Officer-Bob.com Starts His Shift

I was born in Chicago. I’ve lived in this town, this state, this country for forty years. I’ve been making artistic choices of one kind or another for more than twenty-five of those years. More often than not, these choices were about balance.

I became interested in balance when I learned what exactly happened in the world that gave me - of all the billions of the earth - the options I have. What happened was empire. Empire is my counterbalance.

I have spent my life in the interior of the world’s most powerful empire. I am surrounded by proof of this in the form of an unending stream of immigrants, a parade in which my own ancestors marched during the 19th and 20th centuries.

If the imperial character of my home ended there, I might even be a fan of empire. Of course, it does not, and I am not.

This empire, as all before it, breeds its own demise in the form of rampant authoritarianism, official corruption and intellectual stagnation. My friends and I have always tried to stand in opposition to these things, to varying degrees of success.

Officer Bob is one such attempt. It’s a black humor protest of the widening acceptance of senseless force and corrupt officialdom. It’s a counterbalance and a spit into the abyss of history awaiting us.

What I’m trying to say is Officer Bob will never, ever appear on Oprah.

Officer Bob #2: Physical Fitness

In which our constable explores the role of physical fitness in today’s policing environment. Added bonus: watch for the “Ask A Pirate” t-shirt.

Flash nerds: Are you doing character anim with bitmaps and want to cut your SWF size in half? Check this out: this time around, The (Heather) Smith experimented with a new asset building technique. When she did the character builds, instead of bitmapped objects, she used mask vectors - that show the texture beneath. The aim was to reduce SWF size / load time by reducing the number of real assets in a rendering. The series’ art direction as it stands is a good opportunity for this thanks to its use of paper cutouts with more or less consistent textures in the original designs.

As a method for reducing the size of the SWF, it was a big success. Both episodes come in at about one minute length but #2’s SWF came it at 628K where #1 was 1.3MB.

Sure, the dev environment acted weird with all those masks on the stage, but weird behavior is to the Flash dev environment what bling and grills are to rap videos.

Big up yaself to to japnm for the quick audio post.

Meet Officer Bob

Once, the internet served a different purpose than it does today. When the boys in the 1970s Pentagon basement finished the military communications project that eventually became the web, the last thing on their minds was the global distribution of porn and smart-ass cartoons.

Luckily for all involved, I don’t make porn.

Meet Officer Bob, the first in a series of titles forthcoming from Aught-Seven a cash bonfire satirical new media studio begun by myself and an enigmatic malcontent named Chris Kreb with pixel-wrangler par excellence Heather Smith.

Bob voice: yours truly (wrote it too) with art direction and animation by the lovely and talented Heather.

More titles are on their way, along with the requisite titters, chortles and yucks. Austinians: If you happen to spot Heather at SXSW Interactive this week, it’s best to not ask questions: simply offer decongestants and beer. She might favor you with a sticker…

Hello SIRS, So Long Suzanne

While it’s a shame that veteran actress Suzanne Pleshette and SIRS can’t share the planet, look at it this way: finally, another rock band!

SIRS greets the world with a poor attitude, demo recordings and a full international dance card. We’re going to have an excellent reason to have a low audience.