
The Love Punks are the stars of NEOMAD, a junk percussion music video and an online game. But who are they? Where did they come from?
In 2011, a group of young people from Roebourne got together to make a zombie film about how the energy of youth can transform and bring about change to things/situations that are stuck. The idea was that zombies just needed a bit of love and fun and they would come to life again. It was set to the song ‘What the World Needs Now’ and the characters the kids created for themselves became known collectively as the ‘Love Punks’.
There was a desire from the kids to do more ‘Love Punk’ stuff. The initial idea was to create a virtual Roebourne website, where the kids would show visitors to the site around their town. This idea then evolved into creating a game with a series of hidden actions that the player has to uncover to earn points. As the Yijala Yala crew began making the game, it became obvious that several processes could easily be passed on the Love Punks themselves so they could be part of the making and also the design of the game- deciding what their characters would do and say etc. They learnt to use Photoshop and have since made 2,000 animations for the game, cutting themselves out of film footage to create stop-motion animations. The process is outlined in detail by the Lovepunks themselves here.
The Lovepunks are an ever-increasing gang and they are building on their skills to work towards new artistic products like NEOMAD.