Archive for August, 2008

17
Aug

Who Will Be Watching the Watchmen?

By Puck 2 Comments
Categories: Movies

Me!  And lots of other people, probably!

This trailer has been out for quite a while but I haven’t posted it.  Why?  I don’t know, because it looks incredible!

For those who aren’t familiar with Watchmen, it’s a comic book by Alan Moore spanning 12 issues.  It came out out in the mid-80s and is seen as a turning point in the comic book industry.  It’s set in an alternate-1985, where costumed heroes have changed the course of history.  These heroes are based on existing archetypes, so yes, that guy does look like Batman, but he’s called “Nite Owl” and is a cross between DC’s Batman and then-Charlton Comics’ “Blue Beetle”.  (The new Blue Beetle comic from DC is excellent!)

The comic contains many flashbacks to the different ages of superheroes, side-stories, subtext, the psychology of being a costumed hero — it’s a complete deconstruction of the superhero genre and it’s brilliant.

I first read Watchmen back in the early 90s, after being loaned the collected graphic novel by Brad Stewart.  Back then I was a power-fantasy superhero fan, and I have to admit that I didn’t really “get” Watchmen on my first read.  It was just too different from what I expected in a superhero comic book, and I didn’t understand that the art style was purposefully old-fashioned.  I told Brad “it was ok” and he looked at me like I was crazy.  Back then I wanted awesome art and straightforward stories, I admit.

Years later after my comic tastes had expanded — and I had grown up a bit – I read it again and was blown away.  It’s so information-dense that I’ve read it several times since and pick up more on each reading.

So here comes the movie, which Watchmen’s Alan Moore has washed his hands of because of bad experiences with movie studios in the past, and a belief that movies simply can’t tell stories like comic books.  But director Zack Snyder, who directed the super-faithful ‘300′ has been doing the sme for Watchmen, and from the looks of that trailer he’s pulled it off.

Recently he let Kevin Smith watch it.  His reaction?  “It’s fucking astounding!”

“I saw Watchmen. It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching Sin City on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching Watchmen. Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.”

07
Aug

Warner Music dinosaur’s death throes

By Puck 2 Comments
Categories: P2P and Rant

Warner Music says music video games must pay more.  Apparently they signed deals that were acceptable but now think they should get even more.

Rock Band tracks cost around $2 each, which doesn’t include the ability to actually just listen to the song on my iPod or stereo.  They do have the value — added from Harmonix and NOT the music industry – of the individual tracks prepared for playing, as well as animations and audience members.

The music industry can go to hell.  They’re a cartel and not needed any more.  Their practices are ruining what should be a creative free market, one ruled by the content creators not by the conglomerates who pay for studio time.

Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner can go fuck himself.  Here’s hoping Harmonix basically tells him that and let his artists NOT get any promotion for their tracks because they weren’t included in the game.

Bands:  stop signing record deals!  You don’t need them any more and you’ll make more money publishing your own music online because it goes to you, not all to your record company who then decided that they spent another million on promotion which comes out of YOUR share.

Making money off of music when signing a deal with one of these asshole-filled companies is like playing the lottery.  Only the very, very lucky end up making enough money to have a career.  But if you publish and promote yourself — easy to do online these days — you can make a decent amount of money with little cost and little risk.

05
Aug

Avatars

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Avatars

I make a lot of avatars for forums and figured I’d share them here.  I try to keep them to 150×150 and less than 50kb, though some had to be much bigger.

If you’re going to use these please find your own hosting — my site is not an image repository for you.  If you don’t follow this request I may replace these images with something incredibly embarrassing, or turn off remote linking altogether.

Venture Bros.
       

Dr. Horrible

This one’s quite large because of the high number of frames and stuff changing.

Assorted
     

Update:  This post got me looking through my old avatars, most of which are smaller than today’s default and got me off my butt to update my favorite avatar, “Hobbes Club”.  Here’s the original, in the old 80×80 format.  The font isn’t right because a more comic-book font isn’t legible at this small size.

Additionally, Watterson’s word balloons have much more white space and are far less perfectly shaped than this.  I took the time to get this all right in the new 150×150 icon, with a better font (though I couldn’t find a recreation of Watterson’s own) a proper word balloon and even a more ragged outline.

And another bonus, here’s House, bored.


Someone else did the original creation, but it had entire-frame animation and needless extra frames.  I can’t find the original file, but it was in the multi-megabytes, probably around 4MB. I got it down to 171k!