Murray's Weblog

Broken Saints is Incredible

Broken Saints, which I mentioned yesterday, is pretty damned incredible! I've been wading though a lot more of the story line. The first few chapters are painfully slow, and the graphics and animation were a bit rough. But at about chapter 6 everything kicks into high gear. You can see the artists' proficiency develop rapidly, and the technical Flash engineer makes a progressive study of how to eek out every ounce of artistic potential from the medium.

There are two things I find really cool about Broken Saints. First of all is the production story. Three guys—the writer/director being my age (early thirties) and both the technical (Flash) guy and the graphic artist being in their early twenties—dedicate two-to-three years of their lives to make an artistic creation with little financing, lots of hard work, supported by the raving love of a building fan-base. It's the sort of thing I would kill for. I've had the honor of working with two brilliant artists in my life: my friend Tom during my childhood and another friend Paul in college. In my youth I had no idea how damned difficult it was to find good artists to work with.

The other thing I love is the story. This is something on the caliber of "V for Vendetta," one of my favorite graphic novels. It has a global flavor and an appreciation for different religions—including one of the heros being a Muslim freedom fighter, how daring!—that is desperately needed in today's world.

I encourage everyone to watch it (and stick with it for the first 7 chapters). It may not be for you, or it might be really thought-provoking. Personally, I'm going to keep my eye on the career of writer/director Brooke Burgess. I think he's going to be a real "up and coming" star over the next decade.

By the way, the technical advice I gave yesterday about using the Quicktime Player... it works for all but the final chapter. Although you can also use the Flash Player. My big point was: it works REALLY WELL in full-screen mode. The viewing experience is far better than running something like a tiny web-video in full-screen where everything is too blocky to discern.

Posted by Murray Todd Williams at November 17, 2004 04:48 PM