Bryn Oh, Imogen and the pigeons

Bryn Oh is the avatar and pseudonym of a professional oil painter who lives here in Toronto who has been creating mesmerizing and challenging multilayered installations inside the virtual world of Second life for several years (see previous post). I'm especially impressed by Bryn's latest work Imogen and the pigeons, an "immersive narrative exhibited in the virtual world called Second Life...a layered story told through poetry."

I find it difficult to classify work like this. Is it Machinima, immersive interactive art, digital puppetry, all of the above, or something else entirely? While I'm not entirely sure what the answer to that question is, I do know that I like it. A lot. It's inspiring to see the innovative ways that Bryn Oh is exploring and expanding how this still new medium can be used.

You can explore Imogen and the pigeons inside Second Life (click here and follow the instructions to join Second Life) and/or see more of Bryn Oh's previous Second Life builds on YouTube.

"The Internet is For Porn" screened before Congress

If you haven't been following the debate over the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States, well, let's just say I have to hand it to the United States Congress. It takes a whole lot of stupid (or maybe just a whole lot of money from Hollywood studios and record labels) to come up with copyright legislation that is even more asine and one-sided than what they already have on the books in the U.S., but with SOPA they seem to have done it.

In any case, Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat from Colorado with a refreshingly intelligent take on internet policy, injected a little levityby in to a debate on the bill by screening the Machinima mash-up The Internet Is For Porn before the House Judiciary committee. Rep. Polis used the video as part of an effort to add an anti-pornography amendment to SOPA, a tactically brilliant back-door legal manuevere that potentially could have made the entire piece of legislation unconstitutional.

The ammendment was ultimately defeated by a vote of 18 to 9, but not only was a Machinima film screened for the House Judiciary committee, but the entire lyrics of The Internet Is For Porn are now officially part of the congressional record. How silly (and kind of cool) is that?

Via BoingBoing.

Machinima.com Gets Techcrunched

Techcrunch - one of the web's leading tech industry blogs - has an interesting post about Machinima.com today talking about the huge audience numbers the website has been racking up; 2.3 billion video views last year (350 million in of them in December alone)and over 45 million unique visitors. The article also mentions that Machinima.com has over 90 staff in L.A. producing their various online shows every week.

Part of the article that will especially warm the hearts of longtime Machinima creators is this:

He (Machinima.com owner Allen DeBevoise) tried to raise money back then (in 2005) but the audience was seen as too niche, maybe 5 million people if Machinima was lucky. Clearly everyone underestimated what was brewing here.

I think that's a huge understatement. Machinima isn't quite mainstream yet, but these numbers prove that it's already taken off as a medium in a very big way.

Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series

I haven't had time to check out Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series or the feature film from whence it sprung for that matter, but it certainly looks good. The six-part series serves as a prequel to the feature film and features Blair Williams, played in the film by Moon Bloodgood, who voices the character in the Machinima series.

The series was made entirely using in-game assets from the Terminator Salvation video game and was overseen by Terminator Salvation director McG, who's building an innovative little empire for himself in Hollywood these days. This is the first official studio-produced Machinima series and it's such a great example of cross-platform synergy that it's easy to foresee a lot more of these kinds of projects in the future.

Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series is available to download from iTunes and the X-Box Live Marketplace. Free recaps of each episode are available to watch on Machinima.com.

Bryn Oh Second Life Machinima

I love Bryn Oh's trippy, fantastical Second Life Machinima. Read more about her on PuppetVision and watch her latest work, filmed in the Immersiva sim in Second Life.

BusinessWeek on the Future of Machinima

BusinessWeek recently ran a story on Machinima and how more and more game developers are packaging their titles with Machinima creation tools. It's a good read that outlines the history of Machinima and ponders where the artform is headed in the future.

Michael Bay Gets In To Machinima

Looks like Michael Bay and his Digital Domain FX shop are the latest Hollywood players to jump aboard the Machinima bandwagon:

As foreshadowed by the studio's "Mad World" Gears of War TV spot, Digital Domain won't be using game engines for just games. Also on the agenda will be a series of teen-targeted animated features, which will utilize machinima er, a "new" cost-effective animation method. Does Hollywood actually have anything to offer the games industry? Or are Bay & co. just hopping over the fence 'cause the grass smells greener? "I make world-class images," says Bay. "Why not put those images into a game?"

It'll be interesting to watch this play out. Thanks to Brian for the link!

Why Machinima Is Different

Peter Rasmussen - an indie filmmaker who crossed in to Machinima and is now producing a feature length Machinima film called Stolen Life - has written an interesting piece called Why Machinima Is Different that's worth a read. I especially liked the way he compares the current state of Machinima to the miliseconds after the Big Bang, full of pieces that are very basic but very powerful.

Via Overman's Blog.

The End of Red Vs. Blue

Pioneering Machnima creators Rooster Teeth Productions have announced that they will be ending their insanely popular series Red vs. Blue with the series' upcoming 100th episode. Red vs. Blue is significant for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was a huge viral hit that put Machinima on the map. Six episodes left to go and if you've never seen the show before now seems like a great time to go check it out and see what you've been missing.

Via Thinking Machinima.

Gameplay Boogie

Gamers will be able to use the Wii's innovative controllers and some digital puppetry techniques to help an alien bust a move in Boogie.

EA regularly gets critiqued in the video game world for a lack of innovation. It's not hard to see why; the company seems to just churn out one relatively uninventive version of Madden Football after the other. That may finally be about to change though thanks to Boogie, one of their upcoming titles for the Wii.

On the surface Boogie sounds like another Dance Dance Revolution clone, but what makes it different is that instead of pushing buttons to make an onscreen character "dance", players have to make their character move in time with music using the Wii Remote and its Nunchuk attachment. The Nunchuk controls the character's body while the Wiimote controls its head. Players have to invent moves and dance routines with minimal guidance from the game and they succeed based on the variety of their moves and how "stylish" they are.

Sounds suspiciously like a digital puppetry game, doesn't it?

What you can't do in Machinima (for now)

This animation test above is a fantastic example of pose-to-pose animation (even if it is a "test") from Pixar. As I've mentioned many times here before, one of the inherent limitations of Machinima as it exists today is that the available authoring tools are really unintuitive and don't allow for much expression. Even the best examples of Machinima puppeteering like the ILL Clan's Trash Talk With ILL Will - which won a Mackie for best virtual performance at 2006 Machinima Awards - are ridiculously crude compared to what most puppeteers and animators can do.


I also like this fantastic clip from Aardman. It's done with Claymation of course, but it's so simple there is no reason something very similar couldn't be done in real-time. There is absolutely no reason high-quality animation work can't be done in real-time. The only problems is that a) you need fast enough hardware to render enough polygons on screen and b) there aren't simplified tools that allow you to create great performances.

All it takes is a little money to solve the first problem and, well, I'm working on the second.

Two and a Half Virtual Men

Many viewers in the U.S. who watched the Super Bowl pre-game show last weekend got their first look in to the virtual world of Second Life thanks to this short promo for the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men that was created using SL. The big-time exposure is something of a landmark achievement for Machinima, although unfortunately this is a pretty weak piece, no doubt due in part to the fact that it was reportedly produced for CBS in big a rush.

The Two and a Half Men promo was created by The Electric Sheep Company, which usually does better work than this. Visit their Machinima portfolio for some much nicer Machinima examples.

Making Love Not Warcraft

South Park's Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny as World of Warcraft characters in the South Park episode Make Love Not Warcraft.

One of the biggest things to happen to Machinima last year was the use of it to create Make Love Not Warcraft, an episode of South Park that parodied the popular massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft and gamers in general. Machinima.com has an interview with South Park's Frank Agnone, J.J. Franzen, and Eric Stough explaining how Machinima was used to create in-game sequences in the episode.

One of the things that impressed me about Make Love Not Warcraft was the relatively high degree of lip sync in the Machinima sequences, which I didn't realize could be done in a game like Warcraft. Turns out that it can't; Warcraft's publisher Blizzard helped the show cheat a little bit, providing South Park's animators with Maya models of the characters to animate conventionally for close-ups. Even if it's not technically 100% "true" Machinima though, Make Love Not Warcraft is a great example of how Machinima and real-time animation can be incorporated in to a professional production pipeline.

A Merry Machinima Christmas

Visiting Scrooge puts a Machinima spin on a Christmas classic.

In the mood for a little holiday Machinima? Take a look at Visiting Scrooge, a two-part film based on Dickens' A Christmas Carol and made using The Sims 2. A behind-the-scenes page about the film is also available.

Inside the Machinima

A Machinima film that explores how Machinima gets made. Very meta. From Machinimated Studios.

Machinima Application Design Requirements

Brian Stokes has posted a great piece on his blog about Machinima/Digital puppetry application design requirements; essentially laying out what's lacking in the tools currently available for Machinima creators. I really agree wholeheartedly with all of his thoughts, especially the need for better assets and really kick-ass sequencer software. Be sure to check it out.

ILM, LucasArts & Machinima

George Lucas is the most influential filmmaker of the past thirty years. Not just because of Star Wars and Industrial Light and Magic either; he's lit and/or bankrolled the spark behind virtually every major advance in digital cinema since the dawn of the computer age. A new BusinessWeek article discusses how now George has got religion when it comes to Machinima and is restructuring his LucasArts and ILM divisions in an effort to have the two separate companies work together collaboratively in the area of real-time 3d graphics and previsualization.

You just know that some cool technology is going to come out of this!

Hugh Hancock resigns from Machinima.com

The big news today in the Machinima world is that Hugh Hancock has resigned as Editor-in-Chief of Machinima.com. Hugh was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic proponents of the artform, co-founding Machinima.com and doing pioneering work through Strange Company. In an open letter to the Machinima community (see link above) Hugh explains he's stepping aside to focus on his work with Strange Company and because he feels that after six years he's getting stale and needs new challenges.

Best of luck to Hugh with all his future endeavours - he's owed a tremendous 'thank you' for all his hard work by Machinima filmmakers and fans everywhere.

Glossing over "The Movies"

Tony Walsh has written a thoughtful response to Annalee Newitz's recent Wired article about The Movies in his Clickable Culture blog. While I think the The Movies is an interesting step forward for Machinima, it's not the killer app Machinima filmmakers want and, as Tony points out, potential censorship by the game's makers is a big part of the reason why.

Lights, Camera, Play!

The Dallas Observer has a great article today called Lights, Camera, Play! that provides a good overview of the Machinima phenomenon and where the artform is currently at. Highly recommended reading, especially if you've heard me or others talking about Machinima, but still aren't sure what it's all about.