You can of course buy off-the-shelf Christrmas Cards, but for the personal touch and to send just the right message to each person on your list, make custom personalized Christmas greeting cards on your Mac. You can do this with iPhoto or Pages, and and both Canon and HP offer free greeting card-creation templates that you can download and edit using free Adobe Acrobat reader. However, you will probably find it a lot slicker, quicker, and easier to use one of the several third-party greeting card creation applications available. Here are nine greeting card creation tools for the Mac

This project, I have to admit, was done more for software experience than to promote my play, the mighty Spoon Millionaires, which finished its six night run in Lima, Ohio on August 19th. I lifted the idea from Bishop Allen (a band you probably aren't listening to, but should be), who used to have a PowerPoint presentation on their site that documented...nothing, really. I have no interest in messing about with PowerPoint (I don't have it, so that factors in, too), but I'd been looking for a reason to dig into Keynote, and this was it.

The beauty of the web is that, for a nominal feel, you can do whatever you want with it. For example, to promote our upcoming play, Jim and I had the idea of releasing multiple postcards that parody one-sheet movie posters from the 80s. No way we could afford to print multiple designs, though, so that idea went on the web. But, to get to the point, Jim wanted to do a production blog. The idea amused me, because Jim lives in southern Florida and the show's being produced in mid-west Ohio. What does Jim know about the production of the play? Nothing, and that would make it so interesting...have to find something else to talk about.

The problem with making a movie is that it's difficult to make a movie. I'm not talking about the technical aspect of it, I'm talking about the people aspect. I have the equipment, as we've discussed in earlier entries of this column. I have the scripts. I'm a writer, after all...I have plenty of scripts. Most of them aren't worth filming, but did that stop the producers of The Lady in the Water?

For my second project, I shot another short film. Like the first, this one was also conceived as something I could shoot entirely by myself in a short period of time. It took about 30 minutes to do the initial shoot, 10 minutes for reshoots, and an hour to edit. What's most interesting about this film is that it's a failure. I intended it to be a Twilight Zone-esque short with a surprising "shock" ending, but due to lack of planning, not only is the "twist" not a shock, it doesn't make any sense at all.

Although the tutorials will help beginners, they're not designed for beginners. The first one, for example, has you using the various drawing tools to draw an ant. It teaches you to use the Ellipse tool to draw an oval, then tells you to use the Bezier handles of the Contour Editor to reshape the ellipse. It doesn't, however, teach you anything about Bezier handles, it just assumes you know how use them. To really use them effectively, you'll need to access the manual (chapter three, in case you're looking). Since that's in the same online Help system as the tutorial, you'll probably want to have at least one of them printed off, as mentioned above.

I've decided to make my first film extremely short, something that had actually happened a few years ago. I was in the bathroom. When I touched the faucet to turn on the water, I got a nasty shock. I (eventually) figured out that I was standing barefoot on a power cord that had been chewed through. When I touched the faucet, I completed the circuit. I looked out the bathroom and saw that my pet rabbit Hazel was watching me. Rabbit assassination attempt. Perfect. I had everything I would need to film it: My apartment, a camera, a tripod, and my cast (Hazel and me).

We know you're anxious to go out and start shooting your epic, but before any serious filming starts, you need to figure out just what kind of film you'll be making. In our previous article, we took stock of the hardware and software we'd have available. Now, it's time to take a look at the other resources available and needed. You may know what kind of movie you want to make (horror, sci-fi, comedy), or you may be trying to think of one. Either way, taking stock of your realistically-available resources will help you shape your ideas.

myMovie is a column about going through the process of making a short film (or should they be called "digitals" now?). From the initial idea to the final burn, we will journal our work: the discoveries, the successes and the failures. We'll provide examples of the work we do, and, in the end, hopefully we will have both completed a film by which we're not terribly embarrassed, and we will have helped you along the way.

In part two of my ongoing look at Toon Boom Studio and creating cartoons on the Mac, I dig into the online tutorials and forums for help in getting this project going.

I've reviewed a few animation programs of varying capabilities over the years, the most notable of which is Toon Boom's Toon Boom Studio. Always a pretty cool program, it was also always pretty powerful, and it's one I've wanted to look into beyond my standard review period. To that end, I'll be writing a series of columns about my experiences with the newest release—Toon Boom Studio v3—rather than just write a one-off review. I'll talk about the tutorials, the online help (no manual to speak of), the program's capabilities, and my personal project. Hopefully, you'll get something out of it, as I'm quite sure I will.