I’m happy to announce that Male Restroom Etiquette has made it into the Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 as the most viewed Sims movie. I think it might also be the most watched machinima of any kind on YouTube - I know it was at one time - but now that’s difficult to establish with certainty since it got bumped from the Top 50 Most Viewed Comedy Videos list. It does rank as #42 amongst the Top Comedy Favorites of All Time, which is pretty wild.
Here are some stats. According to Tube Mogul, it’s averaging about 12,000 new views every week so far in 2008. A year and a half after its release, we’re at 4.56 million total views, Favorited about 34,000 times, Rated 23,000 times (for an overall average of 4 to 4.5 stars), and nearly 6,600 comments. It’s in those comments where I first heard about the Guinness mention. Thank you for the heads up, viewers!
M dot Strange recently made a presentation at Berlin Talent Campus 08 called “Adventures in Self Distribution.” The methods and philosophies he shares here are the framework for a New Media Manifesto, if you ask me. If you’ve been a content creator for a significant length of time, a lot of this probably won’t hit you as particularly profound, but it serves as a nice reminder of what we’ve learned about what works. If you’re new to directing, the info here is a great primer… the essential fundamentals of new media, especially as it relates to animated filmmaking.
FYI, if you don’t know who M dot Strange is, he’s the guy who made “We Are The Strange,” a home-crafted full-length animated feature which made it into Sundance last year. After getting several offers to “go Hollywood” with it, he rejected them all and chose self distribution. Ricky Grove wrote a great review of the We Are The Strange DVD over at Renderosity.
In a move I find both disappointing and inexplicable, DivX has decided to shut down their Stage6 video site effective February 28, 2008. When it first came along, Stage6 was the absolute best option for sharing high quality videos, a welcome alternative to the hypercompressed world of YouTube. It is by no means their exclusive territory anymore (see: Vimeo (supports HD resolutions), Veoh, Brightcove, and so on), but Stage6 is still a top tier video host and it’s a crying shame they’re dropping what I would think would be a valuable piece of internet real estate.
For those of you who are fans of the wonderful embedded DivX Web Player, remember that you can use that player for locally hosted DivX movie files - they don’t have to be Stage6 hosted videos. This generator will provide you the code.
Au revoir, Stage6. You’ll be missed.
I’ve been a bit A.F.K. for this week, a condition which is likely to persist over the next few weeks while we remodel a new home and move into it. Part of the plus of this move is a new workspace for my music / machinima pursuits… an official, tax-deductible office, if you will. Here’s where things stand after this week.
On the left, you can see one of two interior walls which has been gutted and filled with fiberglass insulation (installed by yours truly, woo!). The door just right of center leads to a closet which will become an isolation booth for ultra-clean vocal recordings.
Lots left to do, but I’m having fun taking on the general contractor role (as well as active participant) for this and other areas of the house as we really make it our own. I’ll continue to document in photos the ZS office and vocal booth construction as it progresses.
As for podcasts and films, I thank you for your patience as I strain my own, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to get back to work.
EHanson has posted a list of 3d model repositories on the web (with a focus on FREE material). I was surprised to see some entries I did not recognize; needless to say, I’ve spent countless hours scouring the web for these kinds of things. Check out the list here.
The site where the list is published represents a very interesting project which is underway: a detailed recreation of New York City… in Sim City 4. This recent post shows a screenshot of the Bronx as it develops. Too bad Sim City doesn’t have a free cam or fly-through mode; if it did, it would be the ultimate cityscape stock footage emulator. As it is, City Life is much more useful for machinima purposes.
The next Talk the Machinima Talk audio conference will be held on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 7:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. (That’s 10:00 PM Eastern, 3:00 AM GMT). Check here to confirm the time in your area.
This month the conference will be hosted by Frank Fox (of Fling Films) and Peter Rasmussen… and the event will take place for the first time inside Second Life. Frank will be hosting the event on his own land, you can look him up in world as Fleef Fimicloud for assistance. The location of the event is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Cape%20Wrath/183/142/23/ It is recommended that, if you are new to Second Life, you give yourself at least an hour before the start time to walk through SL’s orientation process.
For the audio part of the conference, we’ll be using Second Life’s built-in voice chat capability. If you have a headset which works with Skype, it should work great with Second Life too. IMPORTANT NOTE: BE SURE TO HAVE SKYPE TURNED COMPLETELY OFF BEFORE TRYING TO USE VOICE CHAT IN SECOND LIFE. Sometimes Skype can seize the headset hardware, making it unavailable to other applications. Simply exit completely from Skype before connecting to Second Life, and you should be fine.
If you don’t have voice capability, but still want to participate, Second Life does of course have a versatile text chat system, so please feel welcome to show up even if you don’t have a headset.
The following Voice FAQ for Second Life should prove helpful: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voice_FAQ
We’re very excited about trying the conference in this kind of venue, not only because of the added visual aspects of interaction, but because we expect that the person-limit and lag/latency issues we’ve experienced with Skype will not be as much of an issue here.
Tell your friends!
