It’s probably safe to say at this point that I’m something of a fan of Judge Dredd.
Sadly to lots of people that just brings back bad memories of the Sylvester Stallone movie. There’s a new Dredd project gearing up that will hopefully overwrite the last attempt, but you really need to go back to the source to appreciate the impact this guy had on a couple of generations.
So when I saw that @Termight was starting to fabricate actual helmets I was very interested. You may remember I already have some incredibly cool Termight merchandise so even though I’m not a big collector of this kind of thing (or fully understand the need to have a Harry Potter wand in a fucking display case) I knew the finished thing would have had a lot of work put into it. The attention to detail on the badge and buckle are exact so I new something on a larger scale was going to be special. Here’s what happened on Friday morning:
Showing the thing off on Twitter I was immediately christened ‘Old Man Mountain Dredd’ (cheers @stml), but the video and subsequent pics sent a little wave through the 2000AD demographic of my followers. Been a bit busy since then, but here are a few more photos for those of you that don’t think this kind of thing is nuts.
I was in conversation the other day following completion of the Slingers sizzle shoot about why it was we care about the small details of geekery as much as we do. It seemed best summed up with this line:
“Some people visit, but we live in this world. You have Judge Dredd tattooed onto your arm for fuck’s sake…”
Which is a nice way of looking at it. I can’t oversell how big an influence 2000AD has been on me.
Talking to Sean Pertwee over lunch about our mutual love of the British sci fi comic back in the day was something to cherish. That he read the script and immediately recognised the character of GUN as a homage to Rogue Trooper is as key to me as his ‘getting’ the character of Colonel Hall. This stuff is important to me.
Subsequently I opened my iPhone in a bar the other night to find I’d been sent an exclusive peek at some new Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper art work by current 2000AD artist Paul J Holden (thanks Paul!). This week I’ll be talking to Paul about having a bash at some Slingers artwork. It seems apt as back when the thing was called ‘Ratpackers’ it was very much a 2000AD inspired comic book project. And then on Saturday morning I heard this package crash into the hallway:
I’ve been aware of Termight Replicas for a couple of years at least (if memory serves I managed to talk about them on Londonist back in the day) so it was great to see @Termight in my twitter stream. Wakefield got in touch with me a little while ago and the conversation lead to Saturday’s package. The contents?
That’s a Judge Dredd replica belt buckle based I believe on the artwork of Cliff Robinson. Along side it was this:
Now I’ve had a Judge Dredd badge before. They gave one away with Prog 300 back in 1983 and I kept it in fairly good condition up until about five years ago. Not bad for a free gift made out of plastic and gold paint. But this… well this is a serious piece of comics merchandise.
Full disclaimer. I’m not a big collector of this stuff – half the time I’m just simply baffled by the array of comics related collectibles and the price tags attached to them. And nine times out of ten I’m amazed at how poor the attention to detail is. I’m happy for other people to be happy collecting that stuff, but I’m happier knowing that particular bug passed me by.
These two items though are in a different league. First thing you notice is the weight. These guys are not messing around. They even manage to kick the ass of non comic fans. The detail is brilliant and they’ve immediately both become prize possessions.
But if you have even a passing interest in 2000AD you are going to want something from Wakefield. Turns out he doesn’t do this for a living – he’s just a fan like you and me. I guess the easiest way to say it is that he lives in our world.
Go throw money at him – what you get in return is something you can’t buy anywhere else.
Wandering around town after the Wordia press launch last week with Christian I was encouraged to pick up a an iPhone. Already had some well deserved grief over this one, but Jess came to my rescue (as usual) and co-opted the shiny little bastard as a belated birthday present. Now I can whip it out in public and deflect the “I thought you said the iPhone was a piece of crap?” comments with the my girlfriend bought it for me clause.
Less than a week old, but yeah it’s crappy in all the areas I expected:
battery life is terrible, most of the applications come from the same fuckwit funnel as the crap on Facebook, the camera is so-so and it cries out for a second camera and video capibility, then fails as an iPod replacement too due to the meager 8 or 16GB capacity.
Pushing all that aside and treating it as an extra gadget to throw in my bag it’s a lot of fun. Some of the apps are great, the screen is shockingly bright compared to my Archos and because this is the PAYG version I’m not tied to anyone for 18months. Having 3g means I can find more than enough uses for it to start bitching about the lack of a decent battery at least once a day.
I hear a rumour there’s a 32GB version on the way, which would at least bring it into line with the iPod Touch (we also have one of those in the house now – thin little fucks), but the 16GB one I have should do fine as I’m not really using it as an Archos replacement. I’ll probably hang on to my Viewty for the 120fps recording facility alone so I’m now one of those idiots with two phones.
I’m beta testing the new upgrade to LifeCast too so I will be using it as a blogging tool from time to time. As a pocket version of Twitter it’s exceptional (I use a Twinkle, Twittervision and Twitterific combo). I’ve also downloaded a handful of Japanese comic apps that are utilising the interface in an interesting way.
More on all this once I’ve got used to the thing, dropped it or thrown it against the wall…
I love the tiny window this gives you. It’s still not quite the video equivalent of Twitter, but it could get there once people find a way to @ one another and follow the conversations. Not that I think that’s a priority. Right now it’s just fun to see what can be achieved in such a confined space. Christian as always is way out ahead:
When I logged on for the first time it was a little like a video conversation yearbook. All the familiar faces where there already. I noticed that while most people were faltering with the built in limitations of the platform Christian was already on his 8th page of videos! I mentioned this to Jess and her reply was:
He’s like Monkey: irrepressible!
It’s not a bad comparison. He’s a little wayward at times, but makes for an excellent ambassador. If I was starting any video related platform I’d ensure he had an invite from day one. He brings an audience and certainly puts a new place through its paces.
This website follows Bryony as she attempts to make the world’s first UGC zombie movie.
What’s a UGC movie?
UGC stands for User Generated Content. That means it’s a film that’s made entirely by contributions from the online community…
So what’s the BBC’s involvement?
The Zombie movie is entirely up to Bryony – we’re just following her as she makes it…
The Beeb are actually doing a bit more than that. By choosing to follow the project and committing to having a documentary by the end of it the BBC are in many ways legitimatising what Paperlillies is up to. At least in the eyes of BBC viewers who think YouTube is nothing but a place to watch old episodes of Doctor Who or ‘that video with the monkey’ (take your pick).
It’s an interesting step for a channel like BBC 3 and I think the correct one. Just recently I watched Adam Buxton’s MeeBOX and while I’ve always enjoyed his work and he’s obviously very in tune with the Internet this came across as a tad dated and way too obvious. Disturbingly he also suddenly looks a lot like Documentally.
The other show that promised to play in the world I live and work in was Delta Forever:
This was a pilot for a proposed show about an online community whose lives revolve around a very Harry Potterish series of novels. Some things the pilot got absolutely right (the Scottish character defending the original title of the first novel over the bastardised American version rang some serious bells for this Dark Materials fanboy), but the most obvious failure was the idea that these kids needed a visual cue to help them stand out as Internet nerds. The cast had to suffer a tedious amount of OTT makeup. Horrible to watch, which was a shame for the few good performances that got buried. But there was something there that to me at least warranted further viewing and I’d be interested to watch the concept develop if it gets picked up for a series.
That may of course have more to do with the pilot revolving around an advance geek screening of a film that the fans will either love or loathe. Something I have a certain familiarity with…
The zombie project though is an entirely fresher idea. First and foremost this is a project developed by an already popular online community member and something that was set in motion before the Beeb swung a beam on it. I think an organisation as big and respected as the BBC getting involved at this stage of an online madcap idea is very important and the payoff for everyone involved is accumulative.
There is of course the danger that if handled improperly the YouTubers will come off as a little irregular, but to survive on YouTube you need to be pretty thick-skinned so I’m not too worried with that angle. It should be win-win for the Beeb as this kind of thing makes them look web savvy at a time when they need a leg-up in that area. The worry is that they’ll cut corners on this in the way they have with the iPlayer (great concept, horrible realisation – note the two show links above now have nowhere to go which will now instead send you straight for a torrent).
What they could have on their hands is something as vital as say the upcoming We Are Wizards or at the very least an interesting companion piece to it. It also comes at a time when Joss Whedon is putting a fork in this space too.
Oddly enough this seems to be the summer for home-made zombie projects. I’ve been made aware of a small pile of them currently in production with budgets ranging from the very modest to the very respectable. This however is by far the most interesting. The plot for once is the least of my concerns as I’m far more interested in how a community comes together to pull this kind of project off.
It’s the kind of thing that was talked about a lot in the early days of Seesmic but it came to nothing. While some of my more succesful recent projects have been built in a similar way by finding the right people with the right skills in my own social media backyard (which handily stretches across the globe), but nothing quite on this scale.
Getting the right people together to land an interview with Stephen Spielberg is one thing. Beating him at his own game is quite another…
Toby Moore’s Cool Curve presentation is now online:
This is the presentation he gave both at the Tuttle and Reboot from an original concept worked out with David Terrar and David Tebbutt. The video is a cleaned-up version of this talk, but now filmed (properly) by Laura Kidd, further tweaked and distributed just about everywhere by Phil Cambell.
The content of the presentation has been refined through lots of feedback, but this is the first chance to put it in front of as wide an audience as possible.
I’ve been hanging out with the Cool Curve for a couple of months now, testing it on people, catching reactions to it and generally building up a picture of what it covers and where it still needs a little TLC. I’m very interested to track the feedback on this so if you can free up 20 minutes and a coffee please give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
At 19+ minutes it obviously needs editing down and I also think there’s a couple of natural pauses in the flow that will allow us to split the presentation up. The latter part regarding Chris Brogan’s “conversations are rivers” and how that should be developed feels like it’s going to grow into something that works as a stand alone piece. I’d love to see The Cool Curve refined a little more and given to the guys at Common Craft to play with.
That said, I’m a big fan of Toby’s drawing over powerpoint style and this makes a great jumping off point for conversation.
When I first started talking to DT and Sleepydog about the Cool Curve I was immediately struck by how my own creative (and not so creative) endeavours fitted within the structure. That’s something I want to discuss further as I’m not usually comfortable being pigeon-holed between two axis, but this is such a resilient little idea that it’s hard to dismiss, even for a contrary SOB like myself.
More to come once the video has been digested a little further… (it’s also up on Google Video and Vimeo)
A couple of weeks after mentioning The Flip I finally got my grubby little hands on one. I went to the European launch this evening and came out with one for free (and a lot of beer mats). Nice little event. No hard sell, great venue (The Soho Hotel) and free food and drink. I would have been impressed if they hadn’t thrown free cameras at everyone…
I did a short(ish) unboxing video:
And had a conversation about the thing on Seesmic and Twitter. I also threw some FLIP video up on YouTube. You can see it here, but the built in software (and by built in I actually mean built into the device which is handy) seems to have over compressed the video. The sound especially is weird. I just reviewed the raw file in fullscreen and its actually very impressive considering the price of the camera.
I’ll take it along to tomorrow’s Tuttle if anyone wants to have a play with it.
I’ll be writing more about it and have some very particular ideas in mind in how to use it, but for now I need a coffee and am weirded out by using a white Macbook (mine is in for repair at the Apple store).
Once I get all my kit back I’ll really put the thing through its paces, but for now I’m quietly impressed.
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