Most of the pictures on our Flickr account are now under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license. That means that from copyright viewpoint you can copy, remix & re-distribute the photos as long as it’s not for commercial purposes. They can for example used to illustrate blog posts or Wikipedia articles. Just remember that if pictures have recognisable people you should respect their privacy.

The few pics that have all rights reserved are usually pics where the photographer has given us the right to use the images, but we haven’t yet asked them if it’s okay to let people remix the images.

Why? Why not. If Peter from Northampton needs a picture of a Koala for his school presentation of animals that fail in natural selection then why not let him use the one Janos took? It’s not like we’re loosing anything. But maybe koalas win if Peter’s presentation is a bit more convincing and gets Mary to study to be a vet whose research saves those cute, fuzzy bears from extiction. Probably not though.

Have fun.

Are you interested in CGI work? Then you simply have to see this video, since there’s a work offer in there for you.

Don’t forget that there are several ways you can take part in Iron Sky! You can share your ideas in Wreckamovie, buy our merchandise, invest your money in the movie, demand to see Iron Sky in your home city – or simply spread the word about Iron Sky!

Thank you everybody for your help so far, especially in the last few weeks – hope you enjoy this video!

We took some of that footage, built a teaser out of it, and here it is!

In addition to getting new material for all of you to see, this was a valuable experiment for us: we got the look and feel of the movie nailed down and found out what works and what doesn’t in our shooting-CGI-post-production workflow. This kicks us one step closer to the beginning of the main shooting and production period of the movie.

Also, there have been rumours on the interwebs for months now, but now we’d like to make it officially known: both the soundtrack of the teaser and the finished movie is provided by a Slovenian underground heavyweight Laibach. Both Timo and I have been fans of their music for a long time, and getting to work with Laibach on Iron Sky is a great thing for us!

Did you like the teaser? If you did, remember that sharing is caring: share it on Facebook, Twitter, your favourite blogs and forums. Drop in a link to http://www.ironsky.net/demand/ and you’ll make us really happy! You can also take part in the production in Wreckamovie, or support us by buying merchandise or investing in Iron Sky!

Thank you to all of our fans and collaborators from the whole Iron Sky team! We are again one step closer to the premiere of Iron Sky!

Yesterday Steve Jobs‘ favourite gadget blog Gizmodo posted the pic. We posted it on Facebook and users dugg the article.

Once it passed 200 or so diggs it became popular and went on to the front page. That is pretty much the holy grail of traffic, bringing some 50,000 visitors to the Gizmodo during the 2½ hours an article typicallys tays on Digg’s front page. And amazingly, it didn’t even quiet down after that, but the with over 1000 Diggs the article was promoted to the “Top in all Topics” section, displayed on every page on Digg!

This morning we noticed Gizmodo had posted a follow-up article, answering one big question presented in the comments:

What if Darth Vader was a robot operated by evil hamsters?

As of today the Gizmodo article has become one of the most popular on that site and has been read almost 170,000 times, with 40,000 of those continuing on to visit our site. We weren’t expecting a traffic spike anytime soon and that lead to our site becoming unresponsive for a little while yesterday, but our host Nebula handled it quickly and the server has been holding up well since then.

There are four big lessions in this:
1) The internet is unpredictable, we didn’t get on Digg when we spent months making the Iron Sky teaser, but one picture became hugely popular.
2) Never underestimate the traffic. Optimizing websites pays off.
3) If you like Iron Sky, let it show! It’s people who click “like” or “digg” or link to our websites that make it all the more popular. And then good things happen.
4) Usually if you Photoshop hamster-controlled Darth Vader robots you are strange, but if you work for Gizmodo, it’s your job. Apparently.

So thank you to all our fans, old and new alike! You’re awesome.

Our fans came through – as we knew you would! – so here we go: this is what a Nazi UFO cockpit looks like!

A lot of thought has gone to figuring out how the Moon Nazi technology looks like. The easy solution would have been to follow the current scifi trend of holodisplays and whatnot, but frankly, it wouldn’t have been that interesting or made any sense. We’ve done a lot of research on the Nazi UFO conspiracy theories and came up with the following guideline: 1945 technology – perfected. Also, for the Nazi UFO aficionados out there: there is an instrument from a “genuine” Nazi UFO in there – can you spot it?

Anyway, feel free to post this to your favourite forum or blog, and throw in our teaser and a link to Demand to See Iron Sky for good measure!

Iron Sky -elokuvan tuotantoryhmän kesken heräsi ajatus: miksipä emme järjestäisi Iron Skyn maailman ensi-iltaa Tampereella! Eikä mitä tahansa ensi-iltaa, vaan koko viikonlopun kestävän tapahtuman, joka tuo yhteen niin scifi-faneja, elokuvantekijöitä kuin elokuviin ja uuteen mediaan keskittyneitä yrityksiä ja ammattilaisia! Tapahtuman huippukohdat lähetetään live-videona verkon yli, joten sitä voi seurata vaikka toiselta puolelta maapalloa.

Nyt sinulla, hyvä elokuvan fani, on mahdollisuus vaikuttaa suoraan Iron Skyn ensi-illan järjestämiseen! Etsimme nyt yhteistyökumppaneita, jotka auttavat meitä tekemään Iron Skyn julkaisuviikonlopusta vuoden 2011 siisteimmän kulttuuritapahtuman koko kaupungissa. Tarvitsemme tämän toteuttamiseen ehdotuksia järjestämispaikoista, sponsorirahaa ja varusteita itse tapahtuman järjestämiseen, sekä ideoita ohjelmanumeroista.

Työskenteletkö firmassa, joka saattaisi olla kiinnostunut tällaisen tapahtuman sponsoroimisesta joko rahallisesti tai muulla tavalla? Vaikutatko Pirkanmaan alueella tai onko sinulla yhteyksiä siihen suuntaan? Jos näin on, voit auttaa meitä käytännön tasolla seuraavilla tavoilla:

1) Kerro pomollesi tai kiinnostavan firman, oppilaitoksen tai muun tahon yhteistyö- ja sponsorikuvioista vastaavalle henkilölle Iron Sky -elokuvasta. Kätevä tietopaketti projektista sekä yhteystiedot löytyvät esimerkiksi pressisivuiltamme, osoitteesta http://www.ironsky.net/press/, minkä lisäksi tarjoamme yrityksille työkalupakettia sosiaalisen median käyttämiseen verkossa: http://www.ironsky.net/site/sosiaalinen-media/. Iron Sky on miljoonaluokan kansainvälinen projekti ja meillä on laaja faniyhteisö ja ykkösluokan nettinäkyvyys etenkin nuorten tekniikan edelläkävijöiden ja pop-kulttuurin harrastajien parissa. Vähimmilläänkin voimme tarjota näkyvyyttä ensi-iltatapahtumassa sekä yhteistyökumppanien listassa ja vuorovaikutusta faniemme kanssa, mutta tapauksesta ja firmasta riippuen onnistuu myös laajempi yhteistyö, kuten tuotesijoittelu elokuvassa.

2) Tutustu Wreckamovie.com-elokuvapalvelusta löytyvään ensi-iltaprojektin tehtävään ja tule mukaan pallottelemaan ideoita. Wreckamovien käyttäminen on ilmaista ja sinne voi kirjautua sisään helposti esimerkiksi omilla Facebook-tunnuksilla.

Ensi-ilta ei ole ainoa asia, mitä haluamme Tampereen alueella järjestää. Jo tällä hetkellä Iron Skyn efektejä kasataan mm. tuotantoyhtiö Energian tiloissa Tampereella. Puolet elokuvan kuvauksista tulevat tapahtumaan Saksassa, mutta studiopuolen kuvauksista neuvotellaan edelleen. Eräs varteenotettava kuvauspaikka on edelleen Tampere, ja olemme erittäin kiinnostuneita erilaisista yhteistyökuvioista myös tähän liittyen. Teemme lopullisen päätöksemme parhaan tarjouksen perusteella tämän kevään aikana.

Toteutuneen yhteistyökuvion suunnittelijoille ja muille ahkerille puuhamiehille voimme taata sekä kiitokset elokuvan lopputeksteihin, että ilmaisen pääsyn varsinaiseen ensi-iltatapahtumaan. Lisäksi harva firma on tyytymätön siihen, että sen työntekijä keksii yhtiölle näyttävän ja tuottavan yhteistyöidean.

Tämä on Tamperelaisille faneille ja Iron Skystä muuten kiinnostuneille erittäin konkreettinen ja suora tapa auttaa meitä elokuvaprojektin toteuttamisessa, ja olemme kiitollisia kaikenlaisista ehdotuksista! Levittäkää siis sanaa Iron Skystä kiinnostaville tahoille niin firmojen, järjestöjen kuin päättäjien keskuudessa. Älkää kuitenkaan spämmätkö ketään toistuvilla viesteillä, moinen toiminta kun kääntyy helposti tekijäänsä vastaan.

Yhteistyöterveisin,
Iron Sky -tiimi

English summary: We are planning on having the world premiere of Iron Sky in the city of Tampere in Finland in 2011. We are looking for companies, schools and such who would be interested in sponsoring the event in one way or another. We are planning on arranging a weekend long event that brings together fans, moviemakers and companies. If you are interested in helping, please spread the word about Iron Sky to companies, schools etc. that might be interested in sponsoring us. There is more information about the movie on our press site, plus there is a task in our collaborative movie creation platform Wreckamovie where you can express your ideas.

Yesterday in Tampere we filmed the first shots of Iron Sky that will end up in the actual film. No, this wasn’t the start of the main shoots, that is still in the future. This was one day spent in front of the green screen shooting marching Moon Nazi troops and other material. We will use these shots to determine the final look, feel and mood of the movie and to iron out the kinks of our effects and CGI workflow. You’ll get to see the shots in the film and we hope we can show you something more before the summer as well.

We started the process on Monday with shopping. We needed a bit of rough concrete for the Space Nazis to walk on. So our production manager Tarja Jakunaho led us to a hardware store to find the best (and cheapest) way to fake a slab of concrete.

They look amazingly real through the camera. We’re kind of thinking of using the “concrete” blocks as a dividers in the office…

Tuesday we headed out to a building that used to be a electronics store and probably some sort of a factory before that. There was renovation going on on the other side of the hall, but since we didn’t need to record any on-set audio this time we were able to set up the greenscreen on the other end of the building. Iron Sky’s cinematographer Mika Orasmaa was behind the camera working with camera and lighting team from Obscure Entertainment.

The stars of the shoot were the costumes, made by our costume department headed by Jake Collier, who has worked on project such as Australia, The Pacific and of course the cult sci-fi series Farscape.

These are the suits of the “modern” Nazi troopers. Compared to the bulky spacesuit of the 1940’s Nazi astronaut in the teaser they’ve come a long way. While the outer layer of clothing is very traditional uniform, underneath they wear a new type of skintight spacesuit. This means the space troopers have far greater mobility than the current designs would allow. And yeah, there is a rationale for the leather straps.

The shoot itself was quite simple – it get’s a bit more complicated in post production when the three marching troopers are cloned into a small army. Still, it’s not easy to goose step in perfect unison when you’re wearing a gas mask, but after a bit of coaching our extras did really well.

The title is: Space Nazis attacked Lielahti.

We also had a couple of reporters come see the shoot, both from paper press and the radio. Turns out we managed to invade most of the front page of Aamulehti, the second largest newspaper in Finland, with a huge pic of space nazis! You can read the article here, it’s in Finnish but there are some photos worth checking for.

Things are picking up speed and it’s time for the CGI department to get busy with the new materials. If you want to help us on our task, remember to Demand to See Iron Sky, and link our demand site and teaser video to your pals, acquaintances and your movie minded enemies. This stuff really helps us, since the more we can show people are interested in Iron Sky, the better standing we have with the distributors, funders and other such elements of the business side of movies!

In this episode of Iron Sky Signal we will give you a first person view on what happens in the art department, an interview of our production designer Ulrika von Vegesack, a few words from our concept artist Jussi Lehtiniemi – and one bloodied director.