Words of Wisdom: The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama (Mr. Lama to you!) is back with some kick ass styles to slap down those mother hubbards who've been calling him a pussy for the last 74 years. 

Machinarium, Beautiful New Game by Amanita Design

In true Video Wall tradition I don't normally post videos up on their own (You're too busy for that nonsense!), but this needs savouring. Machinarium is a beautiful new Flash animated computer game brought to us by Amanita Design. I don't really waste much time playing computer games anymore but I'd happily sit in front of this for hours I think - Just as long there's no overblown loading times. Clicky, Clicky Mr. Close Button.

Mmmm... suck it in.

Fair Trade on XtraNormal.com

Louis stumbled across animation site XtraNormal the other day, and I'm already hooked. It's a pretty powerful online animation tool that lets you make your own animated films without so much as a clue of how to animate. All you have to do is pick a setting, pick some characters, and type in a script for them to read out. I had a play with it by putting one of our sketches called Fair Trade into the system, you can see the results here:

The only downsides are the robotic voices, but to be fair, they aren't that bad. It isn't likely to be free for long, so get your creative juices flowing soon.

The Birth of Easter

Happy Easter! Here's an artist's impression of how it probably started.

Need to write a story fast? Use Frankenstory

Using Frankenstory you can create a sort of blind story writing tennis match. You write 40 words, of which the next contributor can only read the last few words. When you've done 4 entries you have your story.

Ian served up the first 40 words, which ended with:

"...the park and before he knew it something terrible happened."

I accidentally lost the rest of it due to me serving it onto Tom (you can't play tennis in three's apparently) so here's how the rest went:

... St Mary's apple orchard had vanished. What was left? Biscuit crumbs. Tons of the stuff. This was the work of Fat keith. 'No more cider for Jack', he weeped as he sprinted full pace with his hands failing towards the devastation. The child wept as the chilling events unfolded before him, surely that old woman couldn't have been right? The blind man, the prostitute and the ferrel child scrambled for the last rust encrusted wrench.. Only one would be beaten to death. The sky gods turned their eyes away in disgust. There was no fight. There was no picnic. Just appalling rust induced hugging. 'What hope can there be if they can not learn to hate properly?' said Hovis the God of Elasticity. He backed off momentarily, catching his breath before allowing the last remnants of blood to dribble down his chin. He should have know all along, who else but Eamonn Holmes could have done this? He held his shins praying for death.

THE END

You can get to Frankenstory here: http://frankenstory.com/stories/34ac7a0f

A Bit of Light-Hearted, Feel-Good Melancholy

Tom's decided to take that depressing old song, Needle in the Hay by Elliot Smith, and spruced it up with some feel-good melancholy.

You can watch it in HD (well, bigger) here.

If you've never heard of this song or you want to see it in possibly its best context, here's a clip from The Royal Tenenbaums.