Archive for March, 2008

kings of power 4 billion %

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Almost two years ago I talked about Paul Robertson’s Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, an animated short made in the style of side-scrolling 2D fighter. Now you know that was chock full of ultra-violent awesomeness, but what if I were to tell you that Paul Robertson is back with even more eye candy? Candy that not only brings the same side-scrolling animation and blood, but even more pop culture references, religious references, and a fantastic sound track?

Well, Mr. Robertson has gone and done it. Check out KINGS OF POWER 4 BILLION %! (warning… this really isn’t for the squemish. Yeah, it’s just 2D sprite violence, but it’s pretty gory even for 2D sprites… especially the final battle).

Trailer below.

Editable Google Maps…

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Now that’s interesting. Apparently you can now edit any business entry in Google maps. For example, these guys tried to change the web address of a local Republican Party office to fleshbot.com. Lovely.

To see recent edits, you can go here, but from what I can tell it’s just an unstoppable moving map showing each recent edit in order.

I really have no idea how they plan on stopping vandals from basically ruining their map. Wikipedia does it with a small army of dedicated folks who have good guidelines on how to deal with vandalism. Right now I don’t see anything like that on Google Maps. Guess everyone will have to keep an eye on their address to make sure it’s in the right spot (I already changed mine so that it actually points to my house instead of a block down the road). Businesses especially will have to keep a sharp eye out since anyone can change anything on the map, even the business’ name.

Radiohead and NIN music videos contests…

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Well one of them is a contest anyway.

A few days ago Trent Reznor of NIN got on the YouTube and asked the community to take music from their latest (Creative-Commons licensed) album and make a music video — http://www.youtube.com/ninofficial. They would then take a look, pick some favorites and then present them in a film festival of some sort.

And just today I find out that Radiohead, with Adult Swim and AniBoom.com, want you to do the same thing with their (previously-pay-whatever-the-hell-you-want) new album. Except they want it animated and you have to storyboard it first. But if they like it they’ll pay you to make it — http://www.aniboom.com/radiohead. You’ve got 40 days.

I’d enter them both if I had the time, I’ve downloaded and listened to both albums already and I could certainly think of something. I even story boarded an animated video for “Just” once upon a time. I’m not saying I would win anything, but it would be fun to be able to do something that creative.

Plus it’s just cool for a band like NIN to be encouraging others to build upon their work, to the point that they didn’t even name the tracks so it wouldn’t influence you.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention. Another artist that isn’t really getting a lot of love for releasing his album online is Saul Williams. You may not have heard of him, but you might have heard one of his songs on a recent Nike commercial (which of course seems like a strange pairing if you know anything about that song) or seen him in the indy movie Slam. It’s a mix of hip-hop, poetry, and industrial. Not bad in my opinion, but I think I like his previous self-titled album better.

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust was produced by Trent Reznor and will cost you some money, but it’s DRM free and you can get it in a loseless format.