Ukoko

I am so excited about the film version of Dave Gibbons’ & Alan Moore’s Watchmen. One of the most influential comics ever when it came out in the eighties, the film adaptation finished principal photoghraphy a few months back and has several more months of post production to go through before it’s release in 2009. There is a scene with a bank of TVs showing footage and commercials (presumably in Ozymandias’ HQ) and the production company are offering fans the chance to fill them with thier own Fan-Generated videos… but first the backstory.

For anyone not familiar with the Watchmen comics / graphic novel, it’s hard to explain what a landmark it was in the evolution of comics and how it’s release helped to move superhero comics away from the juvenile and into a more mature, literate position. Watchmen is a story of aging heroes, failed dreams and masked vigilantes who are no longer wanted by society……. imagine a Mike Leigh version of The Incredibles and you’re mostly there.

Watchmen (and The Dark Knight Returns) both came out in 1986 and practically pinpoint the exact moment when superheroes really started to get character. Until then, character depth was limited to Peter Parker being a bit shy with girls. Alan Moore’s work, like that of his contemporary Frank Miller has been directly responsible for re-defining comic-book and paved the way for the darker, richer film-adaptations we see today. However, unlike Frank Miller, Moore seems to shy away from the cinema remakes, asking for his name to be taken off V for Vendetta, and disassociating himself on more of his creations including The league of Extraordinary Gentleman and the Keanu Reeves led Constantine (a character Moore originally created in Swamp Thing that spun-off into it’s own series).

In addition to the iconic source material, the film of Watchmen is directed by Zack Snyder with production design by Alex McDowell, one of my favourite production designers - I worked for Alex on Breaking and Entering (directed by the late, great Anthony Minghella) and not only is he a gifted Production Designer but a really nice guy too.

But I digress. This is supposed to about the competition, so here’s the links:

the production blog was at:
http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/

some more info at
http://www.youtube.com/watchmenmovie

And the competion rules etc are here:
http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/veidtadvertisingcontest/rules.html

Oh, and Frank Miller’s The Spirit site is here:
http://www.mycityscreams.com/

Just watched a wonderful, refreshing, down to earth presentation by David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals‘ - the people who brought us Basecamp, BackPack, Highrise and that awesome Omnicom spoof site back in the nineties and one of the people behind Ruby on Rails.

As someone brought-up in Essex with a family in the second-hand car trade, my idea of business has always been at odds with the VC backed, buzzword driven valuations   (I mean how can Twitter be worth 75 million USD) and we all have a friend trying to create the next myspace or youtube and giving it away for free ;), this presentation on good business sense is like an affordable photo on GettyImages, a rare and precious thing.

There are no secrets in it, you don’t need to buy the book or subscribe to the service and, in fact, you won’t learn anything that good old common sense won’t tell you. It’s just clear, simple, straightforward old-skool business talk, updated for the digital age. Genius.

Startup School 08

A pair of Docs, DMs, Doc Martens…. immortalised in song by Alexei Sayle, worn with pride by workers, skinheads and Brighton queers, the iconic Doctor Martens have launched a new design competition with the winner going into a limited production run. So many options I just can’t decide what to enter….

Just discovered the awesome WPhone, a plug-in for WordPress which formats your admin nicely on iPhone/iPod Touch. Haven’t given it the full run through yet but seems to have solved a few Ajax hassles I had. Given the sudden rise to dominance of the iPhone as a mobile browser (number 1 in US, number 2 in UK) it’s an excellent complement to ContentRobot’s iWPhone plug-in, which displays the public side of my WordPress blog neatly in an iPhone stylee.

While trying to track down a particular game for a project I have in mind, I found this from Finnish developer Petri Purho - but the site has gone down. For one year Petro a grand plan: to create games in 7 days (12 in a year) and it produced one of the simplest and most beautiful games I’ve ever seen - Crayon Physics Deluxe - reminiscent of the complex mousetrap like drawings some of us drew as kids.

Petro’s tenet that all games should be made “within a 7-day limit, …. made by me alone and test some new form of gameplay” might not be everyone’s cup of salmiakki but it seems to have produced some fantastic results, earned him the respect of his peers and got him nominated for numerous awards - I just wish I could find the games now!

Jaarko Laine did a short interview with Petri Purho in 2007 which gives more detail but the relevant links from there are dead now. Pixelrage a download link, but as I’m Mac based, I’ll have to wait till I’m back in the studio and can borrow a PC to have a go.

Oh well, I’ll have to make do with the highly addictive flash games at the Science Museum’s Launchball site, part of thier Launchpad section, and made by the folks at Preloaded

One of the big disappointments with marketing that incorporates user-generated-content is that it rarely seems to resolve into something worthwhile for the users. Far too often it’s reduced to a competition: “make a film, win a prize” or “send a picture, win a prize”. Hardly imaginative, especially considering that those who regularly conrtute to Flickr/YouTube et al do it to share rather than compete; they are part of a community where the only opinions that count are your friends and peers, not the opinion of a selected-panel-of-judges.

But the Nokia Global Animation project executed by Universal Everything is one of the few exceptions to normal UGC marketing ideas. Nokia Global Animation project is, on the surface, a regular user-generated-content project but what makes it different is it’s inclusive aims, making all contributors part-of something bigger. Every contribution makes small but important difference, and, while I’m sure the images may be moderated, there won’t be one winner or, more importantly, any losers.