Quick aside: I just posted a new sound-design entry (click here) on the BloodSpell Production Journal, entitled “Anatomy of a Crossbow.”

By Wednesday midnight, I was a real wreck. The reviews from within the machinima community were starting to pour in on BloodSpell, and I was really getting the impression that people just weren’t liking it. And, well, I worked with them on it, and just really wanted people to love it! So I suppose anything less than rodeo clowns doing backflips in the streets was going to be a letdown. And that’s my own fault, because I’ve been looking at this thing the entirely wrong way.

Ken Thain is talking about “the subtleties of human behavior” as something that is desirable in machinima. Others are talking about smooth camera pans and cinematic shot choice. Still others are talking about how the human form should be properly animated, and the importance of accurate and precise lipsync. And others talk about how the foley could use more definition, or the voices could use better EQ.

My friends, this is good, VERY VERY GOOD! Do you realize that we are now at a point where we’re starting to hold ourselves to some of the same standards that are demanded of CGI and even conventional film? And this isn’t just one lone voice crying out in the desert… it is a veritable consensus! We are saying, collectively, these are the things we want from machinima. We’ve come a long way from Diary of a Camper, have we not?

The more we start demanding these values of ourselves, the better we will ALL become at what we do. I’m not saying BloodSpell is the event that raised the bar; what I’m saying is let’s take it as an opportunity to realize that the bar is indeed raised. Celebrate that; and I think you will find that the entire crew at Strange Company will be celebrating it with you.