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I am going to go on an extended non-blogging break.
If you’re following along on Twitter, you haven’t missed this good stuff:
Despair’s latest vividly demonstrates awesome longer-form storytelling via video (here you go, Mr. Eisner), parts 1 and 2;
Ask A Ninja isn’t shy about anything talking web video;
Rooster Teeth has launched Red Vs Blue: Reconstruction;
Laughing Squid […]
You can say many things about the gang at Rooster Teeth. They own their medium. They’re funny. They’re continuously experimenting with new forms and permutations (Grifball!) And many more.
But they’re also just overkillers in the best way. They invest their DVDs not only with the classic Red vs Blue content, but with so much of the unrelenting absurdity that is their signature. So when they release the DVD BOXED SET of ALL 5 Seasons of RVB on 5 DVDs at $69, you’re already getting an enormous value. (The DVDs individually retail for $20) And each of those DVDs were packed with all the outtakes, missing scenes, bonus foo and so on.
But with this new boxed set they’ve now created 2 MORE hours of behind the scenes material, “making of” documentaries and all sorts of other stuff. So six DVDs for seventy bucks, it’s like $50 off. Plus you get the awesome black/blue and red all over double-box to carry them in.
We hope to have a more extensive writeup soon. (we still have to watch through all this stuff!)
Arguably one of the most influential working t-shirt designers today, Glenn Jones, has launched his own t-shirt company, Glennz Tees. If you’ve spent much time in the t-shirt world, you already know his work. He’s won more Threadless contests than anyone. He combines a richly-colored, insanely detailed illustrative style with a laugh-out loud funny visual gag.
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The death of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax earlier this week wasn’t just a loss for gamers and fantasy fans, but for creative types and undependents all over the world. Some of the web’s best and brightest undependents have been remembering the role-playing game titan as only they can.
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According to some highly-regarded scholars of the intersection of music and popular culture (by which I mean, whoever wrote the first entry that came up after my hasty Google search), David Lee Roth once said that the reason most music critics love Elvis Costello is because most music critics look like Elvis Costello. (For those who have never really gotten over the nerd vs. jock tensions in high school — Hi! I’m Mike! — it should be pointed out that Costello later got nominated for an Oscar and commissioned by the Danish Royal Opera, while Roth is now doing this.)
The point is — or should be — the relative acceptability of nerdiness is a somewhat recent phenomenon, and the Internet is helping the bespectacled and pallid among us finally convince the world that knowledge is actually pretty cool. There’s a whole slew of webcomics out there celebrating, and not apologizing for, their creators’ love of periodic tables, quadratic equations, obscure art history, and all other kinds of fancy-pants book-learnin’. Here’s two of them:
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Happy Valentine’s Day (sorta) from the Undies:
- College Humor offers holiday cards.
- Diesel Sweeties, too, has cards aplenty.
- Despair has BitterSweets Candies and a heart-shaped card that you can personalize with one or three hearts.
- JibJab has tons of themed Sendables waiting for you to make them your own.
- Perhaps sensing all of the above, Indexed commented on the (possibly rampant, at least among the Undies) anti-Valentine’s sentiment.
Enjoy.
Micropersuasion.com’s Steve Rubel recently described the revolution underway as (i.) content production and distribution explodes and (ii.) creators bypass intermediaries to go direct. Providing an apt metaphor, he called for Digital Curators to help audiences discover, experience, and understand the best “finds” within this ever-increasing flow of content.
Nice call, Steve. Thank you.
We help audiences (all of us) find, follow, and enjoy the best work from the emerging class of self-sustaining Internet-based artists, aka the Undependents or Undies, who are telling amazing stories within podcasts, video, webcomics, machinima, animation, etc.
As curators, we feature these programs:
- Undependent.com, which focuses on success stories, trends, insights, and practical advice.
- The Undependent Del.icio.us feed, compiling excellent reference material and news;
- The Undependent Twitter feed, a quick spotlight on great new content, merch, and news;
- The Undependent Universe, our living museum showcasing the best Undies. (Thanks, Netvibes).
The Undependent Universe’s Collection continues to grow. It currently includes the following, in no particular order (visit the site for links):
- Webcomics: The Perry Bible Fellowship; Girl Genius; PvP; Starslip Crisis; Sheldon; Evil, Inc.; Piled Higher and Deeper; Wondermark; Unshelved; Dinosaur Comics; xkcd; A Softer World; Cat and Girl; Dresden Codak; AppleGeeks; Ctrl+Alt+Del; User Friendly; White Ninja Comics; and Octopus Pie.
- The Drumbrella Exhibit: Boy on a Stick and Slither; explodingdog; The Creatures in My Head; Diesel Sweeties; Overcompensating; Scary Go Round; Goats; Wigu; as well as RSS feeds from the creators;
- The Achewood Exhibit: featuring all character blogs;
- Videos/shows: Funny or Die; College Humor; The Onion; Heavy.com.
- Others: Penny Arcade; Rooster Teeth Productions; Angry Alien Productions; JibJab; Despair, Inc.; Ask A Ninja; Smosh; Homestar Runner; Those Lil’ Rabbits; Tiki Bar TV; Engrish.com.
- How To’s and News: Fleen; Webcomics Weekly; Comixtalk; Cold Hard Flash; NewTeeVee; Halfpixel; Web TV Wire; Thinking Machinima; Digital Strips.
- Rotating special exhibits highlighting great stuff, and much more!
We hope our programs help you enjoy the Undies more easily and regularly. We live in such an exciting time, eh? Creative expression flourishes, and newly empowered creators keep inventing more ways to delight their fans.
Thanks again, Steve, for your great post and ongoing work. And thanks, too, to all the Undies and especially all the fans who support them. Without you, this revolution doesn’t happen.
Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman calls webcomic Achewood (which is, perhaps, the best comic strip in American history) the best graphic novel of the year, noting “(i)t’s not a graphic novel in every, or maybe any, traditional sense, since its primary venue is the Web, but Achewood is so profoundly genius it would be a crime to put it anywhere but on this list, and at the top of it.” (more…)
While there is no shortage of interest in the album cover medium, there’s no obvious web page out dedicated to the world’s first record cover. I’m apparently I’m not the only one looking for it (See: “Anyone have a scan?“) I’ve seen scattered images from articles about Steinweiss but I’ve not found anything resembling a Shrine.
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Tiki Bar TV’s Lala Fastwaster now has a pinup calendar. Artfully rendered by Vancouver visual effects artist and increasingly-popular pinup illustrator Kevin Genzel (thethirdsequence.com) this calendar achieves a lot more than meets the eye. For thousands of Internet Geeks, saying “Lala Pinup Calendar?!” will doubtless be more than enough to capture credit card numbers. But this hits a trifecta, well, ok, maybe a quadfecta.
- “Lala Pinup?!” - Understood
- Direct Function - By actually providing real utility, it increases the impulse purchase likelihood because “Hey, I need a calendar anyway…”
- Shibboleth - Tiki Bar TV now offers another product that lets fans identify themselves as “in the Tiki Bar TV Fan Club”
- Brand Deepening - The genuinely authentic rendering of these illustrations itself reinforces the cool retro vibe which spans other Tiki Bar TV elements.
All these elements together just deepen and expand the Tiki Bar TV brand. We’ve already mentioned their truly awesome original Charooba Mug here. Charooba is the Tiki Bar TV mascot made into an actual Tiki Mug. (A coffee table book that ITSELF becomes a coffee table!) This wicked, green glazed creature is a must own for any serious fan of the show and anyone who calls themselves a Tiki Collector. Buy them both and be done with it.
