1. Ivy Film Festival - Deadline is Sunday to enter this student machinima festival (I'm one of its judges, by the way). Any work you created while a student, past or present, is eligible. Entry is free!
2. Ultimate Guide for Creating High Quality Textures - It's talking about textures in a web context, but the photography and prep tips have wide application and are excellent.

There's a degree to which one can get obsessed with the vocabulary of one's chosen profession / hobby, where it becomes an annoying distraction. I've been trying to consciously steer myself clear of that as a generally unproductive practice. But at the same time, language interests me, and how we choose to talk about things and the names we assign to those things do have meaning on some level.

1. The Expo, Year 2 - Last year, it felt like a test or an experiment to me. This year, it felt like THE machinima event of the year to be at. Not because of anything we organizers did, but because of you who attended. I'm already excited about next year, are you?
2. Training Really Took Off - iClone has a number of "Certified Trainers" who are keeping busy.
   

A real shocker, I know, right? Moviestorm's new Subscription Plan has brought forth a lot of opinions - I believe someone even described it as a "furor," though being on holiday I remained blissfully ignorant of that. Opinions are mixed on the subject, and forming a confident opinion can be a bit of a challenge as speculation has given rise to some misunderstanding and even misinformation. Even my thoughts didn't solidify instantly on this, and I'm a self-proclaimed Moviestorm lover.

Chantal Harvey, the recently appointed producer of the 48 Hour Film Project for Machinima, has asked me to be part of the jury for this year's competition. I have accepted the invitation, and in doing so have once again created an excuse for myself to not participate in the project.

But I sure hope some of you will band together and give this thing a go.

1. Cambridge Film Festival 2009: Machinima - Programming with Light - It's happening on the 25th of this month. Did I miss a Call For Entries?
   

Some exciting news regarding this year's Machinima Expo: it is being sponsored by Reallusion! And they have put up some fantastic prize packages for the Jury winners. More details are here:

http://tinyurl.com/nr8jyd

Have YOU entered your best work yet?

Submission Info, Guidelines, and Entry Form are here:
http://tinyurl.com/nbb5mt

Update: Oops! In my original post, I mistakenly attributed the forthcoming feature film and the embedded short below to the same creators, because they were mentioned side by side in a forum post. Turns out the creators are a continent away from each other.

1. NewTeeVee: Sony Adds Machinima Studio To Playstation 3’s Home - Wagner James Au asked both myself and Hugh Hancock for our first impressions.
2. NVidia Badaboom converter uses GPU instead of CPU to transcode videos - I'm not sure how significant an advance this is, but thought it warranted a mention.
   

... holy cow! I can't recall the last time I've seen anyone even attempt some of the animations here in machinima except of course Dr. Nemesis. I mean, come on, a woman sits across a man's lap and pulls down the kerchief from over his mouth?