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View Profile TXMStudios
Though listed as TXMStudios, we actually consist of two houses, Loren Productions & TXM Studios. Loren Productions handles most of the writing and focuses on short films while TXM Studios handles all of the animation and most of the sound production.

Age 40, Male

Animation and Film

Austin, TX

Joined on 7/27/07

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TXMStudios's News

Posted by TXMStudios - September 28th, 2007


We have released episode 1 of As The Hamster Wheel Turns, a TimeSplitters machinima. While browsing through NewGrounds we haven't really noticed much appreciation for machinima and the file would have to be streamed and be rather large so we are currently only showing it on YouTube.

We hope everyone takes a moment to check it out and leave us a comment.

Visit As The Hamster Wheel Turns on YouTube


Posted by TXMStudios - September 11th, 2007


Woah, this has been an awesome day. We just want to thank everyone who has watched our movie. We really appreciate all of the kind comments and we are glad to see other people think like we do. We were starting to get worried we were the freaks. Feel free to hit us up anytime, we'd love to share animation stories and make new friends on Newgrounds!

Next on our line of attack, we want to leave a mark on Funny or Die. You know, the website with Will Ferrell yelling at his baby landlord.

Watch Honey Smack HD on Funny or Die!

Please click FUNNY in the bottom left corner of the film to support us!


Posted by TXMStudios - September 8th, 2007


http://cfx.newgrounds.com/ sent the following question and I responded. I thought I'd post it as an entry for anyone else who might want to read it.

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Superb!

The content was funny as hell, but Honey Smack HD's technical merits are excellent as well!

For something that sounds that good and is that fully animated, I might expect a filesize of 2MB, not less than 1MB.

So -- I have to ask a bit of a selfish question. How did you get such nice audio quality along with your animation? You obviously used a decent microphone and have experience dealing with Flash's odd audio issues in general, but what sort of equipment, software, and techniques did you end up using?

Best,
~Miz

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Hey Miz,

There is nothing selfish about your questions, and I'd be glad to impart what little wisdom I have.

As far as the quality of the audio goes, I used an MXL condensor microphone with a silk screen to prevent popping and a Lambda Alpha audio recorder. I got the mic in a bundle with an instrument mic for $40, you can find pop screens for $20 and the Lambda recorder set me back $100. Considering that I am also in a band and we film movies, this was all worth the money.

We then record our cartoons by the sentence in Cubase SX 3. If there are two people talking, we let one go first and get all their lines done. We've spent a lot of time practicing to make the back and forth seem intimate. For Honey Smack it only had one guy, so he just ran through the thing in two takes. Make sure there is zero peaking! There is a handy live recording peak tool just for that.

I then edit the sound in Cubase SX 3. I increase the gain as much as I can without peaking, I might slow down the dialogue if necessary. Since it is just speech, I save it as an 64 kbps / mono / 44100 Hz mp3. You could probably even get away with 48 or 32. After all that, our minute long cartoon is about 500 kB.

In Flash I set it up as streamed audio. For Honey Smack it was inserted into one scene. For my next project I am going to split the audio up into different scenes wherever there is a dead silence. I set the audio compression in Flash to 64kpbs / mono / 44100 Hz / Medium. You could again compress this more if you wanted.

Visually the goal is to break everything into layers as much as possible. When doing FBF, use a layer only for the parts that actually change. Put everything that stays still in an extended layer below it. The more information you have not requiring new keyframes, the smaller it'll be.

If you were making a game, this might be a bad idea, and you'd want every object to be drawn onto one layer for speed improvements, but it isn't really an issue for cartoons.

Hope all that helped! I'll be releasing the code I created to handle subtitles, rewind, play, and fast forward in the next week or so.

Sincerely,
Kevin Nuut


Posted by TXMStudios - September 8th, 2007


First of, I'd just like to say that we finally have a mascot! I've incorporated the panda into various aspects of TXM over the years and I thought I'd just make it official.

After two months of work, Honey Smack HD is finally released. It is the first official animation of Loren & TXM and we just want to thank everyone who has supported us along the way. With each day, the animation process gets easier and we are pumping out new ideas like crazy. Keep your eyes peeled for our next animation short, Barflies!

Thanks to Arvand, Alex, and Caulder especially for helping me with tons of Flash tips!

http://zombie-pimp.newgrounds.com/
http://alex.newgrounds.com/
http://riftmaster.newgrounds.com/

Sincerely, Kevin Nuut

Honey Smack HD is out!


Posted by TXMStudios - August 3rd, 2007


So we switched our account over from kev-nuu to TXMStudios to better reflect our animation studio with the fancy new sub domains. We will be rereleasing a high definition version of Honey Smack shortly and fancying up this page a bit with descriptions about each team member, etc.

You can check out our lead animators old work at kev-nuu.newgrounds.com or visit our site at TXM.com in the mean time.