━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EXPLAINING FREE SOFTWARE ANIMATIONS Christopher Allan Webber ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Table of Contents ───────────────── 1 Braindump .. 1.1 Rationale and general plan .. 1.2 The general action plan .. 1.3 Visual and narrative style .. 1.4 Animation one: What is Free Software? (and the four freedoms) ..... 1.4.1 Rough concept .. 1.5 Potential followup animations ..... 1.5.1 Explaining issues of DRM ..... 1.5.2 Explaining copyleft .. 1.6 Some additional technical notes 2 Tasks .. 2.1 TODO Braindump what this all means .. 2.2 TODO Send to the FSF .. 2.3 TODO Funding .. 2.4 TODO Setting up 1 Braindump ═══════════ 1.1 Rationale and general plan ────────────────────────────── • Free software as a social movement has strong, philosophical foundations • Problem: those foundations mostly understood only by hackers and academics • RMS's essays explain things clearly and coherently, but are somewhat impenetrable to the general public • Could be blamed on short attention span of general public, but I think different than that: essays take time to digest, and require general understanding of the domain of software • If free software is really about user freedom, it should be about more than just hackers, and so we need to explain things to a general public • Why short animations? • We can reduce "time to comprehension" by producing both clear narrative and accompanying visual metaphors • Video is a medium that can be consumed somewhat passively • That doesn't mean having to reduce substance of message • See also: the MediaGoblin crowdfunding animation: done specifically with this in mind, particularly (but not exclusively) the network animations Also: I would strongly, strongly recommend we make the film CC BY-SA and publish all .blend files publicly. 1.2 The general action plan ─────────────────────────── Produce single animation (with intention of possibly producing more in future depending on success of first) that explains free software within the scope of the four freedoms. Plan: work with/hire animators from Blender community, try to hire artists; it's a community that understands well both free software and producing messaging. • Phase one: planning • General structure of animation agreed upon • Produce rough script • Draft general look and feel • Secure funding for animation • Find film team • Phase two: pre-production • Revise script in conjunction with film team and FSF • Produce draft storyboard • Produce storyreel with draft audio • Create "baseline" of characters and style tests used for film • Finalize script and storyreel, get sign-off all around. (Avoid changing script after this point!) • Phase three: production • Finalize look and feel • Animation of film begins • Finalize voice recordings • Complete animation • Phase four: finalizing • Messaging *about* film produced • Film published • Artists paid (or maybe paid already! ;)) 1.3 Visual and narrative style ────────────────────────────── I'm flexible on the end result of this, but my initial thoughts for this are that the visual style should be designed with several key ideas in mind: • It should be minimal yet aesthetically pleasing. The imagery is there to "back up" the messaging. • The style should be designed with the intent that there may be several films made in such a series. Hopefully we can make some designs and rigs that are reusable, but which some adjustments to individual characters can be made easily without too much effort. • Probably, something stick-figure-ish • I find these general styles to be inspiring: • The general style of [http://sadpicturesforchildren.com/] (not the ones with the entirely blocked-in characters, but the ones in the style of: [http://sadpicturesforchildren.com/324/] ) (also, not as in terms of content, but as in terms of minimalism of stick figure form while still being aesthetically appealing) • maybe even more so this guestcomic edition [http://sadpicturesforchildren.com/204/] • The "Moblin 2.0" animation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsCpIeLLoT8] (NOT the Meego style, I think those are really strange looking) • From [http://dustycloud.org/tmp/stormcloud_site_data.tar.gz] see images in gfx/ • Very minimal texturing, simple-looking materials • ("stick figure 2d, immersed in 3d"??) Animations should play to "illustrate" the main point being explained by audio narrative, not for their own sake. I think it is very important that narration should be done by a feminine voice for diversity reasons. Audio should be something instrumental, ambient, background-ish. 1.4 Animation one: What is Free Software? (and the four freedoms) ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1.4.1 Rough concept ╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌ • Animation starts out explaining that this is about free software, says literal definition • Explains four freedoms, each one with a visual metaphor As for visual metaphor, I think the easiest thing to do is to show something possibly around some sort of abstracted machinery being run, copied, modified, distributed. There's a possible pitfall to this: one of the issues free software messaging fights often is the idea that software and data are *not* like physical things, in that there can be an infinite number of them made, unlike physical objects. However, I think that distinction could be worked into the visual and audio narrative to make that clear. (Insert joke about 3d printing making copying physical objects from data here ;)) I actually visualize this as in terms of there being characters that are gesturing towards the abstracted imagery, which is copied / modified / etc. (As possible heresy, it may be easiest to explain the four freedoms out of order… It may be easiest to demonstrate and explain as users turning on and operating the abstracted machines, copying them, modifying them, and distributing modified copies.) Example possible imagery: • Running: "user" gestures, the machine turns on, does something interesting • Copy: explaination that since it isn't like physical things, we can make as many copies as we want, and with free software, that's one of the main ideas. user gesture, machine glows and duplicates, gestures, machine passes over to friend • Modify: explaination that software is built on source code, with free software everyone has the right to modify software to their needs (or pay/work with others to do so). With gesture, machine "disassembles" into a cloud of gears, etc, various gesturing, new pieces added, another gesture, it rearranges back into the machine, which transforms with some obvious modification (grows robot legs? who knows) • Distribute modified versions: the new, modified version is glow-copied over to another friend who is excited to get it. At some point in the imagery, there should be an explained contrast to the continued lockdown, whatever. 1.5 Potential followup animations ───────────────────────────────── 1.5.1 Explaining issues of DRM ╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌ 1.5.2 Explaining copyleft ╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌ 1.6 Some additional technical notes ─────────────────────────────────── Probably use git and git-annex. Full repository made public later. How much to store in git, vs how much in git-annex? 2 Tasks ═══════ 2.1 TODO Braindump what this all means ────────────────────────────────────── Okay, so general structure. 2.2 TODO Send to the FSF ──────────────────────── 2.3 TODO Funding ──────────────── John thinks this is likely grant fundable? 2.4 TODO Setting up ───────────────────