Pixels & Pandemonium
Long live pixel art! I fell into some pixel pandemonium this week, but there was also great chaos from elsewhere!
🎧 Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you (that’s me, not AI).
Pixel Pandemonium: millions are drawing on a live digital canvas, one pixel at a time.
Curated/Cuts: A spot bursting with creativity, fun and joy from children + Tilda Swinton’s call to be weird.
Sneaky Youtube?: AI enhancements to videos without telling users.
Netflix: A big cinema weekend + AI guidelines
Creator Brands, meh? Celebrity brand flops
Bundesliga: German football’s unbundled rights reach creator channels on Youtube.
The Colour Bar- a collision of creativity, content, culture, tech and brands.
Pixel Pandemonium
I was drawn into Wplace, a live digital canvas millions are drawing on, one pixel at a time.
Launched just a few weeks ago, in late July, this deceptively simple-looking website already has more than 10 million users. What is it? A giant shared world map, on which you can drop pixels, which everyone can see. Place it anywhere you like— but you get only one pixel every 30 seconds.
That’s it. The rest is imagination, creativity… and persistence.
What it has led to is all kinds of imagery— some solo, many working collaboratively. Zoom into a major city, and it’s pixel pandemonium. I spotted game sprites, anime heroes, sports clubs, university crests, fast-food icons, train stations, national flags, pop culture characters, celebs. Some are carefully crafted mosaics, others feel like a random, joyful graffiti scrawls.
Since pixels are doled out slowly, big designs take patience, and some serious coordination. Users form groups, working for hours to form logos or build giant murals; sometimes you might need to ‘protect turf’; others could swoop in to overwrite pixels. What emerges is not always polished art, but for many, the point must be the rush of real-time creation.
The dynamics of geography, the teamwork, the tribal nature of choices— I find these fascinating. Equally, its quite something to while away many minutes hopping from one part of the globe to another. There’s a one click random locator that helps you explore; or may be you’re keen to find places that mean something to you.
Digital graffiti? Map mural? Global doodle?
Call it what you will, but it’s captivating. A mix of sheer internet chaos, collaborative focus, unpredictable creativity, and imagining a single dot become part of something larger.
Take a look, scroll around, and see what the world is doodling today?
Long live pixel art!
🎬 Curated/Cuts.
1. You go, kids!
The kids are not all zombies! Not all lost in the void of social media!
Enjoy this spot bursting with creativity, fun and the joy of watching children.
Channel 4 dropped a ‘oner’- an ambitious, energetic, action-packed one-shot trailer to promote the return of the ‘Educating Yorkshire’ series. The entire spot has been done in collaboration with students who wrote, planned and starred in it, soundtracked by the school band.
Between the single take and the distinct school and student look, there is an undeniable ‘Adolescence’ vibe here, but that crushing emotional and societal weight is replaced with a rather more celebratory feel.
Channel 4 got ‘Paddington in Peru’ director Dougal Wilson on board and conducted 12 workshops involving over 400 Yorkshire students*. “Pupils became writers and actors, photographers, voiceover artists, producers and even media buyers.”*
It’s never easy to work on such projects with kids; this one is next-level difficult, and next-level rewarding.
Director: Dougal Wilson · Director of Photography: Stuart Bentley Production Designer: Andy Kelly · Production: Blink · Corin Taylor
Music Leland Edit Final Cut VFX Untold Studios SFX MACHINESHOP Audio Post Factory
2. Be Bold, Gentle Monster
Disclaimer 1: I am not sure what to make of this.
Disclaimer 2: I am not particularly familiar with eyewear brand ‘Gentle Monster’, and its apparent penchant for theatrical, bold aesthetics.
With that out of the way, have a look at Tilda Swinton ushering a new collection for the South Korean brand.
An energetic spot; the futurist-techno-wild rave vibe could sweep you along in a heady rush, or drop you cold in bewilderment. These polarities are represented well in two viewer comments:
“5 minutes ago I didn't know you existed and rn you're the most cool brand in the world”
“I have no idea what you're advertising here”
Having said that, Swinton is someone who can carry this strange vibe of real-unreal-powerful-weird. The heaving, swinging, pulsating crowd has an unreal AI-esque feel to it, which I am less than enthused by.
But we could all do worse than to listen to the lady,
“Stand true. Stay weird. Be bold.”
Director: Mau Morgó · Production: ProdCo · DoP: Mauro Chiarello · Post: Olimpic · Sound: FactoryStudios · Music: Amnesia Scanner · Choreography: Black Haine ·
Sneaky Youtube AI
“YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without telling users or asking permission.“
The platform is altering a limited number of YouTube Shorts videos, though neither the creators nor the viewers have been told.
Irrespective of where one might be on the AI spectrum, doing this sans creator consent and informing the viewers seems to be a pretty low bar. The use of the term 'machine learning', as if this is just some mundane tweak, isn't great either. Youtube said this is “traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise and improve clarity in videos during processing.”
These kind of steps can feel sneaky, and cause an erosion of trust, even more of a concern for the creators than the platform. Viewers will assume creators are using AI without disclosure, and form their judgements accordingly.
"If I wanted this terrible over-sharpening I would have done it myself. But the bigger thing is it looks AI-generated. I think that deeply misrepresents me and what I do and my voice on the internet”
Also- why is Youtube really doing this; is it a test or some other longer play?
Or, as a YT commenter on this video said, “They can't make AI look fully real, so they're making real look AI.”
Netflix’s weekend at the cinema
Netflix going for theatrical? Rules are meant to be broken, I guess.
Their streaming hit and cultural freight train ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ found its way to the big screens. Two months after it premiered on Netflix, the streamer put the animated sensation in over 1700 cinemas in the US (and four other countries to boot) for a sing-along fan fest this past weekend, with karaoke-captioned screenings. Fans were invited to dress up, whip their phones out and film themselves singing at the top of their voices. It is an interesting reverse journey for a film to make, but not one we should expect will form a pattern for the the streamer.
Oh, also? It topped the weekend box office.
Netflix’s AI guidelines
Netflix has released some guidelines for production partners on the use of AI. The overall approach seems to be based on transparency and legal safety. The use for ideation and development and non-final assets (’temporary use’) seems straightforward to move ahead with, while other uses need to be cleared.
“We expect all production partners to share any intended use of GenAI with their Netflix contact, especially as new tools continue to emerge with different capabilities and risks,”
“if the output includes final deliverables, talent likeness, personal data, or third-party IP, written approval will be required before you proceed.”
Their proposed use case matrix ; a quick breakdown from Lucien Harriot here.
Creator Brands, meh?
We have heard for some time now on the flywheel of successful creators. Content is not enough! Make your brand, create a product, have real life experiences, expand expand expand!
Then, recently there have been a few takedowns of how creators or celeb-fronted brands have failed. Scott Van den Berg spent a week to map out the celebrity brand flops from 2024, finding that “47 brands shuttered. $450M evaporated.”
Jim Louderback’s Inside the Creator Economy touched on it too, citing it as a key takeaway from a recent summit with creators and stakeholders. “CPG Is Brutal: Unless they know better than others in the market, creators shouldn’t launch products. Beating consumer packaged goods companies is ridiculously hard.”
Sounds about right to me— successful consumer brands or products need expertise, not just great content creators. But I am curious— are creators now best served, after all, sticking to their lane and making content? Is their growth going to come from IPs and setting up studios/media brands? Is this not familiar?
Football on Youtube, latest chapter.
Amidst the headlines about creator Mark Goldbridge & The Overlap becoming UK partners with the Bundesliga for its new season, it should be noted that this unbundling still means Sky Sports will continue to air the prime fixture, and Amazon will have PPV for others.
The interesting bit is on Friday games— all matches will be live and free on BBC iPlayer and Bundesliga’s Youtube account. Additionally, 20 matches will find their way to other Youtube Channels from Goldbridge and the Overlap- ‘watch-along’, if you will.
Simulcasts across platforms- is this redundant, devaluing, or simply going wherever the audience is? The tricky bit is, both answers could apply depending on which provider you are. It can be argued this will, over time, erode value for entrenched players, which could be simultaneously true along with being a good thing for audiences.
More crucially, the POV of the sport. It is a path to continued fandom-building and not losing fans in a fragmented, attention-manic world. In the long term, will that affect revenue & profitability? Highly likely, but it would appear that many sports appear very much to be on the brink of reduced media rights revenues.
In that sense, the reluctance to hasten the reduction is understandable, but many like Roger Mitchell argue federations must move fast, or risk accelerated irrelevance. “This isn’t a fork in the road where sport (and broadcasters) can choose to maybe ignore YT. That war is LOST. There is no alternative but to engage.”
Also worth considering this is not quite the radical move from Bundesliga that it might immediately appear to be. It could as well be a reaction to tighter purse strings from their traditional partners. For their part, a positive spin on it, “Our approach is as diverse as our supporters: by combining established broadcasters with digital platforms and content creators, we are taking a progressive step in how top-level football can be experienced.
The other aspect to this? It will be a test of what kind of audience (size and passion) creators will bring in, given they do not have the highest profile fixtures. A sort of check on whether fans come for the creator or the actual sport, and which enjoys more primacy. Can these creators build the sport or only stem the slowdown on traditional?
You might recall other such deals, most notably CazeTV in Brazil with multiple FIFA deals, plus some French rugby in the UK and Saudi football in France.
has a considerably deep dive here.A growing share of reality is pre-processed by AI before it reaches us. Eventually, the question won't be whether you can tell the difference, but whether it's eroding our ties to the world around us. _Thomas Germain