Law & Order: Grand Theft Auto
No, not really, but this promotional image might be an example of reverse “uncanny valley.” Is Law & Order: Los Angeles a spin-off a tired TV procedural or an ultra-violent video game? It’s hard to tell:
PNCA Hand-Drawn Animation Class for Teens
Yep, analog as opposed to digital, sketching not clicking, specifically for illustrators who are 13-, 14- or 15-years old. Neophytes and semi-experienced amateurs welcome.
The class functions as somewhat of a time machine, transporting those born in the mid-1990s back to the era of hand-drawn animation and storyboarding. In other words, Adobe Flash, After Effects, Premiere and Illustrator (et al.) not welcome.
The class meets Saturday mornings in October and November. More details: http://pnca.edu/programs/ce/
If the 2010 Pakistan Flood Had Hit Portland Instead
The BBC microsite How Big Really? has created an application to put the size of this disaster into geographic context relative to anywhere else in the world. Had this massive disaster hit Portland, the affected area would’ve stretched from the Bay Area nearly to Calgary, Alberta:
I don’t know which relief charity is best, but please make a donation of any kind however you can. This might be the worst catastrophe of our lifetimes, including this year’s Haitian earthquake or even the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Hurricane Katrina was a light shower compared to this. The number of deceased and displaced children is an unfathomable tragedy.
Portland Commodore Users Group
Yes, this exists. And why the hell not? For those born in the early-to-mid-1970s, the Commodore served as the “gateway drug” to basic (literally BASIC) computer programming and digital graphic design, whether it was the classic Commodore 64, 128, VIC-20 or even the (premium) Amiga.
At the height of the brand’s popularity, a Commodore was the only personal computer in millions of American homes. It was an actual computer like Tandy’s TRS-80 rather than a game console like the Atari 2600. With a Commodore you could teach yourself how to create your own rudimentary programs and graphics. Further you could save them to magnetic tapes, 5.25″ floppy disks and, eventually, 3.5″ disks and come back to them later, adding more complexity as you honed your programming skills.
Or one could go to the Walgreens, buy a company of RUN magazine, and spend hours upon hours entering machine code to create a simple game you wouldn’t pay 25 cents to play at an arcade. God help you if made typos in the process. Debugging was immensely tedious, to say the least.
Despite the limitations of the operating system developers were able to recreate passable facsimiles of arcade and console games from Bally, Namco, Nintendo and Atari. But the real genius went into the original game programming produced and published by companies like Epyx, Interplay, Accolade and Electronic Arts. The quality of the graphics and music was revelatory. The entertainment value was immense—in the context of the 1980s, especially—and the games could be replayed hundreds of times. Long before teenagers squared off in Madden contests over the internet, kids gathered in suburban basements to play all-night tournaments of the game de jour.
A player could wander the dungeons of the “Temple of Apshai” dozens of times, set the game aside for a few months or even a year, then return to rediscover all the old tricks and traps and techniques and…
…anyway, the group meets the 2nd Thursday of every month. And the gatherings aren’t just about nostalgia for long-gone cartridges and joysticks; they are about learning how to develop applications in a “dead language” like BASIC: the challenge of creating something unique and engaging with only 16 colors and 65,536 bytes of RAM to work with.
For more details, visit http://pdxcug.org/. They’re on Twitter, too: @pdxcug
Fisher Communications Centennial Interactive Flash Timeline
Upon their 100th anniversary, Fisher Communications—owners of Portland ABC affiliate KATU—has created a microsite with an interactive Flash timeline highlighting the company’s accomplishments.
It’s an interesting design, similar to the Oregon Baseball History piece that we created several years ago. Two notes: one, there is way too much copy in the Events column. Either cutting down on the content or including a scrollbar would’ve been good for the user interface (UI).
And second, the anniversary logo could be improved by omitting the years. Given the black background, the dates become imbued with funereal significance, as if to mourn the passing of a beloved public figure. Subtracting 100 from 2010 is pretty easy math for most people to do. The word “century”—instantly impressive—is sandwiched and buried. Make it bigger and give it room to breathe.
“Celebrating a Century” might be a better tagline: “service” and “innovation” are buzzwords that many, many businesses try to co-opt as their own distinguishing characteristics. These terms have lost any value they once held. Push them down into body copy or drop them altogether.
The iStockphoto Royalties Mess and Links of the Week
- If you’ve got an iStockphoto account—buyer and/or contributor—you may want to browse through the massive, deeply emotional threads on the proposed changes to the iStock royalty model: a new concept called “redeemed credits.” A strong majority of contributors are quite mad and not without reason. The changes constitute a pay cut and, more vaguely, evidence that high revenue targets on iStock are being imposed by Seattle-based Getty Images and their parent company Hellman & Friedman (their web site is more than a bit dated).
- There are quite a few other changes coming to iStockphoto, including the news that Vetta collection images will now be sold on the Getty Images site. And yet another premium collection—Agency—will soon be part of iStock. Artists will be personally selected to contribute to Agency. Add it to Vetta, iStock Exclusive, the regular files and the partnership program/dollar images and the iStock collection has become much more complex than it was just 18 months ago.
- CNET has a very good summary of the iStock kerfuffle and what it might mean for the future of crowd-sourcing.
- Despite of that, microstock life goes on. Cosmonaut’s image of Interstate 5 in Portland at dusk was accepted into Getty’s Photodisc collection. And it’s never too soon to get Christmas-themed stock photography up to iStockphoto for sale.
- Spammers are already finding ways to exploit HTML5.
- Submissions to the Pixel Awards are due by the end of September.
- From Pennsylvania, perhaps the funniest headline ever.
- Personal Life, the latest album from Portland group The Thermals, was released last week.
Rite Aid: With Us, It’s Personal… and Fattening
Yes, that’s actually their horrible tagline (sans the “fattening”), dreamt up by a creative director who watches too many procedurals on CBS. Nobody considered that this tagline comes across as threatening rather than reassuring? It conjures up Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood more than it does a matronly pharmacist who knows your name before inspecting your driver’s license.
In any event, it seems that Rite Aid’s personal commitment is to making or keeping you overweight. Why else would they offer Wellness+ Rewards card deals like these:
We spotted this over Labor Day Weekend at the Rite Aid at North Lombard and Denver. We didn’t check to see if there were similar discounts on marshmallow peeps or cases of Coors.
Stock Photo Featured During Opening Video Montage at Microsoft Directions Conference
A bit of old news. From October 29, 2006:
A stock photography image taken by Daniel Deitschel, “Execute,” was used in the opening 7-minute video of the Directions 2006 conference in Atlanta, an event sponsored by Microsoft. The conference, themed “Riding the Wave,” had over 500 attendees.
Please Don’t Call It a “Base Brawl:” the Nationals and Marlins Tumble for You
I haven’t checked Google Trends but I imagine the phrase “base brawl” is blowing up on the heels of the last night’s Washington Nationals-Florida Marlins scuffle. It’s one of the lamer puns used in sports journalism. Not that “diamond dust-up,” “slugfest” or “bean-ball wars” are necessarily any better.
If nothing else the video is worth watching for Gaby Sanchez’s spectacular clothesline on Nyjer Morgan, trying to protect Marlins pitcher Chris Volstad. Apparently, unwritten rules about stealing bases when trailing by 10 runs still matter to today’s players.
Monday Morning Photosnark: Jimmy Fallon Hosts Primetime Emmy Awards
Photosnark caption possibilities, including a double dose of “The Simpsons” references:
- Ruff, ruff. I’m Poochie the Rockin’ Dog!
- I’m Jimmy Fallon and, Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Poplowski of Hazel Green, Wisconsin, I’m here to rock your sensibilities in an outrageous but completely non-threatening manner. Don’t let the sunglasses scare you. I’ll have your daughter back before 11:00. Or will I? Yes, I will. Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. No, sir, I don’t wear the sunglasses when I drive at night. Um, is Becky ready to go yet?
- What is hell is this thing in my right hand? I’ve never seen one of these before.
- This promotional photo is the 132th reason ?uestlove regrets joining “Late Night.” And forming the Roots. And having been born.
- Todd Flanders: “Is he killing that guitar, Daddy?” Ned Flanders: “Yes, son.”
Photo credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBC
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