Stumbled across this while looking for something else:

That’s the first ever concept sketch of Junior (December 2008). I did have it as a Twitter background for a while until I started getting emails asking me about his metal penis.

Seriously.

The BBC are building a mythology engine. What a great name. Kinda surprised they didn’t call it the iDigger or some such shit:

The R&D Prototyping team has recently built an internal prototype for BBC Vision called the Mythology Engine. It’s a proof-of-concept for a website that represents BBC drama on the web letting you explore our dramas, catch up on story-lines, discover new characters and share what you find.

One to watch this. The iPlayer sounded exciting for a while and then the BBC fumbled the birth/abortion and we ended up with bucketware (they keep emptying it for us).

Doctor Who is the obvious choice for a prototype – if anything it’s too rich a vein to tap. I can see it getting picked apart ruthlessly when they open it to the public, but it’ll be interesting to see how the bells and whistles here stack up against the mostly text driven wikipedia entries. And what happens when they start digging into shows that are less well documented and (hopefully) have a pop at expanding this framework to news. Of course, for this to get really interesting it needs to be bolted on to the actual content itself at the point we consume it.

My real interest here though is fictional archeology. Something I’ve been thinking about since I first started talking iPhone apps with Sleepydog and began working out the backstory of Slingers (I can give you a timeline for the show that runs from 2020 to 2267, but the bit you’re concerned with kicks off in 2263). In fact we now have a couple of physical artifacts from that future’s history:

But I can’t talk about that just now.

All the cool stuff I have currently loaded onto my iPad are surface applications. They allow me to experience media in a handy, shiny format, but they don’t let me dig too deep. If you ever read Warren’s Fell on its original run you’ll have seen he stuffed the thing with back material (preliminary sketches and information on the real world incidents that inspired some of the comic’s content). Now imagine that on an iPad. The Marvel style interface is very cool, but what I’d like to see is a secondary series of gestures that allow me to peel back the panels. I want to see the original art work, the pencil drawings etc, but also the history of the story.

Enhanced editions of novels are doing a wonderful job here too. But so far whether it’s a novel or a TV show the glop attached to the content are secondary to the content itself.

Keep an eye on Blacklight to watch this kind of transmedia evolve. I sat down with them in LA earlier in the year and they have some very cool stuff in the pipeline. And then there’s Jesse Alexander’s Day One.

Though Day One’s prime time adventures are simple and compelling, its mythology is vast and designed to be experienced across multiple media platforms. A new kind of transmedia epic.

We’re getting to the point now where if you watch this kind of stuff on the right device you’ll be able to do the lean back experience as before, but leaning into the device should give you vertigo.

Of course, we still have to get the story telling part right, but thinking about this stuff up front actually helps build a much richer writing experience and you can avoid the kind of post-it note crap that has me reaching for the bottle, mumbling about fucking ‘star whales‘.

JT of MZP has been busy with both Jeannie and Marti. Very, very cool.

Always nice to pull this stuff out in meetings…

UPDATE: Frank and GUN:

This has already done the rounds elsewhere, but just embedding it here for completion’s sake. A few minutes I spent with Sean on the set of the Slingers sizzle.

He was also very happy to do a little extra voice over work for us a few weeks later. Professional and delightful, working with Sean was one of the highlights of last year. Go watch Dog Soldiers again – as Sean said, “It’s still got legs…”

We’re in the April issue of SFX magazine:

Unleash the Clicken to embiggen. And a big hello to all the SFX readers. We’ve had a lot of online love, but I think that may be out first print article outside of the industry trades. Correct me if I’m wrong.

And we have some fan art:

Cheers to Richard and SFX for taking an interest so early on and to Craig over at The Establishing Shot for the above.

Warms the cockles on such a winter’s day.

Check out the Sleepydog blog for a little GUN-love. It is Valentine’s Day after all…

No real meat to talk about this side of the new year, but rest assured that SLINGERS continues to move forwards.

I did remember a video I shot of Sean Pertwee on the set of the sizzle reel (in which he talks about why he thought it’d be a good idea to pitch in with us and a little bit about 2000AD). I’ve now left that in the more than capable hands of Sleepydog HQ. Speaking of which…

I’ve been very lucky to get to play front-of-house during all this interest in SLINGERS (64,000 views!), but every step of the way I’ve been supported by aone of a kind behind the scenes team. Mark Hilton, Neal Clark and Paul Long have put a lot of time and effort into getting our almost-a-TV-show this far and each of them utilises a skill-set I’m utterly lacking. Thanks guys!

So we’ll have that video up soonish and probably on the Sleepydog website.

I did a quick (probably sweary) interview with both Live for Films and Geek Syndicate. And other bits and pieces have continued to pop up all over the web. I’ve had a few more interview requests, but right now it’s just a question of finding the time. Please bear with me if I still owe you email…

SLINGERS aside, I’ve had an interesting few weeks. It’s one thing for people I admire to tell me they love what they’ve seen of the show, but it’s something else when they suggest we work together at some point. My email has been insane and I’ve had some lovely conversations with the great and good out in LA. The first few weeks in January are now scheduled and I’ll be helping get something I’m very excited about (and not allowed to talk about) off the ground before my next flight to LAX.

I think I’m right in saying that AVATAR is here. I was lucky enough to be invited to the world premiere last week and Todd kindly published my review up on Twitch. You can read it here. Because of a silly UK embargo and my intolerance to sleep we managed to get one of the first reviews up. Be interested to see how many people agree with me now it’s been released. I’m off to see it with a real audience on Boxing Day and in IMAX. Can. Hardly. Wait.

Few things in that movie I wanna talk about. Also had a post in draft form on mythology from before the sizzle excitement so will work on that – hopefully before the new CLASH OF THE TITANS gets here.

I’m slowly moving into Christmas mode here in SE1. Been a mad month and there’s been a lot to do and a lot to think about. Now I have a little more time again I’ll slip back into blogging mode I think.

Enough. Go watch the IRON MAN 2 trailer a few more times…

You can’t tell from that photo, but Junior’s smiling*.

Since Warren‘s triple-slap of blog post, tweet and Bad Signal, the sizzle reel up on Vimeo has had some 36,000 views. I haven’t checked with Steve yet to see how much attention his website has had over the last few days, but I think we’re safe in saying our snippet of the SLINGERS universe has had over 50,000 views at this point.

Not too shabby.

We were picked up by Slash Film, Twitch, Topless Robot, i09 and Sci Fi Wire to name five. I tried keeping track of all the blog embeds and comments, but it was slowly turning into a full time job. I’m still wading through email, messages and phone calls. And so far everything has been overwhelmingly supportive.

Ghasts have been flabbered.

I’ll post any news when I have it right here and hope to have some fun stuff up on the Sleepydog website by the end of the week too. In the meantime there’s always Twitter. God help you.

Tomorrow we start moving a little further up the court – I’m guessing we’ll be moving a little faster thanks to everyone reading this.

Bottom line – we’re determined to get this fucker made so it’s a bloody good job we have an audience.

Thank you!

*What? You thought he was CGI?

Ok.

So this has actually been floating on a few industry sites already so it was only a matter of time before it got linked to. Warren Ellis did that today and kindly christened it “Your favourite new TV show“. That, as you can imagine, sparked a little bit of new interest. Stuff like this and John Rogers exclaiming “JESUS. MURPHY” give me faith that we’re on the right track. Thanks guys!

So the version that got linked up was a tad small and only in .mp4 format over on Steve’s website. I’ve had a lot of requests for a more blog-friendly version so here you go:

Comments, email and Twitter chatter is coming in loud and clear. I’ll get back to you all asap, but feel free to embed and chat about the sizzle as you see fit.

This is actually the second sizzle reel for SLINGERS. There’s one that’s a tad longer with a slightly different voice-over from Sean, but this is the one we really like.

It’s directed by Steve Barron and stars Sean Pertwee, Adrian Bower, Tom Mison, Margo Stilley, Haruka Abe, GUN and JUNIOR. The outstanding conceptual design was by Arran and Corran Brownlee. The music is by The Mummers. And yeah I’m the creator/writer/idiot who came up with it. Sleepydog are the guys running the show.

To quickly answer the most obvious question, we’re hoping to shoot the pilot in 2010. We have a few more meetings to get through before that happens, but we’re still heading in the right direction. In fact we’ve had a lot of good news since the last update on here, but I don’t wanna jinx anything just yet.

More stuff when I have it, but as ever I’m overwhelmed for the love SLINGERS seems to generate. We’re doing our very best to make a proper sci fi show and those of you that came here via Warren already have very high expectations that we’ll make every effort to meet. Early support at this stage is not only crucial, it’s a nice reminder of why we we’re doing this.

You all fucking rock.

Had lots of questions about the shot of Junior I revealed a few posts back, but I’m sorry. I can’t show you what happens next. Shush now.

Here’s my completely unrelated VloMo09 entry in which a couple of stunt men get thrown around a little bit:

The gun shot you hear is real. In that we had an armourer firing a real weapon on set. The actual gun you see was last used by Sean Connery.

The weird ass noise before the gunshot is just sound captured on the day, but the music is by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis taken from the movie Milano Trema La Polizia Vuole Giustizia (aka The Violent Professionals aka Rue De La Violence).

Seems I’ve been writing about everything but SLINGERS. Don’t worry – we’re still making a TV show. Couple more meetings happening in LA this week and as always I’m spending a few hours a day dropping the gang into some interesting scrapes via FinalDraft.

But seeing as I’m still waiting for the go ahead to share the finished sizzle reels with a few more people I figure a couple of stills won’t do too much damage.

Here’s Junior facing off against some security chaps:

Guess who wins.

Doubt that gives much away apart from the fact that we’re not filming this in SUPERMARIONATION.

Although I do have a few episodes of Thunderbirds on my iPhone at the moment…