Hurry and sign up by February 15!  

Class information:

Fo Reel!?
Instructors: Kevin and Kristen Howdeshell
Fo Reel!?  Is an initiation to the world of motion graphics.  This course will take you, brave student, through the process of creating an entire animated motion graphics piece.  If this were a cake mix, you would stir in your own eggs, oil and water, pop the batter into the oven of After Effects, and pull out a treat that has your own unique flavor. While this workshop will be spent in front of the computer screen, please be prepared for some sketching.  We’ll practice going from paper to Photoshop to After Effects.  Basic to moderate computer knowledge would be extremely helpful.

For more information, please visit www.kcai.edu/pcal-3.  We’d love to see you in the lab!

In the lab

ThreeHouse--Strings Attached

Jeremy completely focused on a doodle.

David, bringing things together

Kevin enjoying a break and a latte

Kristen posing for the cameras.

Gregory Kolsto, the caffeinated heart beat of ThreeHouse

We were extremely excited to hook up with fellow Kansas City creative studio, House of Tears Design, to construct an e-card for an international shipping company, Phoenix International.  The card’s purpose was not only to thank clients all across the globe for their business, but to spread the joy of giving and sharing with one’s community.  

From the beginning, we knew that this was going to be a big mile marker for the ThreeHouse team.  House of Tears Design gave us a long creative leash to develop the concept of the e-card based on Phoenix International’s three pillars:  Planet, People, and Prosperity.

Kevin took charge of the design process, the characters, and the overall glow the piece would have.  This was where he ran!  Character design is a realm where he excels, and hasn’t done for an animation since our senior thesis film 2 years ago.  We wanted to make this piece as beautiful as we could, so we put in extra effort.  

We were definitely going to take advantage of this creative freedom although we sometimes made things more challenging for ourselves.  The bear on the bike is an example of that.  He was going to be a difficult animation problem to solve, making his feet propel the petals.  The furry guy was so cute though, we sacrificed our sanity during the animation process.  

I learned a lot from animating on this card.  The bike and the bear were difficult to figure out.  Though he rode the bike for only about 3 seconds in the entire piece, I tried to do quite a bit of research on my own bike out in the parking lot, paying attention to the ratio between my tire speed and my pedaling and how my torso was moving while I pedaled.  

One of my favorite sections to work on was the sad fox and his reaction to receiving the bike.  It takes him a second to comprehend the gift.  He wipes his nose, straightens his tail, jumps on and is ready to go!  The challenge was to give these characters that are limited flat puppets, facial expressions and emotions.  The solutions might be subtle, like a twitch of the ear.  

Another highlight of this process was showing a studio-mate’s 3-year-old daughter the squirrels that I had been animating.  She told her father that night her favorite thing about his new studio was the running squirrel.  So cute!

I hope that you all can enjoy this as much as we have enjoyed working on it.

much to enjoy

view from above the crowds

December 4, First Friday marked the ThreeHouse trinity re-birth. We are officially Media, Studio, and (drum roll) Gallery all in one . Here are some images from our first show on Friday. It was a big success. Many people came and joined us. Once empty walls are now going to be displaying Jeremy’s art all around the city.  

And my brownies were a hit! 

The last three weeks have been crazy with moving in, finishing up animation and design work, and totally changing the face of this space. It felt really great to have so many people filling our new gallery space on First Friday. ThreeHouse is getting legit fo’ real!

Thanks Randy Braley for the pics.

-Kristen

Here’s the dream, from pekipeki in Japan-

“Who needs a site if you’re busy?”

Well… the statement around the studio is “you don’t actually exist in this world anymore unless you have a website, so here we are.”

Love us, kiss us, send us cookies.