Talking Carl Scream Fight

(link)

Via the Curated Internet. (Thanks, @notrhoda!)

DoInk: Sweet Online Animation Tool

The Empress of Denmark's Sister Escapes by mrpony, made at DoInk.com

I've only started to mess around with DoInk, but it's pretty amazing. A co-worker of a friend showed me this robust online animation tool, with all sorts of sharing and community built in. The drawing tool is one of the best I've seen online (it kind of mimics Flash's drawing tool, which I use almost exclusively), and the animation compositer is fairly simple, but it incorporates layering and basic loopable clips. The animation I made is admittedly boring, but I didn't have a lot of time to mess around with it, and just wanted to play with the basics.

I ran into a little trouble getting tweened clips to revert to their pre- or post-tweened state, but this could just as easily be my problem, having learned on an entirely different system. Clips made there can be exported to youTube or exported as swfs (!)

The most wonderful thing about Doink is that once you share an object you draw, it's available to everyone on the site. If you need a picture of a duck, say, you can search for one and incorporate it into your animation (This system might sound a little familiar to Ruby). This sharing concept meshes with a lot of ideas we've been kicking around at work about the educational value of remixing content, and lowering the skill bar for formerly difficult types of content creation, including animation.

Near as I can tell, the community is fairly small, but the tool is nice enough that I hope to see them attracting a critical mass soon.

Bricksmith Lego Modelling

Because you asked for it: Allen Smith's Bricksmith Lego Modelling App, including minifig maker!

It appears to be a fairly old app (note the clamshell laptop in the pic) and a little hard to work with if you don't read the tutorial (guilty), but it works well enough, and the minifig creator is brilliant.

Also, Panic, thinking back to the bloodshed last night, we really just need to tag-team Pone next time if we're going to have any chance of destroying him.