1. My June 1 appearance on The Wolf & Dulci Hour (podcast) is now available for download.
   

I'd posted about this a few weeks ago, here is another reminder as well as additional info. It appears (if it wasn't apparent before) that admission for machinima creators and students is FREE.

1. TMUnderground: Seven Deadly Sins Community Project - An exciting collaborative effort (open for joiners) which should yield some very interesting films.
2. Edge: Steam Now Supports DLC - Developers can now deliver downloadable add-on content via Steam.
   

Mitch Featherston, long time listener and supporter of the overcast, has just launched a new blog at www.sigmaman.com which is to be a repository of his textures / surface imagery.

The world for internet video creators is so often these days dominated by prohibitions and takedowns, it's nice to see a professional recording artist actually opening up doors for amateur creators to make use of their work.

It was bound to happen eventually. So what was affected and what do I think about it?

1. MFD: YouTube taking down Machinima using copyrighted music - The only thing shocking about this is the number of people who appear to be genuinely shocked across the various quarters of the community.
2. Star Wars: The Old Republic - Developer Dispatch: The Making of Tython - Some nice footage and behind the scenes info on this upcoming title, and a bit of a gander at the Bioware Austin off
   

I am happy to announce that I among several artists featured in an upcoming book by Andrew Selby called Animation in Process, which features profiles of animators from various forms and styles.

Playing through Mass Effect has been an amazing experience. But not just in the obvious way. Oh sure, it's an absolutely amazing game, it does just about everything right in my book; there's a bar-shaped hole in the ceiling of my house.

I've realized something else, too. First, a little backstory; I beg your pardon, those of you who've heard this before. When Male Restroom Etiquette exploded on the scene, surprising all of us, some really amazing opportunities emerged. Three different North American cable television networks wanted to broadcast the film; MTV wanted to feature a clip (and somehow did); a movie theater management company wanted to include the film in their before-the-feature preview roll; and the crown jewel... The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, for decades a much-craved outlet for launching comedy careers, wanted to feature part of the film and have Jay comment on it.

Other than the MTV clip, which I still don't know how it materialized, Electronic Arts - publisher of The Sims 2 game used to make the film - refused permission to air the film in these venues. They refused even NBC Television, the host network of The Tonight Show. And I, having chosen to make my film with their game's intellectual property, was absolutely powerless to do anything about it. After all, if frickin' NBC couldn't get a Yes, what would make me think that they'd ever listen to little ol' me?

Video games broke my heart when that happened. And I reacted like the jilted lover, resolved to never trust them again, released several "protest films" like [COMPANY] Rulez! and the Ad Absurdum series, and began to extol the virtues of IP freedom to everyone I knew.

I regret none of this reaction, and still feel wholly justified. But Mass Effect has made me realize something... I've steadfastly refused to fall in love with another video game since that heartbreak, so the decision to avoid them was relatively easy, in spite of the hardships of starting from scratch.

Mass Effect has seduced me. I'm in love with a video game again. And rebound relationship or no, it changes things.

With the buzz about Ghosts I-IV still going strong, Trent Reznor has dropped another bomb. Nine Inch Nails have just released another album - this one a full length with vocals titled The Slip - under Creative Commons license.

What's different this time is that the entire album is available for free, even the ultra quality versions.