A big congrats from Smith Micro to Ethan and Malachai Nicolle! Fox has given the go-ahead to an animated series version of Axe Cop, the comic-book franchise created by seven-year-old Malachai Nicolle and his older brother and chief illustrator Ethan Nicolle. The comic centers on a very earnest police officer who uses a firefighter’s axe as a weapon and, has a flute as a sidekick and a T-Rex as a pet. (Courtesy of Animation Magazine)
Axe Cop was entirely sketched and inked in Manga Studio 4 EX. Here’s Ethan’s webinar on creating Axe Cop and webcomics using Manga Studio.
To read more of this article on Animation Magazine, please click here.
The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. (Courtesy the Earth Day Action Network)
How does your community celebrate Earth Day? What are you doing to celebrate the environment this weekend? Following our series of holidaygreetings created in Anime Studio, Smith Micro is excited to present this Earth Day greeting that you can share with your family and friends.
Ready to make some greetings of your own? Or just ready to save some green? Earth Day brings you Green Savings and 22% off on all Smith Micro Software! To celebrate Earth Day, we are helping you save some green in your pocket. Get 22% off all Smith Micro software titles from now until midnight on Sunday 4/22/12. Simply use the coupon code: SAVESOMEGREEN when you checkout.
After you purchase, don’t forget to check out our Smith Micro Graphics Facebook Page and Twitter feed to join in the conversation, share your creations, and learn more about your new products!
Here’s your opportunity to see how Ethan Nicolle creates his successful comics Axe Cop and Bearmageddon using Manga Studio.
Sign up and attend this one-hour webinar and you will learn how this pro gets his inspiration and develops his stories. Ethan will also take you through the various steps in making his comics and show you how he uses the tools in Manga Studio to bring it all together. You won’t want to miss this!
Creating Successful Comics with Ethan Nicolle
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 10:00AM PDT Register Now! Seating is Limited.
For more information on our webinars, go to our webinars page.
Share this St. Patrick’s Day animation made in Anime Studio with your friends and loved ones!
When you’re done watching, pick your four leaf clover: 50% OFF the Entire Smith Micro Store!
We’re celebrating St. Patrick’s day with a big sale at Smith Micro’s online store. Get 50% off all software titles from now until Sunday, March 18th. Simply use the coupon code: HOWLUCKY4U at checkout.
We want this blog to be about the fun of creating your own characters with cartoon software, or using 3D models to tell your digital story. Last month, the graphics web team decided we wanted to host a regular, but not very serious art contest in the blog to help liven things up around here. We just want to have fun creating art together, with a bunch of silly prizes and a silly theme where everyone who works with Poser, Manga Studio and Poser can join in together and make silly things.
We put out a call for you to create your own superheroes and a variety of entries flooded in with top candidates to save the world. We had an Anthro-Hedgehog with a light saber and one artist made their first attempt at drawing shoujo manga rather than their usual shounen style manga. We couldn’t believe how CREATIVE you all were.
It was really hard to pick a winner, but UK Manga Studio Artist 888toto (AKA Tony Allcock) stood out with the most votes from our staff! His hero Dart (below) comes with high jumping, gun toting, super-athletic skills and she can even read what you are thinking! Congratulations Tony! We’ll ship you out a package next week!
We picked two runners up, who will also be getting silly little packages of silly things to celebrate their super superhero status. Congratulations to artdude41 (Ashley Martin) and Neil King for your winning entries!
Synestra by ArtDude41, Created in Poser - She’s a member of the Black Avalon, and her powers include unlimited stamina, flight, magic, super strength and speed, as well as telepathy.
Technibod by Neil King, Created in Anime Studio – A new breed of super hero with the awesome power to fix computing problems.
There were actually TWO parts to the art challenge last month! We wanted to create here in the office too! The Smith Micro graphics staff in Watsonville tried to create a few bad guys for the superheroes to battle. (We learned this month that using food for a month long art project is possibly not a great idea…but we know for next time!) Will the world ever be safe when cork dinosaurs roam the earth?
Now that the world is safe with all these superheroes – What’s the March contest theme already?!
MARCH CONTEST THEME – BIRTHDAY PARTY Content Paradise turns 7 on March 21st, and we’re going to celebrate! We want to see your birthday party inspired images and videos this month. Make us a card or make us a clown – but get your images in before the contest closes. We’ll send the winner(s) a box of fun party favors and maybe we’ll even save you a piece of cake!
Deadline: March 31, 2012 at Midnight, US Pacific Coast Time
Contest is open for the entire month of March.
ONE ENTRY PER PERSON
Submit your entry at the below link and make sure you tell us in the extra comments field that you are entering the MARCH CONTEST. Entries without this information will be excluded! Be Creative! http://my.smithmicro.com/gallery/
Artwork Submission Specification(s):
Artwork can be created in any version of Poser, Manga Studio or Anime Studio.
Images must be JPEG/JPG format (or compressed into a .zip archive), 800 pixels on the shortest side, maximum 80MB file size.
Animation formats accepted are SWF MOV MP3 MP4 WMV, minimum 320 pixels on shortest side, maximum 80MB file size and should be between 30-60 seconds.
All entries are subject to the Artwork Submission Terms & Conditions.
Okay, we know we’re a little late with the year end review, but wanted to squeeze it in anyway. With 2012 officially underway, the team here at Smith Micro wanted to still take a moment to highlight our favorite moments and accomplishments from 2011.
On the product front, new versions of both the Anime Studio and the Poser product lines were developed and launched with great success. Both products included ground breaking new features, causing excitement from both established and new users.
This was a big launch for community involvement! In additional some masterful forum assistance in the presales campaign from our Poser Ambassadors, we hosted the first “Iron Render Championship” for the Poser Pro 2012 hero image and were honored to have Syyd Raven and Traveler selected as our winners. We were very thankful for everyone’s help!
Along with the new and updated products the team here at Smith Micro had a very eventful year at tradeshows. Here are some of our favorites from 2011:
We attended Anime Expo for the first time ever over July 4th weekend. Our team got to participate in a panel speaking on the “2D Animation Revolution” that packed in fans, artists and convention-goers.
We also had another very special visitor appear at the Smith Micro SDCC booth – Sponge Bob SquarePants came and hung out with our team to celebrate the release of the SpongeBob SquarePants Tooncast Studio.
To kick off the Poser launch we headed up north to beautiful Vancouver, Canada to attend SIGGRAPH 2011.
We also attended New York Comic-Con. Nothing like Comic-Con craziness in the Big Apple!
To close out the year, Anime Studio animator Andy Eaton won the Smith Micro holiday card contest. He took home $500 and was able to giveaway $500 to his charity of choice.
Thank you 2011 for being such a great year for Smith Micro and our software – looking forward to another fast paced, crazy year of new products, great artists and fun times.
What if you could be a superhero? What would your super power be? Would you giggle and fly or be serious and slay dragons? Now’s the time to make your dream happen (digitally at least!) Smith Micro wants you to create your very own superhero in this month’s image contest.
We’re not looking for the ordinary cape and tights guy, we want to see your imagination go wild in your best Poser, Manga Studio or Anime Studio creation. We will select our single favorite from all the entries!
What happens if your superhero is selected as the most hero-est of the heroes? We don’t want to give away too much, but we promise a box full of goodies to be delivered to the house of the winner, sure to leave you FEELING super at least! (We’ll announce and contact the winner within one week of the end of the month to get more information.)
(Image by Kevin Mall)
Deadline: February 29, 2012 at Midnight, US Pacific Coast Time
Contest is open for the entire month of February. (This month even has an EXTRA day since it’s leap year – but don’t forget, it’s still only 29 days, so get your entries in early!)
Submit your entry at the below link and make sure you enter your superhero name and tell us what your super power is in the Additional Credit field. Entries without this information will be excluded! Be Creative! http://my.smithmicro.com/gallery/
Artwork Submission Specification(s):
Artwork can be created in any version of Poser, Manga Studio or Anime Studio.
Images must be JPEG/JPG format (or compressed into a .zip archive), 800 pixels on the shortest side, maximum 80MB file size.
Animation formats accepted are SWF MOV MP3 MP4 WMV, minimum 320 pixels on shortest side, maximum 80MB file size and should be between 30-60 seconds.
All entries are subject to the Artwork Submission Terms & Conditions.
Isn’t the Holiday season the best? There are two things we love here at Smith Micro – the first is a good old fashion art contest. We loving seeing what you, the users are creating with our programs. The second thing we adore is the holiday season. Put them both together and we get downright warm and fuzzy.
Earlier in the month our team announced a Holiday Card Contest encouraging Anime Studio, Manga Studio and Poser artists to submit a digital greeting made with one of our great programs. We asked entrants to propose a design for Smith Micro’s own holiday greeting with the words “Happy Holidays” as the text. In the true act of holiday giving we wanted to not just reward the winner with a $500 gift card but also donate $500 to a charity of the winner’s choice.
Drumroll please . . . The winner of the Smith Micro Holiday Card Contest is Andy Eaton from Sugar Hill, Georgia. Andy used Anime Studio to create Winter Wonderland, a 30 second digital greeting featuring a snowball-throwing antagonist. Andy selected the Atlanta Children’s Shelter as his charity of choice. Both Andy and the Atlanta Children’s Shelter will be getting $500 from Smith Micro this holiday season.
We also wanted to be sure and say thanks to everyone that took the time to enter. We appreciate your hard work and holiday creativity. Below are a few of our other favorite entries…
Have a very happy and safe holiday from your friends at Smith Micro!
After an amazing preview night and full first day the Smith Micro team woke up again last Friday and joined the people parade headed to San Diego Comic-Con for 3 MORE full days of madness.
Friday was another exciting day filled with interesting sites, great booth activities and special surprises!
The raffles continued and winners walked away with an iPad, a Wacom tablet, and tons of free software!
Comic great Stan Lee was at the booth right next to us signing autographs on Friday. We couldn’t miss this opportunity, so one of our staff made friends with the head security guard and got permission to slip a copy of Manga Studio up to Stan’s assistant. We can now say Stan Lee owns Manga Studio and had one giddy staff member all afternoon.
SpongeBob was among the stars on hand at the Con on Saturday and made another appearance in the Smith Micro booth to support the new release of the SpongeBob SquarePants ToonCast Studio product.
Saturday and Sunday we had even more raffles and gave away even more prizes! We were stoked to see one of our Con regulars walk away with the iPad on Sunday too!
Sunday brought ‘Ratfist‘ and ‘Earthworm Jim’ creator Doug TenNapel away from his booth with Ethan Nicolle to the Smith Micro booth to sign some autographs and do a little demo of the Manga Studio software.
In addition to all of the great customers that stopped by, we are grateful for all of our guests for the time they spent in the booth this year. Another giant THANK YOU to Dave Gibbons, Ethan Nicolle, Scottie Young, Doug TenNapel and the SpongeBob Squarepants/NetToons team for helping us out this year. Our entire team had a blast and can’t wait to do it again!
Well, that about sums it up for this year. We are already counting the days until we return next year. Did you already buy your advance tickets on Sunday? Are you planning your costume yet?
