Machinimag - your resource for everything machinima

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Golden Llamas nominees

The "other" Machinima, snipped from Machinima Premiere:

As announced on the Global Gaming website:

"The fourth annual Golden Llama Awards, which honor films created with the use of video game engines, has been set for March 2nd. Nominees include thirty machinima films in twelve categories, all vying for supremacy in this highly-selective field."

Check out this link for more information on the nominees and judges here.

I just couldn't let this go past.

Also, just so you know, Machinima Premiere's Forum posts have almost doubled during the last two months. The site also sports a slight redesign and seems to become a new hub for the machinima community (thus deserving the second place for the news feed on the right).
Beware 3Dfilmmaker - your top spot won't last forever!

VirtualStage Version 3.1 released

Nikki Marsh writes:

Dakine Wave today announced an update to its machinima toolkit, VirtualStage, that enables the import of BVH files.

Technical Director Paul Brown explains:
"VirtualStage includes a tool that enables users with no previous animation experience to create their own actions and gestures for the virtual actors to perform.
Nevertheless, we have had a lot of requests from users wanting to import either motion capture data or predefined animations in BVH format.
We've responded to that user feedback with this new version."

You can download a free copy of VirtualStage Lite and get more info from dakinewave.com

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

"This Spartan Life" Interview

Isabelle Arvers writes:

I just re-did my website and i would like to invite you in !

isabelle arvers's website, french new media curator, interested in games,online creations and new forms of imagestexts (70% in English); exhibitions and events photo reports ;
artists andcurators interviews related to digital art, games, machinima, 8 bitsmusic, Vjing or audio visual installations.about french and international contemporary art, processes of creation,opening art to new types of audiences and meeting between differentartistic disciplines.

Other subjects: games and politics, games as a way of expression,influence of games in story telling.

News: Interview of Chris Burke, about This Spartan Life, a talk show in agame space

PDF Link to the Interview here.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Machinima Workshop in Amsterdam, 14.-17.03.2006

Stefan Kosters writes:

Machinima Workshop: Making Films out of Games

With a new Machinima workshop, Mediamatic traverses the intersection of filmmaking, animation and game development. This 4-day workshop, starting on the 14th of March, takes place at Mediamatic on the 5th floor of the Post CS building in Amsterdam.

Machinima is the art of making film inside the real-time 3D virtual environment of a video-game engine. By treating the in-game viewpoint as a camera, the gamespace becomes the set, the characters turn into actors, and the gamer gets to be a director. Because an in-game performance is first recorded in 3D, everything is very flexible. In a 3D recording (before it is turned to film), camera's can still be added or can change their path, lights can be changed, the characters can change their appearance or disappear entirely. This brings high-end movie making possibilities to the low-budget movie maker.

In this 4-day workshop small teams of participants will make their own machinima movies, guided by experienced machinimamakers and animators. The trainers will cover all the practical topics, like designing 3D sets, creating character interactions, re-camming, virtual lighting and camera scripting. Also, machinima will be looked upon from a wider cultural perspective, investigating the impact of gaming on visual culture.

This workshop is intended for filmmakers, animators and gamers, who are interested in each others arts. Some experience with playing video games is helpful, but not essential. More information can be found on the mediamatic website. For questions mail to workshops [at] mediamatic.nl

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Ben Grussi steps down from Machinima.com

After Hugh Hancock resigning as Machinima.com's editor in chief, the year long film editor Ben Grussi aka zs|gamemaster steps down from his position on M.com as well.
Ben has worked on Machinima.com for 6 years now and was head of the film departement, machinima.com's one big reason for existence.
No word yet on why he decided to do this.
Here is his statement from Machinima.com:

As of today, I'm no longer a member of the Machinima.com staff.

Heh I never thought I would be posting a farewell letter so soon in my career, but I guess these things can come even this early!.

But this isn't really a *true* farewell, since I will still be reading through the forums and whatnot, but my involvement with Machinima.com as
part of it's staff has ended.

Amazing how 6+ years come and gone like that *click fingers* - and even to this day I'm still awe-struck of all that has happened. :o)

Unbelievable times while on staff, looking forward to unbelievable things but this time from the other side of the glass.

Cheers and Beers!

Ben
Former Machinima.com senior film poster :-D

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Comments now open for everyone

After the last couple of spam comments, i left the comments section locked to registered blogger users and forgot about it.
Thanks to a friendly reminder from Anthony Bailey, the comments section is now publicly open again.
Apologies for any inconvenience.
Comment away...

Saturday, February 11, 2006

new weekly ILL Clan series

The ILL Clan of "Larry and Lenny Lumberjack" fame have moved from political (in-)correct satire to gaming news with their all new show "trash talk".
The ambitious new format tries to bring you gaming news with ILL Will and his missile sidekick Mal once a week!
You can go grab the first episode over at the ILLclan website. Or subscribe to their iTunes Videocast.
After "Gaming News with Lady Mainframe" by binarypictureshow, which came out a while ago, this is the second recent gaming related machinima show.

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