CBBC – Dad visits the Airmageddon Film Set
Dad with the creator of Airmageddon and Robot Wars Steve Carsey – Hag and Con’s Questions!!!
Tea or Coffee? Con age 8
Steve Carsey – Coffee. It has to be Gold Blend – Nor real coffee. I grew up in Yorkshire and proper Italian coffee didn’t exist there in the 70’s and 80’s. We got excited when the Pizza Hut moved into the High Street. We thought it was the height of sophistication. So for me when the Gold Blend came out it was like the posh coffee.
I followed the soap opera (Reference to the Gold Blend adverts in the 80’s.
When I moved down here and became a Media person, this kind of in stand peculated real coffee – I didn’t take to it. Coffee, white, two sugars – very sweet.
What toys would you like to see come out for Airmageddon? Hag age 11
Steve Carsey – Yes. We don’t know that toys will come out yet – but the ambition is that Kidz will see the show and they will want to fly some of those characters there. I designed the show from the very beginning with that in mind. You know lets create some characters and have some big personalities in the show. Above and beyond the personalities of the Kidz and their Drones. So yeah – I’d love to see a whole range of toys. Pocket drones all the way through to more expensive toys and kits. One the things that I’m keen that this show does is – there are drone based toys out there already. What I’m hoping we can do is create a world and create an environment and a landscape where getting a drone one thing – but suggesting things for Kidz to do with their drones. At the moment no one has given anyone inspiration or idea on what they can do with their drones. Other than they can fly them in an open field. So we’re trying to bring rather competitive sense of competition to the world of Drones that they can emulate safely in their rooms and gardens. The shows designed to encourage safe completion in drones in a fun creative environment.
I do love both D.R.A.G.O.N with the flame flower. Now obviously I don’t think that’s ever going to be a toy – it would be a toy, but it wouldn’t have the flamed flower perhaps (Laughs).
My personal favourite is the W.A.S.P. I guess you know they’re all Acronyms – the bugs are all land gyrocopters. They’ve all got names – but there’s a studio-Acronyms name thing going on. I think Kidz will really engage with all of that. I know would. I do – I’m a big kid.
You created Robot Wars and now you’ve created Airmageddon – What would be the best fight between one of the characters from Robot Wars and one of the Airmageddon characters? Hag age 11
Steve Carsey – I guess the best one on one would be Sargent Bash versus D.R.A.G.O.N because they have similar fire power. Literally ‘fire’ power. But I think the scale of the construction of the House Robots in Robot Wars – much heavier engineering. Much more destructive. So if ever genuinely a head to head – I think the Drones would still win, but only because they’re up there and the House Robots are down there.
If they because physically in contact – I’m not sure it would be that fair a balanced battle.
Do you ever want to one day make a show where there are robots that think for themselves and take on people? Con age 8
Steve Carsey – I did do a spin off show of Robot Wars once called Techno Games – which was essentially a robot olympics. One of the events in Techo games was Micro Mouse challenges. Basically they were little autonomous A.I. driven robots that found their way to the centre of a maze. So they kind of think for themselves. There are hunter-prey events where one robots the prey and you have to avoid detection and the other robots the hunter and you put them in environment and see what happens.
I’ve developed other shows that one day may happen called ‘Man vs Machine’. I like the idea of taking robots and pitching them against humans. Particularly in creative areas like poetry and artwork and choreography. There are A.I. software system that emulate those things that we assume are part of human creativity. It’s like the Turing test – if you put two works of music up. One composed by a human one composed by a computer – can you tell which is the human one and which is the computer? I think that would be a really interesting test. If that came into an entertainment format – I’d love to do that. I think it would be quite a revealing idea – quite an illuminating idea to see just how advanced they are. I developed Robot Wars between 1995 and 98 – so that’s twenty years ago. So the things that have happened in twenty years in terms of robots, drones, A.I. – back when I started Robot Wars the World Wide Web kind of existed. But not in the way the Kidz of today know it – there was about 10,000 pages. And we thought blimey it’ll never get bigger than this (Laughs).
No, I’m not creating Skynet. A.I. Is different to human consciousness – I don’t think we’ll ever have conscious A.I. They will emulate it and emulate it so brilliantly that you won’t know the difference – but they’re not conscious. I don’t think that will ever happen. It’s just Sci-Fi.
Dad with Drone pilots Ibrahim and Matt!!!
Behind the scenes!!!
The Drone Workshop!!!
Airmageddon premieres on CBBC Saturday 20th February at 8:25am!!!
