Just pressing buttons? 

Stop at any frame of a Pixar movie in the last years, now open Maya or Softimage or anything, now push some buttons, ok, almost the same right?

You also compared the Fortress game (or whatever that excellent game is called, I’m not being sarcastic it really is good) and you think a common person might believe it to be an upcoming Pixar movie after watching the trailer? 

My dear mr Green do you have eyes on your head?

I wait for a Pixar movie like a father would wait for a child, I expect them to be brilliant and to excell every time they show something to me. Not only visually, but on rythm and other lot of issues that you probably wouldn’t deserve the time spending on, understanding that you don’t have the best critical view for movies , I expect them to drive my eye for every 144000 normal amount of frames and to feel pleasure for being able to see original content in high quality for 7 bucks.

Why is it so expensive? 

Did you know that back in the time when Walt Disney was still alive he found out that there just wasn’t possible to do more high quality feature productions because there were not enough talented people in the world to do the job?

Do you know the pressure and stress people at that kind of production go through while pushing buttons just for a commom person like you to get some laughs? 
Animators strive to the point when they get hospitalized, as it happened in the end of Toy Story 2.

Good luck with 4 geek kids trying to achieve a pixar quality with their PCs, as you imagine there are thousands or millions of them trying it everyday and failing every time they do, apart a few who possibly end in a hollywood production and not at home trying to “copy” Pixar. 

You’re not paying for people to press buttons, you are paying for the best artists around every corner of the world to entertain you, it takes money to do that.

Kids and grown ups know those movies by heart, every word and every move, not because they are forced to, but because they want to.

Isn’t that amazing? 

180 million is a number.

Since I’ve discovered Plankhead, I’ve been struck by how much if it is stuff I either have already thought of and wished existed, or would have if I’d thought about it more. The alternative to corporate culture/free culture ethos, of “rebuilding” culture from the ground up (perhaps a Sissyphean task but worthwhile none the less I think), as well as the idea of essentially an artists co-op are ideas that in just the last few months I had thought of myself and thought “gee, it’d be great if someone would set up these things; artists could really benefit from support-groups.” I am, frankly, delighted that you have taken the first steps to make these things a reality, and that someone out there is more proactive with these ideas than I have been, or am able to be.

I’m currently tied up trying to raise enough funds to buy equipment for my first attempt at a documentary (recording device, a spare mic, and probably another memory card or two for the recording device thing, in addition to who knows what else will come up) so finances are rather tight. If possible, though, I’m hoping to contribute to YFIAS by July. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a support group myself, but I will try and spread the word of Plankhead to the few friends I have who would likely appreciate it. I recently told a friend of mine about it, as he has expressed interest in translation before, so there’s a chance he may attempt to translate YFIAS into Arabic and Kurdi.

Keep on keepin’ on and best wishes to you. The Jeremy Kellerman Advice Hour Archive will be at your service if at all possible; if you need a writer or some such, don’t hesitate to ask.

I can see the reasoning behind the claim that YFIAS would be a good fit for Adult Swim or even Comedy Central, but as you said, pursuing that would probably kind of defeat the whole purpose of Plankhead and YFIAS. After all, the message/goal/mission statement here is to create an alternative to the mainstream, commercialized, corporatized stuff; one might call it “off the grid art.” Somewhere on the site you mentioned creating an alternative to the consumer culture being the goal, and it stuck with me because within the last few months, as I was having one of my inner-dialogues (talking to myself) about the state of copyright and whatnot and I said something similar. I was frustrated that there seems to be so many roadblocks and restrictions to culture, and I believe the phrase that popped into my head was “If they won’t let culture be free and participatory as it should be, then I’ll make my own!” (This was probably influenced by a recent “Star Trek: The Next Generation” marathon I had, in which I noted Captain Picard encouraged Data to look at his creativity as a “culture of one.”)

I haven’t watched “Ugly Americans” enough to really get into the story, but I can see the appeal. I guess for me, for some reason, something about the show leaves me feeling a little creeped out; I can tell that there’s a lot going on with it, but something about the feel and overall aesthetic just doesn’t feel right for me.