Good Ole' P.U.

At Powerhouse we do internal "continuing education" classes on animation once per month. We lovingly refer to it as P.U. (Powerhouse University). It gives our younger folks a chance to learn from some of the more experienced animators and maybe pick up some new tricks and gives our older animators a chance to learn some new technical skills from some of the younger folks.

We are dedicated to keeping traditional animation alive at Powerhouse, so we decided that instead of keeping these lessons to ourselves, we would spread the knowledge with the general public also, just in case we can help inspire and teach other.

You can watch the first two classes; Frank Gabriel's on limited animation dialog techniques and Ronnie Williford's on the Bouncing Ball and Flour Sack here, from youtube, or on our site. Furthermore, we are providing the files from the classes online for you to download and use. Why are being so nice? Seriously. Why are we?

Stay tuned here and on our site at the link above for future classes.  Please do not repost the files without permission.

Powerhouse Animation Studio Tour

If you have not had a chance to make it out to our animation studio in person, then today is your lucky day! We found an old dusty reel of Super 8 film that someone shot last week that shows you the 8th Wonder of The Animated World, Powerhouse Animation Studios, Inc.'s World Headquarters.

Enjoy!

Swarm!

Finally there is some footage of the Hothead's Swarm which we did some cinematic work and UI work on:





We always love working with Hothead and are really looking forward to this game coming out. Congrats to Joel and Art and the other folks at Hothead on another great looking game.

Don't Stop Vanilla Dreamin'

Powerhouse Animation's good friends Wes Hurt (of Hey Cupcake fame) and Rebel Rebel recently teamed up to create this amazing video about the origins of the Hey Cupcake phenomenon. I love it and think you will too. Check it out:

Vanilla Dreamin from Hey Cupcake on Vimeo.

We had the great honor of working with Wes over the past year to help get his new site Mr.Spriggy.com up and running. Stay tuned to the countdown and come back in April when the site officially launches to check out some of the awesome work we did for Wes.

In the meantime, visit your local Hey Cupcake shop or airstream and chow down on some delicious treats. Oh... and keep on vanilla dreamin'...

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!

Powerhouse Animation recently got the pleasure of working with a number of local Austin companies on a fantastic project called...(wait for it)... Hobo With a Shotgun.

Inspired by the 2007 Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse flick, local director Jason Eisener set out to make his very own Grindhouse-style trailer. When this mock trailer got picked up for a feature length film, Eisener got hooked up with the great folks at the Alamo Drafthouse to help promote it.

Luckily, Powerhouse was along for the ride. Thanks to local companies Gamesalad, Perfect Dork Studios, and Mondo, the Hobo with a Shotgun iphone game is now on the market!

Download it now and YOU too can deliver justice... one shell at a time.

Check out some stills from the game featuring Powerhouse original 16-bit style graphics:

Check out this great article about the game on WIRED!

And come check out our SXSW panel this afternoon (Monday 3/14) at the Austin Convention Center!!