Fat-Man Collective Fat-Man Collective BLOG

Cloverfield Bootleg

The creator of Lost stays in one night and instead of watching Legally Blonde 2 for the 100th time sticks Blair Witch in the cassette player (he’s retro), ‘ooh’ he says, he’s wee wee scared, hits eject and breathes a sigh of relief. Picking a channel at random Independence Day is nearly over and his adopted parrot JJ has just regurgitated a Godzilla toy he tore from the hands of an infant earlier that day.

‘I’ve had an idea’ says Lost creator and instead of calling Tom Cruise or his local Scientology sect for some kabbalah water he digs out his mobile phone and starts recording next doors house party.

That’s all made up, but Cloverfield, already a viral hit online is not, or actually it is, or is it? I’ve managed to confuse myself, but if you’ve seen the trailer you’ll appreciate this Cloverfield Bootleg, telling the tale of wannabee video pirates.

Who said?..

…design had to be complicated.

Book

How the world spins…

Herewith a wondrous tale, one imagines the creative product of too much euro fizz, euro folk and frog licking (not euro but imported from the Amazon basin).

Video

From the addled brains of MassMarket.

Network Branding

‘I’ve noticed that, by and large, motion graphics students don’t “get” network packaging. Yeah, they love flashy promos all blinged out to catch viewers’ eyeballs amongst a sea of shiny, sparkly movement. But when it comes to celebrating solid network packages, the only fans seem to be the crickets.

Maybe it’s because quality network packaging skews a little more towards graphic design than balls-to-the-wall mograph. Legibility is key. Readers need to actually read and comprehend a slate of shows or a lower-third or a mortise in order for them to be effective. And figurative legibility—how clearly the network’s identity can be “read” across its programming—is even more important, regardless of how unsexy it might be.

A solid example of what I’m talking about is this new package from Leroy and Clarkson for The Biography Channel’s revamped image as simply “Bio.” L&C rock all the graphic design angles: negative space, scale, judicious use of grid systems, repetition, vibrant but not excruciating chromatic contrasts—you get the idea.

The package’s clean lines and snappy animation imbue Bio with a friendly but sophisticated personality—the kind of branding that’s worth big bucks, even if it doesn’t jump right out and demand them.’

(via Motionographer)

mocap

(via newteevee) ‘I’ve never made a video game, but the reality can’t be as much fun as the new online comedy series MoCap, LLC makes it out to be. While MoCap won’t win any acting awards, its cheeky geek humor will definitely entertain, and its refreshing to see production company, Worldwide Biggies, make an actual sit-com and break from the “person, camera, news” format so many other new media studios are doing…’

Ray Harryhausen

They sure don’t do rodent modeling like they used to…

Ole Crazy Vader

It’s Friday, greetings earthlings.

Nice work if you can get it

Nice, the Cote D’Azur 1994, my flat mate had drunk way too much coffee and asked me too meet ‘the Corsican’ at the corner of the Promenade des Anglais. On my way out the coffee fiend finally managed to re-spool the cassette tape, gently eased it into the tape machine and hit play, Led Zeppelin’s epic Kashmir began and we decided we’d try and throw empty bottles of water at ‘the Corsican’ from our balcony and not pay that month’s rent because that’s what the Zepp would do. Never say youth is mis-spent.

Steve Scott
was lucky enough to be asked to create the only animated backdrop at the recent 02 gig. His deco-psychedelic film played on a 28 x 12 meter screen as the band played Kashmir - the only video in the show.

Nice work if you can get it.

Girls don’t like farts

I’ve got a 2 year old daughter, ever since we went on the train to Grandma’s house she’s become hooked on You Tube and already has clear ideas about what she will and will not watch, in no particular order:

1. Big Bird (featuring Diana Ross)

2. Miss Piggy (featuring Big Bird)

3. Spider Man speed painting.

Absolutely positively none of the Teletubbies remixes, no sir, nor any of the Bob The Builder remixes littered with profanities (hilarious!).

As a web zealot I’m torn, to let her watch You Tube and take a risk everytime I click on ‘Bob The Builder’ that it’ll be an original rendering (it’s often not clear) or just concrete up this creative spring a la Jean de Florette?

Never one to let a problem get me down I thought about a You Tube for kids, a safe area online where children up to 10, before they become tweens or Gen Tweenies or Gen Thumbsuckers or I don’t know what, can view video. No, they wouldn’t be uploading their own content which would mostly feature small boys talking to camera and saying ‘girls don’t like farts’, rather it would aggregate the astounding range of video out there, from design studio animations to gunless Manga.

It could even feature my favourite ye olde business plan stalwart, ‘a subscription model’!!!! Kids don’t want ads, I don’t want my kids to consume ads, ad peeps don’t want to be seen to be aiding and abetting kids in consuming ads.

I’d use it, it may even come with a fluffy toy, I may even ask Bob and his butch lady friend Wendy to build it.

Twitter costs $14 billion…

… to businesses in lost productivity! Er, it’s an estimate, more of a guestimate in fact, though it’s not based on fact, it’s based on fac all in fact.

‘Reversing the normal question ‘what are Twitter’s costs’ to ‘what’s the cost of Twitter’ Phelan and Seroussi got out the calculator. Settling on a million Twitter users (based on 750,000 registered users and 60,000 new users a month), they found estimates of 11,000 requests per second being made to Twitter. They further estimate 27 million minutes per day spent on Twitter for the average user, for about 450,000 hours a day or around 13.5 million hours a month. This, coupled with Twitter doubling in size every 6 weeks, means they expect Twitter to cost 30 million hours per month of productivity. This all adds up to $13.5bn in 2008, which, neatly, is Facebook’s estimated value.’

Time to stop twittering and build something daft and useful using the Twitter API…