A bit of a stunning development in the story of the little film that could: Male Restroom Etiquette. It seems someone saw fit to feature it on the front page of YouTube.com.
I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.
That’s right. Machinima… featured on the front page of YouTube. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that has happened since YouTube was founded. It’s crazy.
Why? Why now, why this film? I’ve got some theories I’m developing as I analyze exactly what has transpired here. When all the data is in, I’ll share them with you. But for now, I’d encourage you to rejoice: this isn’t about me or my film, this is about OUR medium showing it can be competitive with other types of entertainment… and that, my friends, is very very good news.
Mitch Featherston pointed me to some interesting articles on Denise Howell’s blog. Denise’s posts focus on licensing and copyright issues across the board, and her two latest articles both have relevance and good insight related to machinima.
Incidentally, Mitch has released yet another set of free high-quality textures over on his blog. Entries are here, here, here, and here. A really nice variety this time around, some highly detailed rocky surfaces, some ground cover, even a few liquids. Good stuff. (His first such release, “Stone Free,” can be found here.)
I came across a couple very interesting pieces of Second Life machinima this week. Interesting, not just because of their quality, which is certainly way above average… but also because of their style and subject matter.
The videos in question are, in fact, some of the first corporate-created machinima that I have personally seen. (Thanks, Shel Holtz, for clueing me in.) They have the same level of quality as something like Lip Flap, but that’s where the similarities end. These are cleverly crafted marketing tools, real businesses selling real products and services. It is a thought-provoking development, and one that warrants our attention and discussion, because it remains to be seen what the serious business discovery of machinima as a medium means for it as a genre, and as a community. (more…)
Moo Money over at Alt-Zoom Studios has put together this nice video demonstrating how to use the Alt-Zoom Camera in Second Life. It’s a good looking demo / tutorial, and all the in-engine manipulation reminds me of what we’ve seen so far of fiezi’s MovieSandBox for UT2004. Thanks, Wagner James Au.
Interesting interview with Second Life machinimator Susi Spicoli over at In The Grid… though you’ll have to wade through a couple opening paragraphs of WTF as you read a wee bit wacky revisionist history on where machinima comes from. [EDIT: Miller Copeland (the blog author) has since updated his entry with a clarification on his intended emphasis, and was kind enough to comment here too. Thank you, MC.]
“For those who don’t know, there’s a curious form of new creative output that’s been recently gaining a lot of popularity online; what the Japanese know as machinima, or we in the Western world as computer-generated animation…(more…)
Male Restroom Etiquette made the front page of Digg today (Thank you, R.L.!). Just hit 500 diggs; I confess I’m a digg noob… is 500 good? Seems to be leaderboard levels today, could just be a slow weekend.
Fortunately for my bandwidth, the link which was dugg was the YouTube page, though I imagine a good number of folks will be over here to snatch up the much crisper high quality DivX version. So to those of you who have found your way here via Digg and YouTube… welcome!
The vast majority of the feedback has been positive; while some are puzzling over a restroom scenario that could turn violent, most are just getting a good laugh out of the whole thing, which of course was the purpose. But a couple disturbing things have come up in the comments threads. (more…)
