New Year, new start, new projects, new prices!

What a great year 2010 could be. We’re quite excited here at EESB, knowing the projects that are on the roadmap for the short and long-term. We’ve got video pieces coming up, and we’ve go animation pieces coming up.

We’re also working on a brand new set of CD and DVD prices which are set to blow you away.

We’ll keep you posted as and when this becomes available. In the meantime, keep well!

Hey Everybody,

Well, we’re at the end of another year…. where did it go?!!
We want to wish you all a very Happy Christmas, and an amazing New Year.

EESB will be closed from the end of 22nd December through to 4th January. We’re going to enjoy what is pretty much the only rest we get, and are already excited about the projects that await us in 2010.

Have a good break, everyone!

Here’s one we don’t get very often!

David Braviner from our friends Matrix People Solutions, gave us a call earlier today with an uncommon (for us, anyway!) request.

Could we take a frame from the explanatory animation that we did for them a little while back, and give it a little Christmas sprucing (see what we did there?! Christmas, sprucing?) for them to use in their communications?

Of course we could!

One Santa hat, one pair of novelty antlers and one miniature Christmas tree later and, job done!

Some good thinking by Matrix People Solutions, and a very quick turnaround from Eight Eyed Sea Bass. We aims to please.

At Eight Eyed Sea Bass, we receive a lot of documents from both clients and students, which may be Word documents or even spreadsheets. Aside from various people in this chain haven’t different versions of software on their machines, we all also have different printers that we use. For every printer out there that you can buy, there is a slight change in page setups – even if we’re all using A4 pages.

So, as you’ve no doubt witnessed for yourself, when we receive documents, particularly CVs from people seeking employment, more often than not when we open them up, they appear in some sprawled mess of a layout making it difficult for the eyes to read and the brain to interpret, and it is much harder to find the willpower to read this document!

Columns are all screwed up, text is in the wrong place, the font used by the author is not one installed on our systems so it gets cleverly substituted for something else that makes the eyeballs bleed….

But there is a cure to this pain. You see them every day.

And they are: PDF documents!

PDFs are great – the layout as created on your own machine is retained, and the font you use can be embedded within the file – so you know that the way you made the document is the way the recipient will see it. The funny thing is, PDFs have been around since the second half of the 90’s, but still people don’t know how to make their own.

In the past, we have bought, and still use, various PDF creating tools for our purposes. But, we have found one that you can have for FREE.

So, being helpful as we are, we’ve decided to make it even easier for you to get, and make your very own PDFs (so for the people we’ve done conversions for as a favour – you know who you are!) you can now take care of yourself really simply. Well, PC users anyway.

Download the Zip file from the link below, grab the installer .exe file and run it.

The software will install a Virtual Printer to make PDFs, so whatever application you are in and want to make your cute little files from, simply click the File menu, and then Print. You’ll see the PDF writer as an option under the printer name. It’ll ask you where on your computer you want to save your PDF to, and then you are done!

Here’s the file:
www.eesb.tv/gifts/CuteWriter.zip
Compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and 7, 32 and 64bit.

Enjoy!

Here’s a job that’s a bit different to our usual…

The nice chaps over at Boilerhouse were working with their client, Hook Norton Brewery, creating new labels to be used on the beer pumps in pubs.

As part of the design they needed some 3D text within the layout. So, they gave us a call and discussed what their requirements were. A little later on, we sent back to them a new image for print, replacing what we’d received telling us where the 3D text should be placed.

The image was well received, by both the Boilerhouse guys and the Brewery boys. Glad to help.

Have a drink for us, lads!

What is socialbreakfast?

socialbreakfast provides a space for people to come together and express their views on the issues that matter to them in their communities.

The site encourages self expression and is not tied to any one particular political party, belief, opinion or faith.

Eight Eyed Sea Bass were asked by The Social Media Partnership to help them with an element of their presentation to members of the Government. As they had created a lovely looking website for the Social Breakfast, they knew there were going to be large plasma screens at their launch event at the House of Commons.

So, to fill these screens, they decided to have example pages from their website along with some nice scrolling action through a page or two, plus some animated mouse cursors to show some interaction on the site.

That’s where they asked us at EESB to come in, to create these animations and make them play from a DVD, looping forever, in the background of the event.

By all accounts, the launch was extremely succesful. We naturally wish our chums at The Social Media Partnership well with their future plans and endeavors.

Is there much better in the world than motorcycles?
How about Ducati motorcycles? !w00t!

Our great chums at The Gyst came back to EESB once again, with some footage of Ducati’s new 2010 range of bikes [droooool!] to edit into a looping DVD for the International Bike Show at the NEC, and also to be played in some dealer outlets.

Included in the brief was the task of duplicating a number of USB pen-drives with promo material, press-packs and product info.

We hope that the discs and the edit have gone down a storm for all concerned. A big thumbsup to The Gyst for their Christmas card too; cheers guys!

…. I must get me one of them Multistrada 1100 machines, they look awesome…..

The folks at The Production Company got in touch with Eight Eyed Sea Bass, to ask if we could take some footage from a corporate vid that they have done for one of their clients, and turn some of the segments into something like a cross between South Park and Bod.

Well, first of all, Paul had to explain to Dom who Bod was (yes, Paul is old enough to remember!) – though strangely, Dom needed no telling about South Park. Funny, that.

Their client is the Communities United Project [CUP], who specialise in bringing together people from all walks of life through various activities, with a focus on football.

Our brief is to use snippets of interviews with service users, and people involved in the project as tutors and mentors, and characaturise [is that really the right spelling, and is that even a real word? - Ed] these people (in a non-offensive way, obviously) for a certain amount of their interviews.

It’s a pretty interesting and involving project all in all, and we’re looking forward to completing it, so we can show you some 2D animation sometime in the New Year, most likely.

Keep well, all!

It’s not often that we get to work on full blown feature-length films, so when turns up, we are happy to take part and do whatever we can.

The 13th Day, according to it’s producer, began life a few years ago as an ambitious short film about the miracle of Fatima, telling a Christian story. After working its way around a bit, it picked up some oomph from the Catholic Church itself – and the project ballooned in to a full blown feature length film. This was premiered simultaneously in Portugal and the USA through the wonders of the internet.

As the project was nearing its first major close, the production company were needing various flavours of DVD copies.

Eight Eyed Sea Bass was tasked with converting the TV broadcast Digibeta tapes to a run of DVDs at the highest possible quality. Alongside that, there had been a version of the film with Portuguese subtitles, which again needing duplication. Not only that, EESB had to create a DVD master for the American market (with their NTSC television sets), and do a small run of this type of disc also.

Not wanting to let the client have problems anywhere along the line, we also used our magic EESB powers to get an American NTSC master tape of the film transported from UK to USA overnight, compared to the 2-4 days most couriers were stating.

We hope that the film is a success for them – it does sound like they’ve pumped the last few years of their lives into this project, so we can only wish that they get their due rewards.

Good luck guys!

The FLIP Animation Festival at Wolverhampton’s Light House began yesterday, getting both professional and student animators together in one place.

There is absolutely loads of stuff that happens at the event, and some great people can be seen and met. For a fuller idea, check out the website here.

One particular mini-event was the Portfolio Reviews. We can only describe it as being a little bit like X-Factor, but for animation work rather than singing and performance! EESB’s Dom was invited to be a judge in this event, alongside Chris Randall of Second Home Productions and Carla Prada from Rare.

There were 6 people who individually came up on a stage, presented their showreels live to the judges (and an audience of many), to then have feedback given by the judges. Some showreels were very good, some needed a bit more work on the content, but all of those displaying their work were given constructive feedback. We hope at least they agree with that!

Recognition must be given to Peter McLuskie, who organises the event. He obviously puts a lot of energy into it, and so we can only wish him success in making the next festival even better than 2009’s!