By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 pm Tuesday, May 8
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Rick Dakan sez, "Last fall, Mob Rules Games let voters choose their project, and they picked the turn-based haunted house game, Haunts: The Manse Macabre. The trio of indie developers, Geek Mafia author Rick Dakan, programmer Jonathan Wills, and artist Austin McKinnley have been working on it ever since, with the help of a small outside investment. Haunts is being written in Go and the code is all open source, while the content is licensed under Creative Commons. Mob Rules Games is a Benefit Corporation that is employee-owned and managed. They make all budget, sales, schedule, and investments entirely public. They're running a Kickstarter campaign to raise the final $25,000 they need to finish the game in time for Halloween. You can check out their creepy-fun Kickstarter video to learn more, and learn more about the game and the company.
Haunts: The Manse Macabre
(Thanks, Rick!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:27 pm Tuesday, Mar 20
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Girl Walk is a 77-minute dance film that accompanies Girl Talk's astounding album All Day, produced through an extremely successful Kickstarter project that raised $24,817 out of the $4,800 the producers were seeking. I just watched the first half (it's in a series of segments on Vimeo) and was blown away.
What's the story? A young dancer finds herself disgruntled with her low-paying, mundane waitressing job. One day, she impulsively quits, then takes a ferry to the city. Feeling incredibly inspired by what she sees, Anne dances her way across New York, using the city as her stage. Throughout her journey, she meets characters of all types, including a series of like-minded dancers, who'll inspire new movements, engage her in small battles, and teach her to fear, love, laugh and live anew. From the ferry to museums, subways, ball games, bridges, bodegas, graveyards, flower shops, and more, Anne's journey will bring her far and wide. See the trailer, in full, at http://girlwalkallday.com
Watch the Film | Girl Walk // All Day
(via Waxy)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:21 am Saturday, Aug 13
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Brandon sez, "Earlier this year a friend and I produced a self-financed music video for a song we loved, with permission from the band. After several months work, we posted the video online, where it drew viewers for a week before we unexpectedly received a takedown notice from the band, who were reconsidering the rights usage for that song. Not wanting all of our work to vanish, we decided to turn this setback into a creative opportunity, and created They Call Us /Animals/. We've made the edited visuals of the film, without music, available for download, under Creative Commons license, for musicians, sound designers, and remixers to re-cut, use and share, in the hopes that these collaborations could produce even better works than our original video. I've also made an explanatory video for the project, with music courtesy of NIN's Creative Commons album Ghosts I-IV."
THEY CALL US ANIMALS . COM
(Thanks, Brandon!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:56 am Wednesday, Aug 10
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"Soldering is Easy" is a great comic-book primer on soldering; I field tested it this week at the Vancouver Hackspace's table at SIGGRAPH 2011 and managed to solder up a perfectly passable blinking lights kit with only minor burns for my trouble (a major feat, given a) my general clum, and b) my specific jetlag). It's CC licensed, natch.
Soldering is Easy
