por mi participación en  Flipbook!, desarrollado para el departamento Interactivo de Fabrica

Thanks to the geniuses that made the redesign at fabrica.it some projects that were hosted there are offline. One of them is Flipbook.

This lack of planning destroyed the efforts of all the community of the original Flipbook toy wich had built a huge number of animations in the years 2005 and 2006.

The new fabrica.it

At the ex-alumni list there has been lots of critics of the redesign made by http://www.wehavephotoshop.com/ . Even thou some find the graphic style to be more dynamic and energetic, it is not what touched me the most about it.

The site Jon had made was not perfect, but it was pretty good. With all the endless back and forth approval rounds with the higher powers, he had managed to include some great features: Students had “student cards”, their own mini-page on the site and a system to upload images, text and others about their projects. There was info on applying to Fabrica. There was an active blog. There was even a small “grafiti” wall wher random people could draw on the sides of the site and express opinions. The site was fully dynamic and made to the best technical standards of web design. Jon is a very trough kinda guy.

The new site on the other hand, has none of these. Fabrica has changed a lot this last couple of years. Maybe it should not be a surprise that students no longer have mini-pages on the site.

The site doesn’t even have any information about applying. That says a lot to me.

And here is the kicker: i went and clicked on the link marked “Students”. To my surprise the fabricanti.com site had been hijacked without permission and it was displayed there on a frame under the “fabrica.it browser”. I say wihout permission because they didnt bother to tell me or Daniel (the other site admin), about any of this.

our very own fabricanti.com hijacked!

Its really kinda funny if you think about it. We started fabricanti.com as a way to keep all the former students still in touch with each other. We “borrowed” the structure of the original fabrica student database made by JH and we used it to make our small project. It was small little site, not very important to anyone except us and definitely not endorsed or approved in any way by fabrica. It was our own. Little by little former students started to join. Not very actively but still.

Fast forward to now. The small site is now being showcased by the official one. And we didn’t even know it. Since they probably threw away the old site, it’s a good guess to say we now hold the most complete copy of the fabrica students community ever, past and present. (i hope they made a backup of that at least)  [ UPDATE ] Actually somewhere buried within fabrica.it, the old version is still available 

As owners of fabricanti.com, Daniel an I welcome this change because it drives, at least for the moment, traffic to our little fabricanti.com. And another thing: think about it, we could just post anything we wanted there… and fabrica could not do a thing about it …not that we would. We are playing nice.

It’s not all bad thou, at least there is some humor to the page. In the source code (see image bellow)

Now Hansi‘s made an AIM chatting bot so she doesn’t have to go around chatting all day to keep it going. Nice work guys.

Anna Lisa ya habia hecho esto del “chain tale” en Fabrica . Se metía a Ichat y nos pedía que escribieramos paragrafos al azar para completar una historia colectica.

Ahora Hansi hizo un robot chateador para que a ella no le toque andar todo el dia metida chatiando. Buen trabajo chicos.