This week we are treated to a beautifully crafted film by Artcgrrl, fellow Hangout forum compatriot and a gal who has been impressing people with her Sims 2 work since the very early days of that game's machinima. I was particularly impressed with her entry into a one minute machinima challenge a few years ago, where her polish and creativity really shined.

About a month ago, Sam Midwood pointed me to this exceptional piece of Sims 2 machinima by Laroling, a Radiohead music video for the song "Like Spinning Plates" that has a very "motion graphics" feel to it. Sasha on the Machinima.com blog highlighted the film, prefacing it with disclaimers which must have been intended for their gamer audience, but I don't think those are necessary here.

Laroling is one of the machinimators to watch, for sure.

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.