Machinima Info Barf

Or how I manage to cram as much crap into one post as possible. These should all probably be individual posts, but time is a diminishing commodity these days.

1. Overman's Male Restroom Etiquette makes it to the top 20 showcase at the Animation World Network. Congratulations!

Interestingly, one of my favorites from that top 20 list, Bendito Machine, was also chosen as the first prize winner at AniBOOM (as noted on newteevee.com) which appears to be an Israeli start-up promoting the online animation community, including some online tools. Hmm...an interesting idea and perhaps some machinima should be included at that site? Perhaps they can make some money while they're at it.

2. The AV Club has a short trailer wherein they are using Valve's Half-Life to tell the tale of the insane residents who live in an apartment (The Complex). The trailer just shows off some HDR lighting effects, but it will be interesting to see where this goes.

3. Some machinimists actually get hired. Todd from Burnt Coffee Productions (The Fixer) will be joining EA. Are game companies snapping up all of the machinima talent? Could Ubisoft's new Animated Movie Studio be a place to work at? Well, it will be if you like Montreal (nice in the summer, not so nice in the winter).

4. We've seen BF1942 vs. Mario. Now comes WoW vs. Mario. Is the Mario reference similar to how Doom gets ported to every piece of electronics in the world? Maybe somebody should hold a machinima contest (Mario vs. Every Other Game).

5. Speaking of Nintendo, you can use the Mii creator in the new Wii (WiiMii's, MiiWii's?) to create some machinimas (MachinimaMii's - a Big Lebowski example here). There's even a YouTube channel dedicated to it.

6. Machinima for Dummies trailer done in Halo.

7. 3PointD talks about the IMAGTP company using the Crysis engine for architectural visualization in a tool called IMAGIN3D. (see my previous post about architecture in Half-Life). YouTube video and original announcement.

8. Second Thoughts had a post awhile back on whether SL machinima is any good or not. The comment section is enormous and people should check it out.

9. Machinima (Sims2?) used in UK ITV television program. Unfortunately I can definitely see this being problematic for the reporting of news (as opposed to showing fiction).

10. The Future of Machinima post. The most interesting part was at the end, where the possibility that the machines decide what is good machinima is speculated UPon.

11. There's an Armed Assault trailer contest where an online tool is used to mix and match premade clips into some sort of film. There's an increasing number of simplistic online video editing tools available including one called Cuts which lets you take existing online video and:

add captions, insert sound effects, loop the best parts, and skip the boring stuff

Interesting. So not only can you share videos online through various portals, you can also remix and mash them up as well. How to find those videos? Use Blinkx which is unique in that it uses speech-to-text to index online videos.

12. I don't know why I haven't seen this (Paul Robertson's Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006) before, but it's farking brilliant (his blog here). With so many pop culture references thrown into the video game/comics/anime/Tarantino-esque 12 minute animated mash-up that I'm sure I didn't even get all of them. it's a brilliant mix of dark humor, violence, and bad video game music.

13. MySpace is offering a contest in which you win the right to direct a feature film for 1 million British pounds (you have to say the last part in a Dr. Evil voice).