Another beautiful Thesis/Wordpress sites that Amy Stewart and I created, this one done for Caribbean Dream BVI.

What a gorgeous yacht they have. I would love to spend a week or two sailing paradise on it. Check out the site and book yourself a trip I’m sure you’ll never forget.

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One of the biggest challenges for creating the AV stories for the Early Years Gallery in The Old Red Museum was the scarcity of related visual materials that were available from the mid 1800s. For this story all we originally had were the line drawings of William and Henry Miller and the story of Henry’s recollection. As a solution, I came up with the idea of creating scenes using 3D characters. Originally we were planning to tell the story using only still renders of the characters, since we had a very limited production budget.

But after my multi-talented wife and partner Darla showed me the beautiful and detailed characters she created and clothed in a 3D program called Poser, I just had to animate them a bit and bring them to life. Animation in version 6 of Poser was a challenge (I usually prefer Lightwave), but it was also a blast and I enjoyed it. I wish we’d had more time and budget, but we did the best we could with what we had.

Of the 170+ approximately 3 minute AV stories that we produced for the Old Red Museum, this is one of my very favorites. The fine voice work done by voice actor Dell Johnson was perfect for the piece. We were very fortunate to have a group of very talented voice actors, and they greatly improved the power and impact of all our stories.

During a meeting of the Old Red Museum’s Board of Directors, at which I’d been asked to take 15 minutes to show some of the AV content we’d been developing, I showed an early version of this story. The Board loved it, but was concerned that, at the end, I had left the mischievous Isam character unmoving after he hit the ‘ground’. There was concern that children viewing the story might think Isam was really dead. So I woke him up at the end to assuage that concern.

The Board originally gave me 15 minutes to show some of the stories; but they wound up keeping me for an hour and a half and then gave me a big round of applause when I was finished, which was totally unexpected but very gratifying. I love bringing historical stories to life.

Below you’ll find links to a few of the more than 170 historical story videos we produced for The Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture. I will be putting up working examples of some of the 41 touch screen kiosks we produced for the museum soon, but for now, these are just examples of the videos that run in those kiosks.

The first one is former slave Henry Miller’s recollections.

This is a story of Sarah Horton Cockrell, one of the first successful entrepreneurs in Dallas.

And here is a story of early aviation and the first Dallas International Aviation Meet in 1911.

Finally, here’s a story from Tom Simmons about how he got his first by-line in the Dallas Morning News, covering the demise of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde.

These are just a tiny fraction of the interesting stories we helped bring to life for the Old Red Museum. If you’re ever in downtown Dallas, you should treat yourself to a visit to this beautiful jewel of a museum.

This is one of the most complex and beautiful Thesis/Wordpress sites that Amy Stewart and I have created to date, done for the National Piano Foundation.

This one was a real challenge to bring to life, and I greatly enjoyed it. The site is full of information about the history of the piano and resources for learning to play.

Woot, indeed! FINALLY! ;o)

I’ve been wanting to get this cool new design launched since the first time Amy Stewart sent it to me. It took everything I had to squelch my galaxy-sized stubborn male ego and ask her if she would help me with the new design. We talked about some of the ideas I’d been having and when I saw what she came up with, it knocked my socks off. I’ve tweaked it just a bit, but by and large it’s pretty much what her Fireworks comp looks like.

Thank you, Amy, for such an awesome design! I couldn’t be happier with it. I finally have an easily update-able framework to work within and build upon. This site also uses the latest version of DIYThemes/Chris Pearson’s Thesis. I am completely sold on Thesis. It’s rock solid and so far I’ve found few limits.

I still don’t have all the content created or posted yet, but the framework and layout is up and running and that was my goal for this very busy weekend.  The site uses CSS3 to do the cool curved corners. Those of you with IE8 won’t see those, but will instead see sharp corners. No biggie.

Please leave me a comment letting me know what you think and if there’s anything that needs tweaking or has problems. I can’t wait to fill this site up with content! Cheers!

Music in Motion Notions is is a Thesis/Wordpress site Amy Stewart and I created to be the official blog for Mary Ann Stewart’s company, Music in Motion, which is a music education and gift company.

Here’s a Thesis/Wordpress site that Amy Stewart and I created for Steve Hill’s roofing company. Steve wanted something colorful, unusual, and eye-catching to help him stand out from the crowd in the ultra-competitive roofing business.