Apr 1, 2008 02:20 PM
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San Francisco, 2:29 PM
Tue Feb 9
27 posts in the last 24 hours
On Friday, I posted about a series of mysterious UFO pictures that have been circulating on the internet, suggesting they were part of a viral marketing campaign. Many commenters said the UFOs were the work of one Kris Avery, a 3D graphic artist who made a music video for Drone filled with images of the spiny ships. So I wrote to Avery to get to the bottom of the mystery, but his response only made the images more mysterious. Apparently, he did do the music video but he did not create the pictures of the UFOs. He based his video on images he'd seen online in UFO enthusiast forums. He actually made the video to prove to "believers" that the original images could have been faked with CGI. And now he's been accused of creating them as a viral marketing campaign. Here's his weird story.
Avery writes:
The videos I created, which eventually culminated into the music video for 'Drone' the musician are all inspired by the original photos. I myself am totally unsure as to the origin of the images beyond what I already known.. i.e. anonymous witnesses . . .So now we know that Avery didn't make the original images, and that he wishes that he was as good a viral marketer as the person was who actually did create them. And, by the way, he's working on another Drone music video — this time, without UFOs!Since then, I have been accused of being the originator of the whole drone saga, and the photos were in fact just a viral campaign to promote the eventual video. This is definitely NOT the truth. In a way, I wish it had been, because that would make me some kind of viral genius, and I'd be in completely the wrong job lol.
I was involved in the discussions on OMF, Alien casebook, and other places for months, and the whole thing just reached a real frustrating deadlock between the believers and the non believers.. or real/hoax argument. I'd made my point until I was blue in the face, and was met by people telling me that the CG I had created was no where near as good as what was being shown in the photos. So I knuckled down and set out to create a video and images that would shut them up. So really, it is the very people who refused to believe CG was capable of creating the images that pushed me on . . .
It is bizarre really. I'm not sure what people think I am, but honestly, I am just a normal guy who does 3D graphics for a living. I pay my bills, have a girlfriend, a dog, and am currently looking at doing a bit of decorating around the house.
This leaves us with the still-burning question: Whose viral marketing campaign is this? And what are they trying to sell us?
Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.
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