BloodSpell – a Creative Commons-distributed animated series

BloodSpell , described by its creators as a “punk fantasy adventure”, is innovative in a few ways. It’s an independent, feature-length animated series, for starters, made on a budget of less than $10,000 (where conventional animated feature films would cost more like $100,000,000). It’s made using Machinima technology, and shot using an invisible badger as a cameraman. And, despite the fact it’s being produced by a professional production company, Strange Company, it’s being released under a Creative Commons license, free for the download.

The creators are quite fervent about CC and Open models from a business persepective – a rant on the site says

“There’s no evidence to show that non-commercial “piracy” hurts artists’ incomes.

(And don’t get me started on the term “piracy”. Piracy is finding some innocent family or trawler crew, threatening them with guns, forcibly boarding their boat, terrorising them, stealing their goods, and murdering them. It’s not copying a f—ing CD.).

I’m more interested in people being able to watch our movies than in making scads of money off them. But people like my friend Charlie Stross have shown that it’s perfectly possible to put work out under Creative Commons and still make – a lot of – money.

I want people to be able to show my movie to their friends. I want them to be able to make music videos from it, or fan-fiction, or whatever. If they’re doing that, they’re talking about our work, they’re getting their friends involved in it, they’re spending time in our universe.

I don’t know what kind of crack you have to be on to regard that as “abuse” rather than, say, “people liking our stuff”, or indeed “free advertising”. Whatever it is, they don’t sell it round here. “

Check it out at http://www.bloodspell.com.

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