You may have already seen the animated recreation of the Flight 1549 crash into the Hudson River, you might have even seen it featured on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. But did you know it was made with machinima technology?

1. Machinima Film Festival 2008 Nominees - Congratulations, nominees! Some really great films here, sprinkled with a few head scratchers.
2. My Dog Ate The Proof of my Ridiculous Allegations - Sorest. Losers.
   

A change of plans, Ricky and I were going to cover Antics v4 in this week's episode of the overcast, but I'd completely forgotten that Ricky was going to SIGGRAPH last week, compiling audio of his experiences along the way.

1. Graphic Design: The New Basics - A great online resource to accompany what looks to be a great new book coming in May.
2. The Art of the Title Sequence - A blog devoted to... exactly what it sounds like.
   

By a strange coincidence, it all started in Cambridge... again. Founded as Kelseus Ltd., the company which became Antics Technologies in 2004 has been interested and involved in a market they helped create: previz. And for the first couple years, their Antics product was priced as such - something extremely affordable for pro studios looking for a previz solution, but something considered a bit steep for the average hobbyist.

But some interesting things have happened in the past year. iClone's John Martin fired a shot across the bow of the machinima world at the 2006 Machinima Film Festival when it stepped forward into a growing awareness of intellectual property rights issues surrounding machinima, and provided a solution: a rights-free creation platform. Moviestorm, the brainchild of Kelland and Lloyd, broke through the topsoil very soon thereafter, pursuing a different business model.

Antics had been around all this time, having led for at least some of that time in terms of innovation, but viewed as largely inaccessible for the unfunded hobbyist. That view, if it was ever accurate, just doesn't hold true anymore. Let me explain.