Broken Saints Finale Available

An anonymous reader writes "The hour-and-a-half finale to the killer animated Web comic Broken Saints is finally available. I just finished watching it, and I can't believe that only three guys made the damn thing. The story is intense, the music kicks, and the art's cool if you dig anime. Nice effects, really cool style, and even some nice Linux hacking scenes." We've covered this award-winning Flash-animated series previously.

Comments

stuff like this

[Transient0]

makes me incredibly happy as an artist. We are slowly but surely moving away from the paradigm of a handful of millionaire artists with corporate backing to a new world where every other person is an artist. The community is once again entertaining itself in the tradition of the tribal storyteller, only now the community is global.

gives you a warm feeling inside if you can get past the pervading cynicism of the times for a moment.

Re:stuff like this

[Transient0]

the point is, it's too late for people not to take us seriously. people are looking on-line for their entertainment and almost nothing is going to make them stop. bands that are frustrated with the mad struggle to get someone at a record company to listen to their demo are realizing that they can just release their stuff on-line. Sure, it may not make them rich, but it gets them heard. The ones that are good may get some money out of it in the end, but even if they don't people will keep doing it. I'm a tech person too, but there is a heavy hippie undertone to what's happening in the art community these days. It makes no difference how ceesy the "global village paradigm schtick" may be, a time is coming where people are producing art and putting it out there simply because the community wants to be entertained and it feels good to be the entertainer.

You don't have to be a flower-child to appreciate that..

Re:stuff like this

[Telastyn]

Umm... every other person has been an artist for millenia. Now though the ability to entertain MANY others is available at a very low entry cost. It doesn't mean that the artists are any better, or even that there will be more artists. Hopefully the new distribution medium will allow people to find artists more easily, and artists will gain a larger mean fanbase, though the cynical side of me doubts that for most cases. The majority of people are sheep, and will continue the same trends that keep Carson Daly from working at the local McDonalds.

Re:stuff like this

[Lord_Dweomer]

"It makes no difference how ceesy the "global village paradigm schtick" may be, a time is coming where people are producing art and putting it out there simply because the community wants to be entertained and it feels good to be the entertainer."

Wow, I don't think I've seen a better job of someone summing up the original definition of "entertainment". That is what it used to be all about. Now its going through its whole corporate phase because thats the only way to get heard. But thanks to the internet, that is slowly starting to change. Eventually, it will compete with/replace those who do it for profit because the desire to be heard is worth more to some people than making money. And suddenly there's a lot more passion behind the work too. Distribute it for free...and guess what? Corporate garbage entertainment is then seeing a direct, free, LEGAL competitor who they have no control over. If its hippies that are starting all this, I say PASS ME THAT JOINT!!!!.

Re:stuff like this

[Abcd1234]

it used to be that good artists were the only ones who could get an audience

Hah! You are kidding, right? I think you meant to say "it used to be that artists who had mass market appeal were the only ones who could get an audience". Of course, this typically translates to artists who appeal to the 12-20 age bracket, or so, since they have massive amounts of disposable spending cash which they are willing to spend on the latest fad.

The fact is, for nigh on 20 years now (at least), art has been all about demographics and marketability. This applies to music, books, movies, and pretty well any other form of popular art (as opposed to "high" art, which is a different beast altogether) you can think of.

So, the hope now is that, maybe, artists will be able to mass distribute their art without having to worry about marketing, etc, etc, meaning that new, unique stuff might start appearing. Of course, you do have to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff, but at least you CAN get to the good stuff, now. And new technology can help people find the high quality art. For example, imagine a site where you could submit a site for an indie piece of art which can been reviewed by peers. With something like this, it should be quite easy to weed out the less interesting material and get to the good stuff.

Re:stuff like this

[adrianbye]

What is happening is that it is becoming easier for individuals to get their content out.

In the past it was much harder - and thus we had record company royalties of 5%-12%. The reason those rates are so low is that getting content out by traditional methods is hard. But now that is changing and the balance of power is shifting to the artists.

Its a good thing.

As a person non-interested in comics and anime...

[garcia]

I found the animation (while small in size) to be rather boring and slow-paced. I suppose that was the point.

The animation was VERY well done and the sound-effects and graphics were actually pretty amazing.

The story-line was slow and didn't hold my attention.

While I appreciate the artistry it wouldn't be good for the mainstream unless the pace was quickened.

Just my worthless .02

Bittorrent

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Remember to use the Bittorrent links for those who want to download the whole thing in one go.

Looked lame, but I'll try it

[mao che minh]

I watch the trailer and some of the first spisode. It looked awkward and messy to me (animation and artwork). I wasn't sold on the average storyline either. But, considering the fact that it won a Sundance award, I'll give it a shot (I can only assume that it gets better).

The whole "treatment of Iraq" based character is ignorant though. I bet the creators are punk rock slackers - you know the kind, they attend the riots but never know what they're fighting for, they ramble on all day about imaginery politics and "fighting the man" (which is usually their rich white dad), they are always in a "band", etc.

pretty cool stuff

[YllabianBitPipe]

First off let me just say this is really great work ... great story, great art, great flash programming. I'm excited to see stuff like this coming out, stuff done independently that's quality.

I only have one complaint ... I think this story would be better served going all the way to animation. I know the comic purists out there would balk, but to have basic animation, dissolves, and WORD BALLOONS of all things, when you already have audio ... this work has already left the roots of comics on a page. This project should just go fully animated.

Oh, and I just have to mention, no Scott McCloud-esque micropayments going on here. Kudos to these guys ...

Re:pretty cool stuff

[Fjord]

To go from word balloons to audio is a large step. It requires voice acting, which isn't that easy, especially if you are playing more than one part.

Then there is the bandwidth difference for including audio and full animation. That can add up to a hefty bill, something these guys probably can't swing considering they do not have and McCloud-esque micropayments.

Re:Too bad it is Flash

[OctaneZ]

If you're using Mozilla, or a mozilla derived browser, you can add Ted Mielczarek great Flash, Click to Play extension: extension installer. You can find info on it here and here.

Only three guys made this?

[djeaux]

Heck, I figured they'd need a team of at least a dozen just to wait for it to load & review it.

And I still can't comment on the artwork -- after a 5 minute wait for the "50K skinny site" to download, my browser locked up. OK, I'm probably not running the latest-and-greatest: this is "only" a 1.8 GHz Wintel PC with 255 MB RAM & a T1 connection with Netscape 7.02... I'm sure the site looks fine on a 3.0 GHz Linux box with a gig of RAM & a T3...

The point of this rant is that it's a damned shame that excellent artwork gets flushed down the tube of Flash.

To those of you just starting to watch BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that this started over 3 years ago when both technology and politics were different.
To watch the evolution, especially of the art and flashwork, is quite amazing also!
I just can't believe it's finally over.

Smart anonymous reader

[FunWithHeadlines]

"I just finished watching it..."

And only then did he submit it to /. Veeeeerrrrry clever, Mr. Anonymous Reader. Let this be a lesson to us all.

10 and a half hours!

[mikeophile]

I totaled up the lengths of all 24 parts and it come up to more or less 10 1/2 hours.

Not an ad on the site and the creators pledged that there won't be any profiteering or commercialization of this.

We are so not worthy.

Thank you guys.

Re:10 and a half hours!

[JackAxe]

That's 10 hours of pauses, and a half hour of actual animation. =)

Re:10 and a half hours!

[Darth]

and then they opened up a cafe press store and put the broken saints logo on a thong.

i hate flash..

[Suppafly]

I hate flash movies because there is no good way to pause them and come back, nor is there a good way to fast forward or rewind or do anything that you normally would when watching video. Flash is alright for those annoying interactive websites, but its damn annoying for movies.

Re:i hate flash..

[JackAxe]

You can pause, forward and reverse with Flash using Action Script. Here's an excellent example made a couple of years back and it was done with Flash 5. Make sure to click on "Advanced Controls" buton in the upper right when watching the prologue. http://www.becominghuman.org/

Re:i hate flash..

[Eric Savage]

Yeah, and this isn't just a "nice to have" thing either. This is a "got interrupted halfway through and knew I'd have to site through 15 minutes of stuff I just saw and didn't bother to come back to the site" thing.

Not to say I don't appreciate people dedicating themselves to their craft as these guys do, but just because you're an artist doesn't mean you don't have to pick the right technology.

Re:As a person non-interested in comics and anime.

[MagPulse]

I agree that it's technically good but the story is slow. Slow stories are okay if there are things happening to think about or pay attention to. But this animation could be compressed to a third of its length and lose nothing.

Re:A mplayer-like program for flash files?

[JackAxe]

Here's a link to the Linux player: =) http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alter nates/

The limitations of flash

[popo]

The problem is that even with Flash MX's great JPG compression and vector graphics, the technique used by most flash animators is to apply a series of animation techniques to a small set of images.

In other words, the animation is a set of instructions, and the downloaded data is kept to a minimum.

The upshot of this is that while there's a lot of movement on the screen, it gets pretty repetitive. For example, during the intro, we see the same artwork (various faces) used over and over again using a variety of different animation effects.

Whereas film uses a separate image for every frame, flash can use 3 or 4 images and a set of instructions. But these 3 or 4 images (flashed, panned, faded and moved around the screen), hardly approach the immersive experience of thousands of frames used in film.

In an era of digital video and truly fantastic compression technologies, this approach seems dated. True, the potential audience for flash movies may be larger, but that seems like a business decision and not a creative one.

They've done a great job with the medium, but unfortunately this medium, as with so many others online, is extremely limited.

Comics?

[sharkey]

This isn't about football?