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DIY Days In Los Angeles, Story Telling, Possible New LOVELAND Characters: The Inspector & The Hater?

On the 19th I’ll be in Los Angeles to talk about LOVELAND at the DIY Days conference. Lance Weiler who’s co-organizing the event reached out about the project and just gave LOVELAND a nice little write-up in Filmmaker Magazine as an innovative startup approach. I feel in very good company here. (Fun inchvestor fact: I traded Bre Pettis from MakerBot—mentioned in the article—10 inches for a freshly screened MakerBot shirt and hope to see people making use of their 3D printers for LOVELAND.)

Talking to Lance and getting ready to share ideas and experiences with a conference full of filmmakers and storytellers is getting me really excited. I have a dream for LOVELAND that it develops into a whole story universe of characters and things and places and games, with a narrative driven by stuff that actually happen during the course of the project — things that happen with inchvestors, on the property, in Detroit, in the world.

The development of the first parts of this story universe are happening organically alongside the development of the rest of the project. Sometimes for shorthand I say I want to do things that are “1/2 Disney, 1/2 Google, and 1/2 something else”, which to my mind means something with characters and magic and entertainment, along with a strong online component where people engage and interact with LOVELAND through software tools, along with…whatever crazy stuff happens. :) 

LOVELAND story and characters have been on my mind as I think about how to introduce it to a broader audience in a way that’s fun and inviting enough to really attract and engage people.

For those who’ve been following along, Inchy, the main character (or characters plural — I like that there can be a lot of him) jumping around above with his deed and magnifying glass, is a recognizable figure, sort of our Mickey Mouse. I want to keep developing him, figuring out why he’s here, what he’s doing, how he works. If you’ve seen the last couple videos (1, 2), you’ve seen him have one main experience so far: teleporting from the Plymouth colony and getting smashed across the city by a zombie robot. I don’t know exactly where that fits in or what’s going to happen to him next yet, but it should be fun to follow, because it’s definitely fun to work on.

Yesterday I read a fascinating article about Mickey Mouse getting a makeover for the first time in a loooong time. Check it out. One of many interesting truths here:

Keeping cartoon characters trapped in amber is one of the surest routes to irrelevancy. While Mickey remains a superstar in many homes, particularly overseas, his static nature has resulted in a generation of Americans — the one that grew up with Nickelodeon and Pixar — that knows him, but may not love him.

Maybe Inchy and Mickey should hang out? That would be cool to make. :)

In brainstorming characters yesterday, two leapt to mind that I think could add a lot, and that might start showing up in videos and other places: The Inspector and The Hater. 

A couple weeks ago I bought this sculpture from local artist Jack Spack and asked if I could modify it and use it as a character. He said, Sure! So I’m going to play with tweaking this tall, lanky, mechanical dude made from piano parts and try and make a character called The Inspector:

Basically, The Inspector will be a property inspector that works for the city of Detroit who’s going about his business checking things out, making sure stuff is up to code, when he stumbles across LOVELAND, meets Inchy, and flips out because he’s never seen anything like it before, so many little plots of land for so many people. His bureaucratic mind goes wild, but he ultimately likes what he sees and becomes The Inchspector, focused on keeping LOVELAND safe and protected.

The Hater comes to mind as a dude who simply HATES EVERYTHING ABOUT LOVELAND. He hates it! He hates me, he hates Inchy, he hates all the inchvestors, and he loves saying so. When I started thinking from the point of view of The Hater, it’s just very cathartic to intentionally include an element of criticism and dissent and self-effacement in the storyline. It’s funny, but the model I’m attracted to for The Hater is the vintage 1997 battle rapping Eminem who laughs to the beat and attacks people in clever, angry short bursts (note: there are some four letter words in the vid):

I don’t know if The Hater will rap, but if any rappers out there are reading this, get in touch. :) And any artists generally. If you want to help work a story universe of character art and videos get in touch. For serious.

Anyway, as they say in France it’s le all up in the air. Back to the drawing board!

Don't Fake The Funk On A Nasty Inch + Setting Up The Store +++

In the next few hours round 4 of LOVELAND inchvestment on Kickstarter will come to a close. I set a goal of 576 inches (4 square feet) which takes us to over 5,000 inches, more than half of Plymouth, the first LOVELAND colony. At the end of a round it’s always fun to see who’ll come in with the last inchvestment to put things over the top. I’ve started to call this “breaking the backboard” ala vintage Shaq:

The inchvestor that broke the backboard this time was 3rd Ward, an awesome creative space in Brooklyn where my friends and I used to have an office, and which the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit reminds me a lot of. In backboard breaking history, Eric broke the backboard on round 1, Sven got round 2, and Mike Hedge took round 3. But they did it on the shoulders of other giant inchvestors. Welcome everybody!

So now… I’ve got a lot of work to do that I’m piecing through with the big fluffy spiritual goal of making things clearer and funner and better and bigger and more incheractive. First I want to get a proper online store up ASAP. I’m going to use Shopify for this which lets me list multiple products and inch packages and allows people to pay using PayPal or Google Checkout. Here’s a little screenshot of the work in progress:

To avoid inchvestment downtown I’ll probably put up another quick Kickstarter with a fun little goal since they may take a few days. If anyone wants to help beta test the draft store lemme know! I could use some real feedback. The harder to please you are, the better.

I’m looking for an outdoor wireless web streaming camera that can show the property live but I don’t have a great solution for that yet. Any ideas? Do we need to set up some solar power for this?

The deeds and shirts are in progress. The first deed printing should start over the weekend but the magnifying glasses will still be a week to arrive (coming from a small company). Pierce is almost done with the shirt which I’ve decided to try printing through Spreadshirt after considering the pros and cons.

I’ve storyboarded the bones of the next LOVELAND video that recaps the project so far, shows footage from the auction where I bought our property, announces and asks for a few things, and has a scene that turns the whole city of Detroit into a giant casino slot machine thinger signifying the high levels of chance and uncertainty in pretty much every single step along the way here. Ha. Too true. :)

I also *still* need to clean up the inchvestor database so I can make that public, and I’ve been stuck on trying to do it in a clear fun way that shows progress, quantity of space and people, and some unlockable goals. That might just be way too much for me to try and do. I’ve got a lot of notes and sketches, but I can’t really program anything so I’ll have to put out a request for help.

Developer friends, please save me from crazy looking static sketches like these and lets make some interactive graphics that change and progress as people inchvest.

Doing all this stuff, I’m stumbling upon a bunch of neat ideas, potentially very powerful, for animating contributions to projects that I can see being applied to different sorts of fundraising and collective goals.

More soon. Thanks everybody! Here we goes again…

Happy Hallowinch! I Got A Rock vs I Gotta Rock, Making Messy Inchscapes

Happy Halloween from LOVELAND, Detroit! This is about as far as I got on a pumpkin this year. Oh hey dere lil guy. Not very scary, but fear is overrated:

I’m sad that the music video for my favorite Halloween video seems to be taken down everywhere but here’s audio of Kid Koala turning Charlie Brown’s “I got a rock :(” Halloween moment into “I gotta rock! :)” [UPDATE: Ugh, and it looks like it only lets me post 30 seconds of it here — you’re a jerk, internet, a real jerk.]

Tricks and Treats - Kid Koala

Yesterday I went to Home Depot and got some supplies for making LOVELAND artifacts, mostly square inch and square foot tiles. I dug up some dirt from Recovery — the first inchvestor property in Detroit — and experimented with gluing it to the tiles, seeing how real physical simulations of the property look as art works or souvenirs or tiny coasters or trays or landscapes however you want to think about them.

The square inches are pretty easy and look pretty cute, but I got into trouble with the square feet. A beautiful mess in progress:

Egad, Batman, it’s a sloppy Detroit Pollock earth pizza with extra Elmer’s!

And then Mary threw a ball into it and it fell on the floor:

As Kelly danced past the door:

Picture something like this:

But it’s like the shirt says, hunting is everything:

If you spend enough time in the forest you catch your shiz eventually. Now go eat some candy. Onward!

onesquareinch "More Than An Artist Would Think Affordable"

Oh man, this cracked me up. Forget about the value of one square inch, what about the value of onesquareinch.com! Why’s it gotta be like THAT???

Thank You, Inchvestors! I Be Lovin You More Every Day (Can't Stop Now)

First, thanks to Matt Daly, a friend and LOVELAND inchvestor (now his mom too!) who snapped the pic and introduced me to this Major Lazer song while driving around exploring some spots in Detroit. As they say in France, it’s le apropos and stuff.

I just made an update on all the Kickstarter rounds thanking everybody for believing and supporting and inchvesting in the project from a very early stage so far. It talks about how this Kickstarter round will be the last one before I open up a proper web store (and start trying some retail!):

We’ve got 6 days to move 550 more inches in the current round:http://bit.ly/1LqxVi then I’m going to use that money to buy a camera and figure out a streaming video solution for our first property, and move from there. If you want to support that and get more space or if you have friend’s who’ll be into this project, by all means spread the love!

After this round I’m going to open up a store on http://makeloveland.comwhere people can purchase inches and other LOVELAND stuffs at any time (claimed inches, physical inches of dirt from the property, paper deeds and magnifying glasses, and shirts to start with — the shirts and deeds will be on their way soon, things got a little spun in the forest of possible printing solutions). Also after this round we’ll be more than 1/2 way through the Plymouth colony, with a real property to move into, and it’s time to open up to the world more and make some changes that reflect that.

Thank you all so much for being a part of the Kickstarting process. Over the last few months…well, I’ll spare you the speech. It’s been awesome. And you know me, I’m crazy enough to keep doing this until it’s a phenomenon far beyond my control where you’ll all be saying, “ZOMG I was in LOVELAND back when it was on Kickstarter! I was IN PLYMOUTH!!!” And then we will all clink our glasses to history and drink them down to the road ahead.

Oh, I also just started a Google Group that’s going to replace the mailing list as a place for announcements and where we can all squwawk together if you want to join: http://groups.google.com/group/loveland-inchvestors .

Doing my best to create ever more value for your inchvestments,

Jerry Paffendorf 
908-343-1981

PS Attached here is little thank you postcard with Inchy and Inchured Inchy. If you haven’t seen Inchy’s scuffle with the robot zombie from Zug Island, they’re the two top videos currently on http://makeloveland.com . They also show Plymouth (the taped grid) and Recovery (the first property I just bought for us).

Thanks so much, everybody (even the lurkers — what are you waiting for! :)). Here we go. And I be lovin you more tomorrow. I won’t stop.

Crazy Crafts At The Degenerate Craft Fair, Time To Productize

Last month my friend Amy Wilson suggested we get some store space in December to sell our work and showcase our projects. Amy rolled up her sleeves in New York and set up the Degenerate Craft Fair (“artist-made gifts and holiday fun”). While I do not see myself as a degenerate, opinions on the matter do vary, and I’m very happy to announce Crazy Company’s co-sponsorship of the fair along with our friends at Kickstarter. 

There are three great and varied locations the fair will be appearing at starting December 4th then scattered across the month: Silent Barn in Ridgewood, the 303 Grand pop-up store in Williamsburg, and BravinLee Programs in Manhattan.

I’ll be there selling dollar square inches of LOVELAND, Detroit which is a huge prompt to productize the property with tangible giveaways, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but have missed while running around like a hypnotized chicken planning, learning, doing life stuff and getting other things in order. There are already square inch paper deeds with plastic magnifying glasses in the works, and the shirts should be ready pretty soon but there will be more.

One of the things I want to do this week is get a whole bunch of square inch tiles and square foot tiles and paste dirt from the property on them. Now, this could look either very attractive/interesting/cute or very ugly. I’ll post some pics as I experiment. But the idea is to package them as physical takeaways of your land, in actual land form.

I’m sure there’ll be some other surprises too and what not, and that’s just me. There’ll be a bunch of cool people with cool art and stuff so you should plan to do some New York Christmas shopping with us. I’m also trying to set up a couple in-person retail spots in Detroit and I’ll let you know what I find here.

Remember: INCHES IN DETROIT MAKE THE BEST STOCKING STUFFERS EV-AR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Merry Inchmas, everybody.

Inching Towards Augmented Real Estate: Recovery Video, Layering With Friends

Salright! Just in time for a new little week, here’s a new little video premonition picking up where the last one left off and showing the Recovery Colony property where I want to start setting up some augmented reality incheractivity for inchvestors:

LOVELAND Premonition 2: “When We Last See Our Hero” / Augmented Reality For The Recovery Colony from Jerry Paffendorf on Vimeo.

On my ever growing list of things to do I really need to focus on inch sales again. We need money in order to set up and transform the new property, and I’m completely cash-jammed. All help in getting the word out is greatly appreciated. Here’s the current Kickstarter round of inches. Let’s do awesome things!!

As new twists to the project rear their head I want to triply thank all my friends and inchvestors who’ve been brainstorming with me, doing things, and giving advice. <3. To that end, I was very happy to spend quality time with my friend Matt Daly who came to Detroit and visited Plymouth, pictured here pondering his plot. Hmmm……. :)

We went exploring around the city some and I finally download the Layar augmented reality app for my iPhone, which got me more excited for adding some AR to LOVELAND sooner than later. It uses the phone’s GPS and compass to tell you what’s around as you look through the camera in realtime, and simply seeing graphical overlays like that is exciting. Here I am testing it on the Ambassador Bridge, and their story checks out:

Cris stands between me and Hittsville USA:

Joe blocks me from the Detroit Olympia:

Matt’s boot is the only thing stopping me from Wayne State University:

And Lando is cool where he is:

Onward to Recovery, and what layers may come.