Thursday, May 27, 2010

48 Hour Film Project Machinima 2010 - breaking news


border="0" alt="48 Hour Filmmaker: Machinima 2010">


The date is set, during the weekend of 3 - 5 September 2010 the 4th 48HFP for machinima will take place.

Please email me for details/submission at:

machinima@48hourfilm.com

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Machinima at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai


http://alturl.com/z8ut

WORLD EXPO 2010 MADRID AIR TREE EXHIBITION

***** for the first time ever, machinima is being shown at the World Expo. *****
(I am só proud, can you tell?)


The program of OPEN THIS END in the World Expo 2010, consists in three exhibitions that expose the videos created by international artists, showing, for the first time in the history of a Universal event, a World Expo, “machinimas” and the three stages of the artistic virtual immersion.

* curator: Cristina García-Lasuén aka Aino Baer (Second Life avatar name)


ARTISTS AND WORKS:

1º Exhibition, May-June 2010

ALEX ROMAN aka JORGE SEVA (R-V)
The Third & The Seventh, T&S Teaser2, Kahn s Exeter Short Film



ALFONSO KOHN aka AL PERETZ (V-V)
The Rumba Bacana II



BINARY QUANDRY (V-V)
Autumn



BRYN OH (V-V)
The Daughter of Gears Vessel s Dream, Willow



CHANTAL HARVEY aka CHANTAL GERADS (V-V)
Virtual Kerkrade, Orientation, AOM, Kolor Fall, I wish for you



JOAQUIN BALDWIN (V-R)
Sebastian s Voodoo, Papiroflexia



LAINY BOOM aka TRACE SANDERSON (V-V)
Stolen child by Yeats, Push, The dumb man



MAKOTO YABUKI (V-R)
Ace One, Scope, Manakai



MESCALINE TAMMAS and FOUR YIP (V-V)
Fushion



PETER GREENAWAY (R-V)
Nursery Tales



POID MAHOVLICH (V-V)
Ephemeral



POOKY AMSTERDAM and BERNHARD DRAX (V-V)
Date Your Avatar



RODRIGO BLAAS (R-V)
Alma



SASKIA BODDEKE aka ROSE BORCHOVSKI (R-R), (R-V), (V-V)
Lost on Counting by Susa Bubble, The Blue Planet, Trailer photo s, The Survivor of Warsaw



SPYVSPY AEON (V-V)
The oldest airborne City, Multiple Worlds



TOM JANTOL (R-V)
The Remake, The fish incident, The Bridge, Brief to encounter



VICENTE SAHUC and SARA FERNANDEZ (R-R)
Almeria, New York, Tokyo

Saturday, May 1, 2010

10 Little Aliens





10 Little Aliens came jumping for fun....


In March 2010 we entered a competition organised by Aniboom.com, who were looking for the next characters for Sesamestreet.

Our team thought Second Life machinima would be the perfect platform to create Sesamestreet characters, so we got together and crossed ideas and made a plan.

Judi Newall started with script and rhyme, Madcow Cosmos went to create avatars and props, Lorin Tone signed up for music, I cleared my sim to make room for the set, and can you believe it? - I spent 3 days shopping for the right grass textures, before giving up and searching the SL Library to come up with standard green green grass of home).
Lauren Weyland agreed to do narration, and I lured Annabelle Fleury, L1Aura Loire, Ze Moo and robwag Soothsayer into acting. How could they refuse, with the avatar as pay? (....).
Yes, like most of our machinima productions, it was only talent spent, no money involved.

We set a day and time to film, and after a tough edit (dont be fooled, it looks easy but this one was perhaps one of the hardest edits yet, for me) - the machinima was send to Lorin Tone for audio. I was so pleased to hear real drums - Lorin, you did it again, wonderful stuff.
Lauren Weyland started narrating, I received their creative work and went back to the editmachine to finish the machinima and do the credits.

The team agreed, this was the proper Sesamestreet feel, and we were proud to submit our work.

Surprise came the next day, after the upload to Aniboom.com. They turned us down. As they stated in their email:
"Unfortunately, “10 Little Aliens” is not eligible for this competition.
Machinima animations is forbidden due to right sakes, video games design materials are shown in this video."

Several thoughts went through my mind.
* there is no mention of machinima not being allowed in their contest, I entered their fox contest last year on Anibooms invitation, and there are more SL machinima's already in the contest.
* Second Life allows machinima, no restrictions, as long as their TOS is followed, and it was. We created and own all shown in the film.
* I was delighted with the compliment they gave us, really - stating our creations are game design material is making me realise how good we are!

I did send them a reply, including the TOS and rules that Second Life gives, and explained that SL is a platform where all can create their own characters and moviesets.
I also thanked them for their comliment. ;o)

After this, I was totally pleased when i recieved an email telling me that they had put the machinima back into the competition, stating:

"We are checking the issue with the rights that are been giving from "second life", we also returned your movie to the competition.
If there is a copyright issue with it we will be forced to removed it.
Sorry about the inconvenience and thanks for the understanding".

That all sounds very reasonable, and again, I think the decision to refuse it on grounds of copyright issues and game design material was an unfair one, and I am glad we are back in.

Word spread in the Second Life community, and people started contacting me and asking if they could help. Basicly, I really like Aniboom.com and I am part of their community - so I recommended people to go there and check out the Sesamestreet competition. And yes, rate both machinima's that are shown amongst 351 entries, mostly animations and stop motion films.

When it comes to WOW (World of Warcraft) machinima, the community stands behind their creative users, Second Life community is more distant in these things. I really believe in Second Life as the perfect platform for machinima.

So I urge people; please go to these direct links and rate the machinima's:


http://bit.ly/9JAwtx (10 Little Aliens by Chantal Harvey)

http://bit.ly/9oKQ45 (The letter Q by Pooky Media)

Metanomics did a community forum on the above, to create awareness and to support us.
Madcow Cosmos agreed to put the Little Aliens up for sale, and the lindendollars earned go directly into a funds for machinima - so many good projects will come from this.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/RastaOpen4/131/62/41 will take you there directly, and they are 55 ld a piece only.... so get them now, while they are cheap!


















Friday, April 9, 2010

Pop Art Lab - machinima contest

After Claus Uriza's wonderful help at MMIF2010 - his team did build the MMIF-venue on the 4 sims - he came to me and asked if I would be a member of jury for the special themed machinima contest he started up.
How could I say no to Claus, and his effort to preserve the Pop Art builds - that so resemble the MMIF builds....

Well today is the last day of this Second Life contest, and the films keep pooring in as he ensures me.
It will be a hard task, thankfully I am not the only member of jury. (Jeska Linden, Claus Uriza and Lisbeth Frolunde, Chantal Harvey).

Submitted films so far:
http://www.popartlab.com/category/news/

There is only one price....100,000 lindendollars.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Machinima event in Leicester UK

FREE TIPS ON DIY COMPUTER GAME FILM MAKING: THE ART OF MACHINIMA

Machinima experts are to give a free public talk about this ever-growing art of DIY film making using computer game images, in Leicester this week.

The Machinima event, at Phoenix Square on Thursday evening, will also include a world premier of Croatian film-maker Tom Jantol's ‘The REMAKE’ which is already being hailed as a groundbreaking piece of machinima.

Speakers Dr Tracy Harwood, of De Montfort University’s Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT), and machinima artist and Dutch independent film-maker, Chantal Harvey (also known as Mamachinima), will introduce the art and give key tips on how to make your own machinima film.

There will also be a screening of a selection of award winning machinima shorts at the event which will be held in Screen 2, Phoenix Square digital film and media centre, Midland Street, Leicester, at 6pm on Thursday.

Machinima (machine + animation + cinema) is the making of original films from real-time play of 3D computer games engines.

Dr Harwood, Senior Research Fellow for the IOCT, who is organising the event and has an international reputation for her machinima expertise, said: “As a contemporary art movement and an online alternative to broadcast media, machinima has seen a phenomenal growth in both creation and viewership of content over the last few years. The films we are showing will give an overview of different approaches to creating films – a taster of Hollywood style, digital art and fan fiction.”

Please contact the box office to reserve a place on 0116 242 2800 or: www.phoenix.org.uk

ENDS

For interviews with Dr Harwood or Chantal Harvey, or for an interview in Second Life, please contact DMU’s Press Office on 0116 257 7021 or news@dmu.ac.uk .

De Montfort University’s Press Office is now on Twitter. Follow us at www.twitter.com/dmupressoffice . If you would like to be notified whenever a new story about the University is published, sign up to the RSS feed on our Twitter home page.

DMU Cube enables visitors to experience leading-edge research from DMU's Institute Of Creative Technologies (IOCT), free-of-charge and all-year-round, at Phoenix Square, a partnership project between Blueprint, Phoenix, and Leicester City Council in collaboration with DMU.