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Like many owners of Sony’s Plasystation Portable (PSP), Paco Allen originally purchased the device because of its promise to be much more than the Next Big Thing in handheld video gaming. The PSP can store photos, play movies and MP3s, and connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. “The possibilities seemed endless,” said Allen, “but it became evident pretty early on that commercial content providers were not going to fully exploit the potential of the device.” So Allen decided to do something about it, founding an independent comic book publishing house and producing the first full-length graphic novel for the PSP platform. San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) October 4, 2005 -- Like many owners of Sony’s massively popular Playstation Portable (PSP), Paco Allen originally purchased the device because of its promise to be much more than the Next Big Thing in handheld video gaming. The PSP can store photos, play movies and MP3s, and connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. “The possibilities seemed endless,” said Allen, “but it became evident pretty early on that commercial content providers were not going to step up to the plate and fully exploit the potential of the device.” So Allen decided to do something about it, founding an independent comic book publishing house called 42 Ninjas with his brother Chad Allen, and setting out to produce the first full-length graphic novel for the PSP platform. The first issue of NCY2123:Dayender, a cyberpunk-themed sci-fi story illustrated in a stark black-and-white style, was released on August 15th at www.nyc2123.com. The second issue was released on September 26th, and four more issues are planned for this year. The comic is available free of charge, and to date over 30,000 readers have downloaded the first issue of NYC2123 to their PSPs or viewed it online. “Within the first two days, we had to upgrade our server to handle the number of downloads,” said Paco Allen. “The response was far beyond what we expected. There’s clearly a demand for this kind of content, not only among PSP owners, but among the millions of other users who own handheld multimedia devices such as PDAs and smart phones. It’s amazing to us that magazine publishers and major comic book players like DC and Marvel haven’t jumped on this opportunity.” NYC2123 has also received widespread critical praise. Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow reviewed NYC2123 for the popular blog BoingBoing.net, writing, “The story is a sweet little hard-boiled post-apocalyptic cyberpunk thing. It reads like [William Gibson’s Neuromancer with less flash and more computer-savvy. I'll certainly come back for the next episode.” C|Net’s UK website called NCY2123 “a gritty futuristic graphic novel that's wonderful to behold in handheld form,” and the Calgary Sun proclaimed, “Video gamers and comic fans can unite at last.” NYC2123 is also the first digital comic book to be released under a Creative Commons license. This license is a less-restrictive version of traditional copyright protections, and allows other artists and writers to manipulate the work and redistribute it non-commercially. “We’ve opened up the content to digital artists as something they can remix, sample or mash-up to create entirely new works.” said Chad Allen. “The first issue has already been translated into German, and there are French and Japanese translations on the way. These are independent efforts undertaken by fans of NYC2123, and are made possible by the fact that we’ve released the original, high-resolution artwork under a license that allows anyone to take that art and use it in their own creations.” NYC2123 itself was designed and illustrated using a variety of digital sampling and re-mixing techniques. “Each frame of the book is a digital composite of photos we took of actors and background scenes,” said Paco Allen. “We then illustrated over these composite scenes in Photoshop and Flash to produce the final product.” About 42 Ninjas Productions: 42 Ninjas was formed by brothers Paco and Chad Allen in 2004 to explore methods for bringing conventional art forms (like the graphic novel) to cutting-edge digital multimedia platforms. Paco Allen is an illustrator based in San Francisco, CA. Chad Allen is a writer based in New York, NY. For more information contact Chad Allen at (917) 575-8974, Paco Allen at (650) 520-9955. Contact: Chad Allen Co-Founder 42 Ninjas Productions Phone: (917) 575-8974 FAX: (212) 202-4405
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