Somebody at Stealthunit posted a thing called the Garfield Randomizer. Here’s a short explanation as to what it is:
..so this guy noticed that Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. He got a cease and desist letter. So he made the code available for people who wanted to try it for themselves. Here we go!
It’s addictive and a lot of fun. For example, here’s one that I cooked up in just a few minutes:
Not that good, but it shows the potential of this thing. Garfield comics ARE surprisingly modular, and it doesn’t take long to cook up a funny and sensible strip.
So what has this got to do with crowdsourcing? For one, the Garfield Randomizer is a great and fun tool for people to play with and express themselves. It’s incredibly viral. Hell, I’ve sent the link to a number of friends already and together we made a bunch of pretty darn funny comics (some of which were raunchy, I’ll freely admit). If I were Garfield’s publisher, instead of sending a cease and desist letter I would take the Garfield Randomizer right away and put it up somewhere and have people create their own comics – and share them! Imagine, a voting and commenting system for the best strips which could eventually be gathered into a book which people could buy. And the thing is, if the publisher were in control of this randomizer, they could offer links to the original strips from which the individual tiles were taken, and from there offer people the opportunity to order the original comic book on Amazon, for example. And let’s be honest, if they take this one down it’ll pop up again somewhere anyway, so might as well join the fun and get some additional benefits from it.
Fantastic! I want to try a similar modulator with other comic strips
Just finishing up a thesis on crowdsourcing, I felt compelled to answer this one
Touched up a little, with enhanced sharing tools, this little app definitely would hold some promise as a viral marketing tool, since it’s incredibly easy to use and produces fun and readily shareable results that can be enjoyed in no time.
I’m not sure though that it provides enough creative freedom for ‘expressing personality’ to actually work as a fame generator (best cartoons would be rated, etc.), since there’s very little for the person to do except push the randomizer button, and the end result always reflects first and foremost the personality and creativity of Jim Davis himself (personally I think the cartoon nowadays clings to the irresistible character more than the quality of script writing; Garfield passed its heyday some twenty years ago…).
What it all comes down to anyway is the ‘Organization’ piece in the triple play of ‘Business Needs’, ‘Customer Environment’ and ‘Organizational Capabilities’: as the cease and desist letter shows, there’s no force in the marketing dept. of Garfield brand that would allow this, for it doesn’t fit with their existing mindset on how brands should be handled and guarded, which now seems to be ‘tampering with the product strictly prohibited’.
As said, I sure think Garfield could use some refreshing.