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Doug Chiang's Robota
inherent writes "Doug Chiang's studio has released a trailer for his upcoming book. The book is a collaboration with Sci-Fi author Orson Scott Card of Ender's Game fame, and will include 75 pieces of Chiang's artwork. Chiang is the Concept Art Director at Industrial Light and Magic (and thus the concept art guy for the Star Wars prequels). Here is a previous slashdot story on him with a link to an interview."
Since when do books have trailers?
Is Robota a film or a book or what? What exactly is a "film book"?
A "film book" is simply an art book story told in a film-like manner. Books allow the viewer to delve into the thoughts and motives of the main characters in ways film canOt. And films present drama in a linear time specific format that allows for a very controlled storytelling. I want to combine these two mediums, plus a third, the internet, to produce something different.
Eventually, this web site will compliment the book and any other mediums that are developed for Robota. Each will be used to tell a different part of the Robota world. For example, the web site will tell more of the backstory and character development using animation, text, etc. while the book will be the actual story of conflicts and how they are resolved.
This is one of the great things about telling the story in a variety of mediums. I can take advantage of the unique strengths of each medium to build a compelling world that couldn't otherwise be built in one medium.
In other news, Slashdot will now be posting trailers for all their articles. Comment trailers will be introduced by 2005 where every comment will be preceded with a trailer first.
The next trailer will be coming soon but subscribers get to beat the rush!
Isaac Asimov (the guy who coined the term "robotics") gave that theme a name dozens of years ago, he called it the Frankenstein complex. That is why he wrote the 3 laws of robotics, to move away from that theme.
BTW, the polish play in wich the name "robot" was coined (to mean mechanical anthropomorphic labourers) was also about "men make robots, men abuse robots, robots go awry and take over".
Way, WAY before matrix/terminator (in the 20's IIRC).
Battlestar Galactica! Again, before terminator/matrix.
You can't take the sky from me...