Hi There

[Paul Fierlinger]

I think "Download sample" instead of just "download", would explain everything.
Hisko, on the subject of publishing one's works on the Internet there was this interesting article in the NY Times a few days ago (it pertains to software as well):



June 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Bits, Bands and Books
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Do you remember what it was like back in the old days when we had a New Economy? In the 1990s, jobs were abundant, oil was cheap and information technology was about to change everything.

Then the technology bubble popped. Many highly touted New Economy companies, it turned out, were better at promoting their images than at making money — although some of them did pioneer new forms of accounting fraud. After that came the oil shock and the food shock, grim reminders that we’re still living in a material world.

So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”

For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because “enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market.”

Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled “Rock’s New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don’t Sell.” Downloads are steadily undermining record sales — but today’s rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through “publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing.”

What other creative activities will become mainly ways to promote side businesses? How about writing books?

According to a report in The Times, the buzz at this year’s BookExpo America was all about electronic books. Now, e-books have been the coming, but somehow not yet arrived, thing for a very long time. (There’s an old Brazilian joke: “Brazil is the country of the future — and always will be.” E-books have been like that.) But we may finally have reached the point at which e-books are about to become a widely used alternative to paper and ink.

That’s certainly my impression after a couple of months’ experience with the device feeding the buzz, the Amazon Kindle. Basically, the Kindle’s lightness and reflective display mean that it offers a reading experience almost comparable to that of reading a traditional book. This leaves the user free to appreciate the convenience factor: the Kindle can store the text of many books, and when you order a new book, it’s literally in your hands within a couple of minutes.

It’s a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.

Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won’t work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large online readership into an adequately paying proposition, with limited success.

But they’ll have to find a way. Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.

It won’t all happen immediately. But in the long run, we are all the Grateful Dead.

[hisko]

(There’s an old Brazilian joke: “Brazil is the country of the future — and always will be.”

Hahaha.
Well, it certainly would be good news if bussiness will be run that way, because right now the ditributionpossibilities for short animation are very limited.
I think that the writer is wrong about e-books. I recently found out that I'm becoming a Homo Monitorus, spending too much time behind displays and projectionscreens. So a book is a welcome shift (is that the right english word?)

[masterchief]

Thanx, all of you.

About 'Suburbanites'
A bit of a late adopter I'm afraid. I've been looking at some options to publish the film on the net but haven't got around it yet.
Keep you informed.

YouTube????


regards,
William

[hisko]

I think that the imagequality of youtube sucks too much for the High Arts.
It's like putting a film through a papershredder.

[Paul Fierlinger]

MyToons make good quality clips, but the manager sucks -- there's always something or someone who can turn anything of high value into not much of anything.

[hisko]

MyToons make good quality clips, but the manager sucks -- there's always something or someone who can turn anything of high value into not much of anything.

They can even show HD quality. What about that manager? What does he suck?

[Paul Fierlinger]

MyToons is Bauhaus property.

[hisko]

MyToons is Bauhaus property.

So your friends suck....??

[Paul Fierlinger]

Can't be avoided, eh? Paul Ford gave us all a raw deal in the end. When we had nothing to contribute anymore to his plans full of promise and hope he had fed us with for over two years, he just dropped us all without a single word of explanation. While we all sat there, waiting for him to release "very soon now" his brand new software that's going to be "cutting edge, kick ass stuff none of us can even begin to imagine", he sold Mirage to TVP without a word of explanation to us. I got very, very wary of the strange silence of the past many months and decided to come over here, and discovered what had been going on below our horizon.

I reported this to the community back at Bauhaus in a thread I called "My Goodbye Letter to Mirage" which caused bewilderment among all my friends, to put it mildly; there was a short lived fury of posts, Ford shut the place down still without a word of explanation, and there was this exodus over here.

There is one thing I'd like to make clear here; I was never part of the Bauhaus staff and had no access to their inside communications. Raymond (and I'm sure others here) believed that I was a member of the beta-team on this new software Ford was (is still?) developing but this was not the case. I have never even met him. There was NO beta team as far as I know. I was fed by Ford little snipits of information here and there, which later (too late) became clear to me were things he wanted to be released surreptitiously into the public, which I did only in a selective manner, but in good faith that it is for a good cause. I became through his manipulations an extended speaker-phone of his misinformations which were designed to keep the forum going to keep the membership growing. He obviously wanted this to be happening to keep new members from coming here, and to create a future market for his new software.

Once in awhile I would be told little tidbits of things to appear in this new software and once in awhile he would even hint at some of these on the forums so when I added the two together and might have appeared to be an insider, but this was not the case. I was loyal to the product. I loved Mirage and wanted it to live and supported Ford's efforts to keep a growing community around Mirage because I understand the value of community to the life of any software. So I am continuing this practice back here, where I had once belonged as well, in hopes that the software won't become vaporware.

As far as the legal dispute between TVP and Bauhaus goes, I knew nothing more than was on public record and from what I observed, there was breach of agreements committed by both parties. But truthfully, I am not interested in that (as I had told Ford a few times). I just want TVP-Mirage to continue in development so all of us can continue in our personal development endeavors.

[ZigOtto]

... YouTube????

arghhhhh!!! please, don't !
keep your polished animations away from the Paris Hilton clips !
if you have a minimum respect of your own work ...

MyToons make good quality clips ...

take care of these Aniboom-like video/animation portal sites,
there are many on the web, more and more, toooo many imo,
and they have merely all in common "astounding" term of uses that you have to sign up
when submitting your work, how much foolish (or naive, or oblivious) must be an author
to sign up that kind of terms (read the post-"However" thing ... ) :

Submitted Content
...
You retain all of your ownership rights in your Submitted Content. However, by submitting your Submitted Content to the site, you grant to us a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, frame, upload, download, prepare derivative and collective works of, publicly display, transmit and publicly perform the Submitted Content in connection with the site and our (and our successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the site (and derivative and collective works thereof) in any media formats, through any media channels, and on any networks and platforms whether owned, licensed or operated by us or by third parties, for commercial gain or otherwise. You agree to waive all rights of any claim against us for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any intellectual property rights. You also grant to each user of the site a nonexclusive license to access your Submitted Content through this site, and to playback such Submitted Content as permitted through the functionality of the site and pursuant to these Terms of Use. The foregoing license granted by you terminates prospectively with respect to Submitted Content that is removed or deleted from the site, but such removal or deletion will not affect the rights granted to us or other users prior to such removal or deletion.

so, I strongly recommend to follow this Net surfer advice, read somewhere else :

Many of these companies have sprung up, as “content portals”,
who are mostly interested in advertising revenue
and the traffic gotten from the user submitted content.

My advice from my creative copyright attorney: DON’T grant a blanket license
granting the ability to use your content in an unlimited sense,
make sure there is a SET EXPIRATION DATE for the use of your content,
and that all rights revert back to you, at after a set period of time!
This is of course the last thing that these “portal” people want.

Can you imagine getting the rights to broadcast Seinfeld, or any television
program, indefinitely? The proposal is totally preposterous, yet since animation
is a short format medium, it is easier to collect en masse, and profit from it indefinitely.
Who is to say, what someone is in the business of doing, collecting, and owning content
in this manner. A deep read of the contract, by your lawyer, should be the first thing you do,
before submitting content, anywhere.

[Sierra Rose]

Very useful, ZigOtto! Thank you.

The Krugman article Paul posted seems to point to a whole new world of earnings. Time to put our thinking caps on.

[hisko]

Can't be avoided, eh? Paul Ford gave us all a raw deal in the end. When we had nothing to contribute anymore to his plans full of promise and hope he had fed us with for over two years, he just dropped us all without a single word of explanation. While we all sat there, waiting for him to release "very soon now" his brand new software that's going to be "cutting edge, kick ass stuff none of us can even begin to imagine", he sold Mirage to TVP without a word of explanation to us. I got very, very wary of the strange silence of the past many months and decided to come over here, and discovered what had been going on below our horizon.

I reported this to the community back at Bauhaus in a thread I called "My Goodbye Letter to Mirage" which caused bewilderment among all my friends, to put it mildly; there was a short lived fury of posts, Ford shut the place down still without a word of explanation, and there was this exodus over here.

There is one thing I'd like to make clear here; I was never part of the Bauhaus staff and had no access to their inside communications. Raymond (and I'm sure others here) believed that I was a member of the beta-team on this new software Ford was (is still?) developing but this was not the case. I have never even met him. There was NO beta team as far as I know. I was fed by Ford little snipits of information here and there, which later (too late) became clear to me were things he wanted to be released surreptitiously into the public, which I did only in a selective manner, but in good faith that it is for a good cause. I became through his manipulations an extended speaker-phone of his misinformations which were designed to keep the forum going to keep the membership growing. He obviously wanted this to be happening to keep new members from coming here, and to create a future market for his new software.

Once in awhile I would be told little tidbits of things to appear in this new software and once in awhile he would even hint at some of these on the forums so when I added the two together and might have appeared to be an insider, but this was not the case. I was loyal to the product. I loved Mirage and wanted it to live and supported Ford's efforts to keep a growing community around Mirage because I understand the value of community to the life of any software. So I am continuing this practice back here, where I had once belonged as well, in hopes that the software won't become vaporware.

As far as the legal dispute between TVP and Bauhaus goes, I knew nothing more than was on public record and from what I observed, there was breach of agreements committed by both parties. But truthfully, I am not interested in that (as I had told Ford a few times). I just want TVP-Mirage to continue in development so all of us can continue in our personal development endeavors.

Wow, what a story.
You are the McClellan ( http://infowars.net/articles/june2008/1 ... lellan.htm ) of animationland. But with good intentions, I'm sure. Actually, I think we share the same intentions.

I never thought that I would promote software to people, I really think it's kind of nerdy (I'm sure you feel the same about that).
But I do promote TVP now. One reason is, that I want to help collegues that are stuck with the wrong software (Flash etc.), and the other thing is that if a lot of people buy TVP there will be more money to develop the program. TVP has all the potential to be the broadest and most professional 2d software.
The newest version TVP9 will be a major step, I think it will be released this week.
Because I'm a Betatester, I know that the people that make TVP work really hard and listen to the ideas on the forum.
Sometimes ideas that pop up on the forum are realised in an hour, and sometimes it takes weeks, months, years, depending on the complexity and the priority of the ideas.
Anyhow, all ideas are heard as far as I know.

I'm curious about this mysterious new software from Paul Ford, it sounds as if it can take us to Jupiter and beyond!

[Paul Fierlinger]

I'm curious about this mysterious new software from Paul Ford, it sounds as if it can take us to Jupiter and beyond!

I think it's going to take them longer than expected. I have no idea what's really happening to it but I do know that some people on the payroll have left just like us; disappointed with the man and very, very angry.

[hisko]

I'm curious about this mysterious new software from Paul Ford, it sounds as if it can take us to Jupiter and beyond!

I think it's going to take them longer than expected. I have no idea what's really happening to it but I do know that some people on the payroll have left just like us; disappointed with the man and very, very angry.

That's sad.
I hope they get all the money he owes them.

[Stefan]

Hi all,
can you believe I missed the latest bunch of your posts because it hadn't sunk in yet
that there's a second page? Oh boy!

Thanks for the tips on the video-sites. I think I'll keep looking for a really good opportunity lo publish my films. Something along the lines of Atom films or the likes? They made me an offer once but there was no follow up. Anyone has any experiences in this ?

In the meantime I am thinking of
storing the films on the web-server (taking off the site for a while) and giving you a link to download them from there. If I can reduce the films to less than 50 Mb in reasonable quality that is. What format would you recommend MPEG 4?