Line Rider: It has been said that, once you experience Line Rider, “you will never get any actual work done on a computer ever again …” About a week ago, one of our Visionary Editors, Angela Dalton, introduced us to Line Rider, suggesting first that we view the “movies” made with Line Rider and then attempt to use it ourselves. We did so, and now we invite you to do so as well: http://official-linerider.com/play.html.
As with the work of silent film comedy masters like Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, Line Rider seems simple and yet its movies thrill the audience on many levels.However, unlike great silent film comedy and possible only in online media, you can be Chaplin, Keaton, or Lloyd by using Line Rider to thrill the audience.
When our awe subsided slightly, we hunted down our Visionary Editor of the Frontier (“VEF”), David Harrison. We typically bring VEF our freshest discovery; usually, he has not only seen it already, but he knows features and advancements about our discovery completely unknown to us! Once again he was well ahead of us: VEF was a passionate Line Rider enthusiast, and, so, he directed us to www.linerider.org for the most spectacular collection of Line Rider movies we have ever seen. Here you will see the new Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd!
Scooped again by VEF, we asked him when and where he learned about Line Rider, and he said that it was about a month ago, mid December, from “some guy working in a Ventura (California) bike (bicycle) shop …”
The timing of Line Rider seemed … well, odd. So, we ran the traffic figures on the official Line Rider site, and we found that, while it appeared on www.alexa.com back in October 2006, the traffic to the site experienced a dramatic vertical spike in mid December, then dropped off, and spiked again about a week ago, precisely parallel to when VEF and we learned about it.
Even more puzzling is that the Line Rider Theater discussed above, www.linerider.org, appears on Alexa for nearly all of 2006 and with peaks and valleys of significant traffic from mid-October a full two months before the whiplash vertical spike of the official Line Rider site itself!
We would predict: first the official site would find its audience and then the theater site would grow from the former. Incorrect. And, what to conclude from the fact that both our Visionary Editors connected with Line Rider at the peaks of the official site’s recent spikes? Unclear.
We will predict that Line Rider is and will continue to be a very influential, perhaps even classic, work in the emergence of online artistry.
Burning Shorts, Year One.
Mission: Present and Predict.
Present: finest entertainment online video, which video also
Predict: proved to be mass media hits
Results: 100% successful.
Now that we have made that point …
“I’m always late for school cause your Moms drive slow … oooohhh …”
–Strong Bad, HomeStarRunner.
We celebrate in this New Year’s Issue an established online masterpiece, Home Star Runner. Home Star Runner is an online Flash animated site with linear and post-linear features. It is creatively both multi-dimensional and organically whole.
We have adored this work for years.
For those who love this work, give yourself a New Year’s treat and visit again. For those who will love this site, we urge you to visit Strong Bad’s Emails, a feature which wondrously defies description and will make you laugh with joy. http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html
Consider: Just this single feature of the work contains two hundred Strong Bad Email Cartoons!
We urge you to start at the top and go …
No. Unlike our beloved Lonelygirl15, Home Star Runner did not occupy the cover of December’s Wired Magazine.
Yet, what a great way to start the New Year: with gratitude for the enduring and expanding artistic masterwork of Home Star Runner …
