YouVert

Pure Anime Awesomosity

The always solid #Comments points us to this bit of wow today. Some person spent a whole lot of time  drawing this Japanese anime character and filmed it's creation. What's the catch you say? Well, the fact that the whole thing is drawn with HTML! For all of you less nerdified than myself, this may not impress you, but trust me, it is an epic feat unto itself.

FanFiction Is The Old Black (read CGM), And It Also Can Get You Beat Up

In a very interesting development, Fan Fiction, some of the original UGContent on the web has been the subject of a lot of chatter recently. Until recently, Fan Fiction was primarily fan based, with no real interaction with corp America. Then Ex-Yahoo peeps stepped in and had to F it all up. They created Fanlib.com in order to aggregate all the content and offer non-payment type incentives to the authors (DVDs, Screenings, etc.). The community right away started poking holes in what they were trying to do with the site, how they were using the content and suspect of the revenue/rights and ownership question.
This is what happens when you try too hard to be something because you see money in it vs. doing something because it is a passion (not that there is anything wrong with looking for new ways for success, but some things are easier than others). Regardless, the whole thread below by Fan Fiction author Mary McNamara is very entertaining and worth a read by anyone interested in the user content space as this segment is more developed and thus more skeptical than most.

LINK: Mary McNamara's Multichannel News Initial Post
LINK 2: Her further investigation with links all over the place (READ BOTH).

Consumer Generated.............Art On Toast?

In the third installment of things that I want and yet have no need for, I bring you Zuse.

A toaster that lets you draw 8 bit art on the bread itself via different levels of burn.  Yum.
LINK: ZUSE

Via Eyebeam

Spam Is Art

Spamtertainment lives!

In these short films, The Brother's McLeod Spamland explores animation with all dialog being nicked from the garbled word pairings found at the bottom of spam emails in order to try and fool our filters. I find it so full of awesome when people take everyday annoyances and turn them into beauty.

via CHF

Ad Agencies Cower In Fear (Well, not really, but they come off as bitches!)

In the recent article in the NYT about "The High Price of Creating Free Ads", Louise Story questions whether all the hype about user created ads nets out to the brands benefit and especially is it worth the effort. The article presents a fair assessment of the current Heinz campaign and it's highs and lows. What struck me was the 2 ad agency interviews (Strawberry Frog & Kaplan Thaler) and how they seem to be subtly trying to get the message out to brands that 'real advertising' is worth it and that this tactic is not. To me, they come off a little scared and while they claim to not see it as hurting the ad agency model, between the lines you can almost hear the worry that this could cut into revenues if not taken down now. I wonder when Tessio will get the families together to talk about this pending situation.

If It's Friday, It's Pirates!

Seeing as Pirates o.t. Caribbean is comin' out today (saw a preview, long, but not bad!), I thought I would catch the rest of you up on what you may have forgotten.

So here is a version, using playmobile figures... Did i mention it is in french?

Here is a clip from Pirates 1 set to the Benny Hill theme.

When not dodging baddies, Capt. Jack still has to get his sundries.

Some girls lying in bed give a review of P.O.T.C.

Wat wif da Cheezburger

I really don't have time to go into the intricacies of this new cat meets grammatical suicide phenom. But i like it!

LINK: I Can Has Cheezburger

People Are More Creative Than You

In another installment of Other People Are More Creative Than You Are, we find Max Tyrie's entry into a Modest Mouse video contest. Utilizing a huge amount of time, paper and toner and focusing on the aesthetics of the street art movement, he brings a compelling and wonderful approach to the song through sheer D.I.Y effort and the beauty that is stop-motion.

Via Wooster Collective

8 Minutes Of Animal Fury

What do you get when you mix a lion pride, a gang of buffalo and 2 crocs? Some serious video baby. This 8 minute clip has more drama and emotion in it than an entire season of 24. Almost half a million peeps have viewed it and after this post it will be a half a mil +13, so get on it before we bring the servers down.

thanks to the g. cowboy for this one.

And More Mashed Up Art!

No sooner do we post about an art/ad photo contest than we come across the B3ta message boards where people are mashing up art like crazy!

Enjoy - Jesus Playing Poker

LINK: B3TA Boards