...for now, at least.

Followers of the work of Douglas Adams and, latterly, Stephen Fry, will know that there are lots of endangered animals in the world. Well, there’s another one (admittedly of a less tangible nature than most, but stick with me here) that’s on the verge of disappearing – the lesser-updated Crazy Lizard.

[link]

It was back in 1999, while I was studying at Bournemouth University, that I and a bunch of splendid friends set up Crazy Lizard Studios, a funny little website designed to act as a kind of online gallery for our arty things. It quickly came to have a great deal of digi-pics hanging on its VirtualWalls, and although it’s not been updated for nearly four years now (for a variety of reasons I shan’t bore you to death with), it retains a special place in my head. It was my first dalliance with having any kind of online presence, and the chums who worked on it with me were – and very much still are – among the finest folks I’ve ever known. We had enormous fun adding new bits and pieces to it whenever the opportunity arose, and through it I’ve met all manner of other groovy guys and gals on the InformationSuperHardShoulder. Truly, I (heart) Crazy Lizard Studios. So it’s in a slightly sad and wistful tone of voice (which you can’t hear, but use your imaginations) that I have to announce it will shortly be erased from the net.

On October 26 – by a spooky coincidence, almost exactly 10 years since it first ventured onto the web – Crazy Lizard Studios will be no more. On that day, Yahoo! will be closing down all its free websites forever, and our site will be among those unceremoniously flattened with a VirtualBulldozer. As such, if there’s anything there you particularly want to look at, now would be a good time.

But is this the complete and utter end of Crazy Lizard Studios? Hopefully not. I’ve just recently finished downloading every last image and bit of text from the site so that everything will be safely stored on disk when the online version goes phut, and I’m looking at possible alternative venues for bringing the site back to life. Also, whenever it *does* reappear, you can expect a whole bundle of new things to turn up alongside the old bits. So, in a way, the studio’s impending demolition could be seen as the start of a whole new chapter in the site’s curious and unrepentantly minimalist history.

When new things start to happen, all you funky people hereabouts will naturally be kept informed. In the meantime, you might care to seek out the nifty web-dwellings of my fellow Lizardites, namely Sarah Tallon (the artist formerly known as Sarah Jacotine, but she’s a married lady now. Hurrah!) [link] , Chris Christison [link] and, of course, the man who started it all with his drawing of a quirky little reptile guy in a miniature poncho – Mat McGowan [link] .

Crazy Lizard Studios (Version 1.101011101.2): 1999-2009. Until the next time, old friend.