Sometimes I just don’t understand people.
- Machinima.com: Faceposer Video Tutorials - An ongoing series, taking it from the beginning.
- Carlos Baena: Amazing list of animation resources - Thanks, Spline Doctors.
- NextGen: The Value of a Good Writer - Talked about in the context of video games, but has great machinima relevance.
- BoingBoing: Reviewing the Real World as if it were a MMO - Funny stuff. For some reason makes me think of one of the essays in Eco’s Misreadings, the one with the publisher’s rejection letters for works of classic literature.
- Pineapple Chunks: Machinima and a Second Life - Seems like filmmaker who gives a serious look to SL (i.e. beyond the red light districts) comes to this kind of conclusion.
- VFX World: The Digital Eye: Gaming as the Driving Technological Force - My friends at Bioware will love this one.
- Cinemassively: Avatar Puppeteering possibly coming to Second Life in 2008 - A dream come true for those who prefer a hermit approach. Interested in this digital puppetry topic? Check out Andrew’s Machin-X blog devoted to just that.
- Motionographer: Lo-Fi Tron - Nice mix of stop motion with live action.
Click here for archive of OverByte posts.
Zach from Lit Fuse Films tipped me to this film yesterday with the following line: “prepare yourself, for the flooring of a lifetime.” Being that Zach has himself floored me a number of times, I strapped on my crash helmet and headed over to the FacePunch Studios forums to the thread he indicated.
What I found was The Monad, described by its creator as “a paranoid vision of our future in the face of The Network.” It’s a very timely social commentary wrapped in an intriguing - if at times a little confusing - story and setting, and told via some astonishingly good Faceposer work with good VO performances to back it up. I’m not ready to gush and say it’s the Best Faceposer Movie Evar!!!, because it’s not without its weaknesses (sound mix in particular). But where it’s good, it’s mighty darn good and certainly raises the bar of character expression in machinima. The lipsync is flawless, the facial expressions are magnificent… but where this film really shines is in use of body language. Some amazing moments in that regard.
(If you hear of any other download / streaming mirrors becoming available, let me know and I’ll link to them here.)
The Sims 2 has a reputation for being one of the easier machinima platforms out there - a reputation that is mostly true… there are indeed a lot of great things about the engine. However, you might have noticed the preponderance of music videos and other non-dialogue-based films which are made with The Sims 2. This versus say Halo, which seems to be the talkie magnet. And if you look at a cross section of some of today’s finer machinima filmmakers, you’ll find that many avoid lipsync altogether - not because they wouldn’t like to use it, but because why do it if it’s not going to look great?
There is a very good reason for this: to do lipsync well in machinima is not easy, and it has never been easy to do well… (okay, not until Moviestorm, but I digress). The costs of production (in terms of time) skyrocket in most machinima engines when one hopes to get precision lipsync that actually elevates the film instead of bringing down the overall quality. And this challenge has a long history.
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The director of Civil Protection recently recovered from a computer crash which has put his Half-Life 2 comedy series on hold, and to tide over his fans while he regroups, he recently shared some production screencaps from his use of the Source SDK tools. All those little shapes and icons… each of those works together in Hammer (the Half-Life 2 map editor) to coordinate elements of a scene, including scripted Faceposer sequences, lights and more. A testament to the Source SDK’s power to intimidate the uninitiated. You can see more of these (and in better resolution) at his blog.
Related: Valve Software’s Source SDK Wiki
