......ahhhhhh Bullshit! Got this through today, seems like a great idea I can't wait to part with my cash for it! Sorry about the length, even I didn't bother reading it all Hi there Joe Vinton I saw your art on www.3dlinks.com - Great Stuff! I'm writing you this message because I would like to have your opinion as a creative person on an interesting idea. First a little background: About 4 years ago one evening I was sitting in Seattle USA, having a few beers with a guy who was working with me on an IT project. I was working for a company named Cybermatix Inc., and he was the senior project engineer of a client company that had contracted Cybermatix Inc. for some project work. The project we were working was one where a worldwide messaging and collaboration system was being developed, where people all over the world could collaborate, and work together in different fashions, with the only requirement being that they be connected to the Internet. Unfortunately I must say that this project was one of the casualties of the Dot Com bust that happened in that time frame. The project was cancelled some 6 months later. A shame, but I guess that is life. As the discussion over beers went on, we found that we both had a great love for digital arts, movies, and in particular Sci-Fi and Fantasy type movies, such as The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. I told him that I had put together a very nice audio/video studio and had produced a few corporate and marketing videos, one being a Safari video shot in Africa. I had played around with CGI art and animation, primarily 3D Studio Max, and Discreet Combustion. He in turn told me that he had been busy writing a Sci-Fi Novel, set in the 26th Century. He told me a little about the story and to be quite honest I was very impressed. The story had elements of Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation novels, Frank Herbert's Dune series, a bit of Star Trek and Star Wars, a bit of James Bond, and even something approaching The Matrix. And then we talked more. What if we could make a movie, using mainly CGI techniques, and making use of the abundance of talent available all over the world, as is evident by the art, such as yours, we can see published on the Internet such as www.raph.com, www.3dtotal.com, www.3dlinks.com and other public online galleries. If we could find a way to utilize these highly talented people's skills, then at last a big portion making a movie would be solved. But then the old problem of financing the project still existed. It cost an enormous amount of money to have digital production studios or individuals generate CGI art and animation for a movie. A typical example is the CGI movie, Final Fantasy, the Spirits Within, which cost a whopping $160M to produce. So how would we solve this problem? One idea was if we could use the principle of Open Source software development, where people all over the world contributed their programming talent to a development project, essentially for free. This method have resulted in such great products as the Linux operating system and the very popular Apache web server. But here we ran into a little problem. An Open Source product could be used for free by all the project contributors, but this was not exactly the same for a movie. So we could not expect people to contribute their talents for free, because there was no way that the contributors could get anything back for their efforts. The reason for this was that an Open Source was never to be 'sold' as a product, but a movie would have to be, to cover many of the production costs. Then we hit on a new idea - what if we could get CGI and other artists to contribute their talents towards the project of making a movie, but instead of doing it for free as in the Open Source software model, we see their contributions as an Investment in the project, just like any other investor would make a monetary investment toward any project, such as for instance a new building complex or a new company startup. When the project was completed, the movie would be marketed, distributed and shown in theatres all over the world like any other movie, and hopefully make a lot of money, like many other movies make. We would then take this money, and pay the CGI and other talent contributors for the work that they have done in the production of the movie. We could also go further and calculate the Profit that we made on the movie, where the profit is simply the difference between the costs of making the movie, and the Gross Receipts that we received for the movie. This profit would then also be distributed between the talent contributors for the movie. We came up with an interesting name for the CGI and other talent contributors for the project, and that is a 'Talent Investor'. Therefore if you were a Talent Investor, you would invest in a project by contributing your talents, instead of in the conventional way where an investor would invest by paying money towards a project. The concept is the exactly the same, you invest in the project, and later when the project was completed and 'sold', you would get your initial investment back, as well as a portion of the profits. This is more or less how all investments works. But you have to keep in mind that with any investment, no matter what it is, there is always some risk associated. For instance in our case the movie could be a flop, then you will surely lose at least a portion if not all of your initial investment, and of course there would be no profit in this case. But as with all investments this is a decision that the individual investor must make for him or herself. No risk, no gain. So this sounded like a feasible and workable idea. But to make a movie would take more than just CGI and other Talent Investors contributions. It would also take a significant amount of real hard cash. So where would we get this cash from? There are some well known methods of obtaining this investment capital, typically from large Corporations, Investment Capitalists, Angel Investors and in some cases even governments. And then we hit on the second new idea. Seeing that we could get some investments in the form of talent, by the contributions of individual Talent Investors, why could we not expand this idea to cover the smaller investor. i.e. the person that typically surfs the internet, maybe have movies and CGI as a hobby, and may have a particular interest in being involved with a movie project. We could have such a person 'subscribe' to the project by having a monthly subscription of a small amount, such as say $10 per month. This person would then be directly involved in the making of the movie, such as contributing to the story line, and even become a Talent Investor if the opportunity arises. This Subscription Investor would then also be covered by the same rules of the Talent Investor, i.e. when the movie was completed and distributed, the Subscription Investors would get their initial investment back, plus a portion of the profits. Again just like any other investor, such as a Cor porate Investor or an Angel Investor. Again the same risk that accompanies any investment would be there, but again it would be up to the individual investor to decide whether to invest or not. Again no risk, no gain. We thought that it might be a good idea to expand this Subscription Investor concept to a person that would like to make a larger, once off lump sum investment to the project. We therefore came up with the idea of a Lump Sum Investor. Again the same rules of investment and profit sharing applies. After all this we thought it might be a good idea to institute a 'referral program', where a Talent Investor, a Subscription Investor or a Lump Sum Investor could get some gain out of referring new investors to the project. For instance if you were a Talent Investor, your total investment amount would be increased by some predetermined amount if you got an additional new Subscription Investor to subscribe to the project. This referral program is just to ensure that we would get as much investment from individual investors as possible, so that we wouldn't have to go and seek investment from any Angel Investors, or any other Corporate investors. If however we do not get enough investment from the individual investors, we will have to use the bigger institutional channels, but this would obviously have a negative effect on the distribution of profits to the individual investors, so we would aim to minimize the capital received from these sources. Well this sounded like a cool plan, and we were quite chuffed with ourselves. As the evening went on and the beer started to have more and more of an effect, we kept on talking. And then the third idea surfaced. If we could make a movie using this new business model of Talent and Subscription Investors, why not expand the concept a bit further. Currently the Video Game business is actually a bigger worldwide business than the movie business. And the principles of making a Video Game is not all that much different from making a movie. Much CGI work, that we are already using for the movie, as well as some game Programming Talent. So the Talent Investor concept could now be expanded to cover skills of individuals that are involved in Game production. And if we used a common theme for both the movie and the video game, this would even be better in terms of marketing the project when the time for distribution came. And why stop with making a movie and making a game? Music is an integral part of any movie and game. So why not expand on this concept and make a standalone Music Album. With associated Music Videos. If the concept is workable, we will have musical talent available for the movie and game already, so why not use this talent to make the album. And again we can use the same theme for the album as is used for the movie and the game, that again will help in marketing and distribution. OK, so how can we do all this stuff? It seemed that the best idea would be to set up a website where all the contributors of the project could collaborate, no matter where they are located. As both of us has been in the IT project development business for many years, it seemed to be a good plan to handle the project as a Software Development Project. After all many of the components of the movie, the game and the music album is software based. At that time (4 years ago) a new software development methodology started to gain worldwide support. This is the Rational Unified Process (RUP), which is simply a method of developing a large and complex software project with a high probability of success. In the past many software projects have failed for various reasons, and the industry has learned some valuable lessons from this, and came up with this new methodology. Both of us have used the RUP before and since, and indeed it turned out to be a very good way of doing things. So this website would serve as the collaboration point for the project development, and would of course also serve as a marketing tool for the project. Of course developing such a website is not a trivial task, as it would have both marketing and collaboration strategies involved. As part of this we thought again that it would be good to use the concept of Talent Investor to do this task, as the required talent for this is also available all over the world. So now we have a few project components, The Movie, The Game, The Music and finally The Site. Well, it was getting late. We said our goodbyes and we went home. It was a very interesting evening and we came up with some very exciting ideas. The next day we went on with the messaging project we were working on, and our lives. Later the messaging project was cancelled and we sort of lost contact with each other. But this idea kept on milling around in my head. It would be fantastic if one could get it to work. It is a novel concept, and to my knowledge this has not been done before, in any case not on this scale. And then in the beginning of this year (2004) we made contact again. He told me he had been thinking about o urlittlediscussion4yearsago,andhestillthinksthisisagoodidea.Isaid,'Metoo'.Sowesatdownandmadeaplan.Thisguyhadabitofsparecash,andheagreedthathewouldactasanAngelInvestorjusttostarttheprojectup.Hisonlyrequirementswerefirstlythatweusethestoryofhisuncompleted novel as the basic storyline of the movie, and secondly for personal reasons he wanted to keep his identity anonymous. I agreed to this. My part of the deal was to set up a basic website for the project, and to be the Programme Manager for the project. So this is what we did. We called the overall project 'Project Galaxy XQ', and the name of the movie will be called First Light. Over time I lessened my workload on other projects that I was involved with, and at this point in time I can spend most of my time on this project. My personal expertise is with the development and management of large and complex engineering and enterprise level IT projects. But I thought I would take a stab at putting the basic website together. I believe that a project or programme manager should have a good idea about the nitty gritty details of development work, so I saw this as an ideal opportunity to get my hands dirty. Well the result of my website isn't exactly as good as I wanted it, but at least it is a start. Later we can improve it by making use of the Site Talent Investors. At the moment the site, and the project, is very much in the preliminary or Pre-Launch stage, and this is reflected on the website. So this is what I want to ask from you. I would like to know if you would be interested in participating in this project. I understand that you probably have a full time job, but if you could contribute a few hours a week of your spare time, this would be very good. Even if you are not interested, I would like to ask you to spend a few minutes to have a look at the basic website and give me your opinion - where can we make it better? This would be highly appreciated. Also if you have any questions I would appreciate you asking them, as I do not know how clear the presentation of the information on the website is. Also if your English is not perfect, don't worry, English is my second language as well, and we will find a way to communicate. You can see the website at http://www.cybermatix.com. Finally I would like to say that I personally detest Spam Mail. And even though I'm not trying to sell you any porn or any other nonsense, I am trying to sell you an idea. So you can really see this message as spam, as I have sent this same message to other CGI artists as well. For this I apologize, but I couldn't think of a better way to reach the potential CGI artists that is a critical component for this project to succeed. If you are not interested in participating in the project, or giving me feedback, please just delete this message. You are not on any mailing list, and if you just ignore this message, I assure you that you will never hear from me again. I thank you for your time. Cheers Clive Doubel

Sorry about the scrolling screen, but it's not worth reading anyhow. Maybe I'll suggest he invests in a trip for me to the Bahamas so I can get my creative juices flowing!

Condensed version...

Pay me money, in small installments or a big lump sum. This is a pyramid scheme as well. We will make a video game. Really we will, and this isn't spam. Not at all.

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 02:53

Long winded salesperson.

Well, the idea doesn't look like a scam to me. But it's got several holes in the reasoning and in the operative stuff. Too unwieldy and impractical to implement, in short.

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 02:57

this is slightly better than:

HELLO DEAR,

I AM NBEKI AKTUBU, FORMER PRINCE OF NIGERIA...

drac

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 03:21

Attached Link: http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic29871.html

It's a great idea! Not only do they want artists to make the graphics for the movie, they want them to pay the production costs as well. I'm sold! Where do I sign up? Hell, I'll even just invest money with them. Safer than a bank. I don't think it's a scam, I just think it's a naive person with a creative idea and no idea how things work in the real world. But looking at the forum, a few people are biting. I have done in the past and luckily that project only lasted 3 weeks. Still I created a dozen or so pictures for it. I told that guy that the pictures would remain mine and I would licence the use of them to him.

I've done work for movie and television production houses, and I'll tell you there are so many reasons as to why that wouldn't work, that it would be longer than that fable written above. Drac is wise, its a scam people. I've heard so many different versions of this over the years, from products to services to religion, its become background noise to me. Eighteen years in advertising may have conditioned me towards a level of cynicism higher than most, but I can count on the fingers of an armless man, how many times I've been proven wrong about these things.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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Ah, the power of BEER on the mind of Mortal Men...

Yep I got the same E-mail 2 days ago...Time to have FUN...And Aye Power to the many beers..

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 09:29

This may be one of those times when someone sobers up and says, "What the h*ll was I thinking?", LOL.

somewhat naive idea which sounds quite impossible to realize... I personally wouldn't construct a single poligon for it...

I know, lets put on a show! You and I can sing and dance! Gramps knows music! We can build a stage in the barn! Yea' It worked 19 times for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in Pleasantville, on the MGM back lot, In a MOVIE. I've been waiting almost 2 years to release some meshes in the marketplace because I've tried to get some one else to do the texturing. I've given up and decided to do it all myself. If I have a hard time finding one person from a community to commit imagine what it would be like to keep 20-50 or 100 together and on track. Work for yourself. Youll only have yourself to thank when it works or to blame when it doesnt. If you get an offer from Blur or somebody with a real office thats different.

You don't need a big team of people, you just need to find out where jjsmlee went (if he's not dead or abducted by aliens) and team him up with Rochr. Then if you get them together, figure out how to get money for a renderfarm and movie production. Jjsmlee apparently has storyboards and characters worked out, but it's never been animated. Looks like the stuff that would make an awsome movie (Looks like Fifth Element/Stewart Little/Alien/Pulp Fiction/BladeRunner/??? crossover.) The only stuff that seems to be revealed is that Claude The Mouse somehow gets the unnamed heroine (I don't remember seeing her name) to take up the fight against some group of nasty aliens.

LMAO@Electroglyph! You forgot: "Mom can make the costumes!"

Blur has an office? Didn't they break up and the singer formed Gorillaz? :-)

Blur had a big house in the country apparantly!

They were the one's who couldn't hire Rochr because of the visa junk post 911.
Open their website in a seperate window because the shockwave grabs the browser and you can't click "back"
Blur
Check out their short called Rockfish.

He HEe! electroglyph... I just got two sticks and some super glue, now my dog passes for a Buck! (not sayin' what he passes for two bucks) He HEe! Can my dog be in that movie?