The Pond, an Octopz blog on communication, collaboration and coworking online.

Click on the image above to watch a video overview of the new Octopz features.

Lots of news about Octopz to share today, so lets get right to it. The official new release announcing the next major version of Octopz went out earlier today. Here are the highlights:

• Industry-leading support for fully interactive 3D content, available now
• Access to external web services, including Flickr, Yahoo! Maps, available now, and shortly, Floorplanner
• Real-time co-creation with the built-in text editor, available now
• A new Day Pass pricing option as a convenient alternative to monthly subscriptions, available late May, 2008

A second news release provides more details on support for interactive 3D in Octopz. The highlight are:

• Anyone working in a 3D application, such as Autodesk’s Maya and 3ds Max, and Softimage’s XSI can upload their 3D content directly into an Octopz Meeting Room
• Fully textured 3D objects can be imported, shared, manipulated and marked up in Octopz just as easily as any other document
• Additional capabilities will be added in the coming months, including advanced lighting and shading control, character animation, texture swapping, scene editing, and support for Google SketchUp models
• Interactive 3D support is provided by combining Papervision3D with the proprietary Octopz code base

A third news release details the integration of Flickr and Yahoo! Maps into Octopz. Highlights:

• Access Yahoo! Maps and Flickr (either an individual photo collection or the entire Flickr library) from within Octopz
• Upload the desired images and map information directly to an Octopz meeting room
• View and markup the images and maps in real time or asynchronously
• Archive all work — including all markups and notes — in a highly secure environment

To see Octopz in action, including the new features, sign up for a free trial online.

Killer Bean Forever - Official Trailer

Jeff Lew is something of a legend in the world of independent 3D animation. He studied electrical engineering in college but left that world behind after graduation to pursue his dream of working in feature films. He went the struggling-actor-in-New-York route, but that didn’t pan out very well for him. So instead of giving up, he came up with the idea of making his own animated movie and casting himself in the lead role to further his acting career. But first he had to take care of paying the rent.

So Jeff went to work as a web designer and learned all about 2D graphics at work, while teaching himself about 3D animation at home. In the process he came up with a character called Killer Bean and featured him in a 3 minute short called Killer Bean: The Interrogation, which got him some attention on the Internet. About a year later he landed a 3D animator gig and went on to work on feature film projects including the Spiderman theme park ride-film, X-Men, Kung Pow. Looney Tunes:Back in Action. He also spent about 3 years working on Killer Bean 2: The Party (embedded below), which was viewed more than a million times over the course of 6 months and landed him a job working as the lead animator for the Matrix Reloaded.

After the Matrix gig was over, Jeff chose to devote his entire time and attention to his Killer Bean project. He has spent the last four years creating a feature length animated movie called Killer Bean Forever that currently clocks in at 85 minutes. The movie is still being rendered and an official release date has not been announced yet. Thats the trailer for it at the top of this post.

Jeff has also created a companion website for his Killer Bean movie that includes a section called CG Film School. In the first article, Jeff writes about how animation artists and filmmakers can use web conferencing and collaboration to create virtual studios and pool their talents and resources to complete their projects. He goes through the entire creative process and gives examples of how web conferencing can be used at each stage of production. He also shares a really creative example of how to use a webcam to collaborate on animation:

Once you review the animation and request changes, you don’t merely have to give the animator notes. You can actually stand up in front of the camera and act out what you want the character to do. The animator can easily record your video also. If a picture is worth a thousand words, just think how much a video is worth! In animation, reference video is priceless.

Killer Bean 2: The Party