Slashdot Mirror
Online Epic to Release Penultimate Episode
Brokensaint writes "The award-winning 3-year epic 'Broken Saints' is preparing to launch it's 23rd installment in its cult hit saga. Winner of the Sundance Online Film Festival Audience Award for Animation, 'Broken Saints' contains over 10 hours of original flash storytelling in 'cinematic literature' format (think animated comic). Having been seen by over 2 million people worldwide, this free web project will be launching the penultimate episode in the series next week, and will close out its run with a 1 hour finale in June.
'Broken Saints' follows the paths of four protagonists from different cultures that receive an ominous vision of the future - a vision that is somehow tied to the launching of a global telecommunications network. One of the main characters - the Muslim mercenary Oran - was created as a direct protest of the continued sanctions against the nation of Iraq. His role in the story chillingly mirrors the direction of current global events.
The 3-person team from North Vancouver, Canada hopes to release a tradition graphic novel and DVD box set of the series by Christmas 2003. They are also in talks with production companies ranging from HBO to the Sci-Fi Network to do a mini-series adaptation of the epic.
If you want to help the lads chip away at their mounting bandwidth bills, please consider dropping a dime in their kitty."
That's one long story blurb for the front page of Slashdot...
I love Broken Saints, it's one of the best WORKING examples of using the web to deliver dramatic media.
They're utterly deserving of whatever graphic Slashdot brings to the site.
However, I don't think "Penultimate Episode About to Be Release Soon, But Not Yet!" is "news", even in the Slashdot sense.
As a link, cool. The press-release feel of the post is kind of silly, though.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Seriously, that is the biggest description I've seen in the 5-6 years I've been reading slashdot. Reminds me about Katz; just keeps going, and going...
Speaking of The Man Everyone Loves to Hate, the King Of Pontification...where is the guy? We haven't heard a peep from him in ages(not that this is a bad thing, actually.)
Please help metamoderate.
Enough with the anime -- why don't you just start pushing methamphetamines on us nerds instead? You'd make a lot more money that way.
evil adrian
You are aware, of course, that their bandwidth problems will be exacerbated by your slashdot posting?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm partial to Ninjai for my Flash Drama...
But alas they also Suffer from bandwith Costs and keep taking thier episodes offline.
I didnt link as to not drive up thier BW Costs, You can find them if you are so inclined to look them up
moo.
Ok, ok, I know it's petty of me -
But how often do hype the next to last episode? Not very. I suspect that is was copied in the headline from the text simply because penultimate is such a cool word. And very rarely means what people think it does. (Although to be it was used correctly in the write-up).
Clearly I have nothing else to bitch about right now.
If you want to help the lads chip away at their mounting bandwidth bills, please consider dropping a dime in their kitty.
:)
/humor
humor
Also, please consider helping by not posting a link to their site on Slashdot for crying out loud.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
I thought that *was* the episode!
Yup, pretty good. Surprised it hasn't been talked about much on /.
-Sean
"One of the main characters - the Muslim mercenary Oran - was created as a direct protest of the continued sanctions against the nation of Iraq. His role in the story chillingly mirrors the direction of current global events."
So, you mean now he's jumping up and down, cheering, waving an American flag, and chanting "Bush! Bush! Bush!"?
Speaking of weird movies geeks may like, here's my rather detailed review of Donnie Darko.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Didn't RealBasic used to be multi-platform? Perhaps I'm thinking of something else.
How long is the story from the beginning?
Perhaps I'm not fully investigating this (I haven't seen it yet, but will tomorrow when I won't wake people up) but isn't this a bit like the Footage in Gibson's Pattern Recognition?
Uninformed artists unite! Political messages other than universal messages ("be nice to everyone", "love is good" etc.) are a classic sign of poor storytelling. Good storytelling (if it has messages at all) has "universal messages" that can be appreciated after the lifetime of the project. The fact it is dated before it's even out is just a testament to poor judgment.
Interesting fact, a musical number "The Jitterbug" was cut from the Wizard of Oz because the directors didn't want to date the film, they *hoped* it would be profitable for 10 years... Could you imagine how much less esteem the Wizard of Oz would be held in if they jitterbugged in it? (imagine someone doing a fad dance in the movie like "the bird" or "the cabbage patch")
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
...'cinematic literature' format (think animated comic).
I remember back in the day when we used to call these 'cartoons'. Maybe we should all read a little less of Wired magazine?
I have the anime category checked so I don't have too see any of this crap, please put all anime submission under the anime category..
Holy shit, someone used the word "penultimate" properly! On
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I feel so left out. Why didn't anybody call me??
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
A word-count limit on the size of post summaries would be nice.
That site is so funny, 99% of the posts are trolls! I love it!
Yuck. Ok, maybe I don't know how to control flash properly, but is it even possible to pause, or jump around, in a flash animation? If I'm going to be watching a half hour episode of a long series of animated featurettes, I want to be able to pause them when the phone rings. Or, missing that, I want to be able to quickly and easily jump around the animation with an easy to use slide bar (or some equivalent).
Expecting me to sit still for thirty minutes without these options is something that I'm not willing to tolerate for the sake of an anti-war cartoon series.
Now, short animations in flash are fine. Anything longer than five minutes really needs to make the transition out into another format. Give me mpeg, give me avi, give me divx, give me quicktime... give me ANYTHING that I can pause.
Does this bother anyone else? Am I missing an easy way to jump around in flash?
--
RumorsDaily
You said his name three times! Are you insane?
I'd sleep in aluminum body armor tonight if I were you.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
What part of "The 3-person team from North Vancouver, Canada" did you not read? Anime, in the terms commonly used by American fanboys, refers to Japanese Animation. This is hardly Japanese; hell, it's hardly even Anime-styled.
Perhaps slashdot should create a generic "animation" catagory so all you people who whine about anything that might be anime don't have to see stories like this.
Broken Saints is all fine and good, but when is the next episode of Ninjai coming out?
they chose to create a character for THAT reason
instead of creating one as a direct protest to the
brutal treatment the dictator of Iraq subjected
his people to, while spending the countries oil
wealth money on things for his own pleasure
(including the torture and murder of Iraqies).
It sure shows where their priorities are, and
for that matter how out of whack with reality
they are. Loons... Screw 'em!
"One of the main characters - the Muslim mercenary Oran - was created as a direct protest of the continued sanctions against the nation of Iraq."
Since Brokensaint isn't a slashdot user, I guess the article author will remain anonymous. It's hard to tell whether their intentions were good or bad; I pulled down 131mb of zipped episodes (1-22, plus trailer) from http://bs.brokensaints.com/av/downloads/ just now, and so in a sense I guess that's a bit of bandwidth hurt.
It seems kind of odd that the second-to-last episode, and not any of the others (like, say, the first) would merit a Slashdotting, but really now is a good time since there's more to see--better late than never.
But if even nine other people do what I did then that's 1.31gigs of data transfer; someone's got to pay for that. With any luck there'll be a benevolent user somewhere among the mix who's willing to contribute. The benefits of willfully Slashdotting are thus mixed at best: greater exposure but probably a low click to pay ratio.
At any rate, the comic is good. Hooray for pseudo-animation.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
They plan to release this on DVD???
I mean, I can put up with this PBS-like pan-and-zoom animation, with subtitles on a flash presentation, but watching it on a TV would be just torture.
On the other hand, from what I've seen of anime (which is not much, so please correct me if I'm wrong), its all done in this "we're too cool to actually have things move" style.
"it's" == "it is"
/. editors---use that editorial power---for great justice!
"its" == something belonging to "it"
Come on
I woke up this morning with a bad hangover
And my penis was missing again.
This happens all the time.
It's detachable.
This comes in handy a lot of the time.
I can leave it home, when I think it's gonna get me in trouble,
or I can rent it out, when I don't need it.
But now and then I go to a party, get drunk,
and the next morning I can't for the life of me
remember what I did with it.
First I looked around my apartment, and I couldn't find it.
So I called up the place where the party was,
they hadn't seen it either.
I asked them to check the medicine cabinet
'cause for some reason I leave it there sometimes
But not this time.
So I told them if it pops up to let me know.
I called a few people who were at the party,
but they were no help either.
I was starting to get desperate.
I really don't like being without my penis for too long.
It makes me feel like less of a man,
and I really hate having to sit down every time I take a leak.
After a few hours of searching the house,
and calling everyone I could think of,
I was starting to get very depressed,
so I went to the Kiev, and ate breakfast.
Then, as I walked down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place,
where all those people sell used books and other junk on the street,
I saw my penis lying on a blanket
next to a broken toaster oven.
Some guy was selling it.
I had to buy it off him.
He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen.
I took it home, washed it off,
and put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.
People sometimes tell me I should get it permanently attached,
but I don't know.
Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass,
I like having a detachable penis.
Just posting my support for the Brokensaint guys. this project really does rock, and I recommend it to anyone. however, the best bet is to download a "keeper" of episode so that you dont have to download them again and knock up their costs.
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
donnie dorko was a fucking wretched movie.
Good to see other north shore kids do well.
What I want to do is help sink their 'iraq protest' into oblivion - so I hope they fail.
If they had any sense at all, they'd be adding a brutal Saddam like character to protest the killing and death HE has visited on his own people.
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid apparently intelligent people can be.
Has anyone yet added these to a P2P net? Seems like an obvious relief on thier bandwith costs, paticularly as the site is not generating revenue through ads.
Steve Cline http://www.clines.org, http://www.objectbap.com
In the last newsletter there was even a link to an entire cult based on Oran's Ass!
www.evilsponge.com/~cora
There it is! The Cult Of Oran's Rugged Ass! They need an under construction sign badly, but at least it looks OK in Mozilla.
Quite simply, a lot of the stuff that gets approval on slashdot is beyond what I find acceptable for my own viewing [goatse comes immediately to mind...]
Same goes for movies: I seldom go to one, but if I do, I've first read the reviews.
Nonetheless, this might be good. Could someone, as an "anonymous coward", perhaps, post a spoiler. [Moderators: please don't vote up the spoiler -- let it remain hidden to those who don't wish it spoiled]. What's the basic plot? What's the basic premise? How deep is the theme? [For an idea: Stephen King is actually quite deep. His Randall Flag is symbolic for "grand ol flag".]
I'd also like to get some idea of what the content is, as well. Swearing I can handle. Cartoons hacking each other apart I can handle too. However, sometimes nudity, and definitely sex, are a problem for my Y chromosome to handle. So if this is generally for me to avoid, please say so. If there is just one scene for me to avoid, please say that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
gotta love the proclamations of those awaiting graduation from art school...
Its no Ninjai.
I watched the first episode... well almost, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. If you watched the last episode of Evangelion and hated it then this type of thing is not for you.
Hell, I'd host the crap if they'd make it work when javascript is disabled in the browser.
As for Ninjai, it was way better than this Broken Saints thing. Broken Saints manages to discard the big advantage of a graphic novel (ability to read at your own pace and/or dwell on an image) and completely avoid the big draw of flash (animation; zooming/panning and fade in/out don't count as animation).
Of course, I've only seen some of the first episode, so maybe the technique gets better later on.
I think Camp Chaos's Bounty Girl (warning, cheesecake) is the best implementation of a graphic novel in flash I've seen.
a) Those are the people that the media is focussing on, because it makes the "war" look good
b) What would you do if a bunch of soldiers with guns and tanks were rumbling through your city, give them the finger?
Oh, and they still don't post articles about the teleplay project at www.bananachan.com -- that online epic deserves recognition too (it's a much better story than broken saints. Yeah, Broken Saints is pretty, but c'mon) :)
I guess if I were to post an article about Banana Chan, I'd say that their next major epic begins on May 3rd.
Watched the intro - hmmmm - soft music puctuated occasionally by a loud scream. How utterly annoying when people do that. I think I'll pass on the episodes since their intro is done so amaturish.
I've set up a mirror for Broken Saints (of everything on the site that I could find except the forum) to help out with their "mounting bandwidth bills." It redirects to my computer, as I don't have the 400MB to store all that stuff on my account. Furthermore, if you want to set up a mirror to help out too, go to http://[my ip address]/bs/totalbs.tgz for a tarball of the whole thing.
My site (on my computer, currently 140.247.87.50) is pretty neat too, and I've set up a fun hitcounter script too, which logs things like code-red attacks as well.
Please don't hack me.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Just an update, they just had a benefit concert this past month to raise funds to go to the Cannes film festival.
Just wanted to let you guys/girls know.