Roko's Labyrinth - free to download Dec 16, 17, 18

My SciFi novella Roko's Labyrinth is free on Amazon Kindle or Kindle Unlimited on December 16th, 17th, and 18th.

The story is set in a broken world, a post-AI time when the struggle for who will control the future, the machines or humankind will be decided by an unlikely hero.

The Kindle app works on all devices and it's a great help to indie authors to climb the Amazon charts with free downloads. Please grab a copy and tell your friends. Or I'll tell Santa on you.

https://www.amazon.com/Rokos-Labyrinth-Michael-Blackbourn-ebook/dp/B01J34SUSW/

Winter wonderland

The other morning I shot a couple great pics with my cell phone while waiting for road crews to plow and salt

I had to wait a short walk from a beach and so I out I went to the shoreline and shot the snow blanketed seascape.

I really like how the contrast of the snow against the shoreline and dark wood of the trees came through. Especially considering these are color photographs.

The following morning had already melted the snow from the rocks, making this particular view a fleeting one that I was lucky to capture.

BMW films

So over the summer I was fortunate enough to work on the new BMW short film by Neill Blomkamp.

It features a helicopter that gets a rough treatment by an concrete overpass as Clive Owen takes it for a spin. For the sequence we created a CG helicopter and digital doubles of two of the actors, one of them the bearded version of The Punisher from Daredevil,.

Check it out, it's a fun ride from start to finish!

http://bmwfilms.com/film

Great review of Roko's Basilisk

Great review of Roko's Basilisk. Captures why I wrote it, to tell a ghost story for gen-internet. One that, should we create advanced AI, could be true!

Summoning your own savior is not for the faint of heart.

https://intothedragonscave.blogspot.ca/2016/08/rokos-basilisk-random-encounters-16.html

Short story cover reveal

Here they are... The covers for my pair of short stories / novellas about Roko Kasun, a genius AI programmer and the consequences he faces by being the architect of a super-intelligent machine mind.

Both are 0.99$ on Amazon Kindle or free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. Click here for the link to Basilisk. The link to Labyrinth is also now live: Labyrinth

Each story is its own little twilight-zone style contained episode. You really don't need to read one, then the other. But you can. And you should!

Hit me up on twitter and let me know what you thought. Take me to Michael's Twitter Page, Now!

An amazing review of Roko's Basilisk

An amazing review of my short story Roko's Basilisk. Honestly I'm stunned by the praise.

Link to the blog post:
http://www.otherworldsthanthese.co.uk/rokos-basilisk-review/

https://twitter.com/otherworldsblog/status/737023376611520512

MockingJay 2 VFX breakdown

Here is the breakdowns (behind the scenes) for the work we did at The Embassy for MockingJay 2.

http://www.artofvfx.com/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-2-vfx-breakdown-by-the-embassy/

Work in progress cover

This is for a short story I'll be publishing soon. It's the first of (at least) 2 stories about the rise of AI, and how it effects the people close to the event.

Nissan Commercial for the SuperBowl

Here is a Nissan Canada commercial we did for the Super Bowl.

It was a lot of fun to work on and the team did a great job with the rock monsters and mud monsters. I hope we get more work like this in the future.

Enjoy!

Update

I've been quiet on here for the last little while. It was a busy end of year 2015 and that took my focus off my writing for a bit. I'm getting back into my two short stories I've been trying to finish and will hopefully have them all finished in the next month or two. Everything takes longer than I usually.

The first of the two sorts is basically done. It's the second that needs another big pass of editing to polish it up.

I worked on three big projects at work in 2015. Mocking Jay part 2, Disney Playmation, and the 5th wave. I learned a lot on all three and still feel incredibly fortunate that my job is to create fantastic images that tell stories on the big screen (Or small screen in the case of Playmation). But we approach advertising weather its on the web or TV with the same passion we do with our film work.