Dragon Age and Machinima

Gamespot have recently posted an article looking at the toolset that will be included with Dragon Age.

As with Neverwinter Nights, the toolset is designed to give players a chance to create their own worlds and adventures. As far as machinima goes, it was used to create Consanguinity and Bloodspell.

But what really caught my eye was how customizable the characters are. Bioware have taken their face editing tool from Mass Effect and applied it not just to player characters in the game but you can use the same thing with NPC characters in the toolset.

The third page of the article talks about how you can use the conversation editor to animate characters and make cutscenes.

It looks very promising for machinima and hopefully we'll see some good stuff.

Check out the full article.

Audio/Pix from Clear Skies 2 Premiere

Members of the audience enjoying Clear Skies 2

The Premiere for Clear Skies 2 went swimmingly this last Sunday. With about a dozen people attending, we screened CS2 while director, Ian Chisholm, commented via text chat. Watching some scenes that seemed very simple on screen while Ian told us that the scene had a very high level of complexity in the HL2 engine gave us all an even healthier respect for what Ian and his team have accomplished. The difficulty in combining two separate game engines (Valve's Half Life 2 and Eve Online) is great in the idea stage, but the technical obstacles are enormous.

Hathead's great new screening room

Ian felt that Clear Skies 2 is a better film because he had a much better grasp of tools like Faceposer and voice recording. And you can see this in the quality of the film itself. The voices are much clearer (a fan loaned him some good audio equipment to record with) and the style of the film seems smoother than the first one.

Virtual Ian Chisholm relaxing during the Q&A

It was a great pleasure to watch the film in Hathead's new screening room on Hathead Island in Second Life. He's been working hard to re-vamp and upgrade his SL constructions and the place looked great. My thanks to you, Hathead, for providing a space for us to have our Machiniplex shows. Please visit his blog when you get the chance or check out some of his live music sets in Second Life (his King Bee rendition is wonderful). He's a very supportive and talented person. Thank you!

Clear Skies boys have their eyes on the stars it seems

The Q&A after the screening was very enjoyable. With Phil Rice moderating, we covered the making of the film, how it was put together, problems encountered and, something I liked a lot, celebrated just how damn good the film was. Ian was constantly witty and amusing with anecdotes on voice recording, script-development and "star cruiser" wrangling in Eve Online. I challenge anyone to spend an hour with Ian and not understand immediately why his films are so well done and feature characters with such a sense of fun and mischief at the same time.

I was fortunate in being able to record the Q&A. With Phil moderating, I could capture decent audio and after a bit of cleaning and editing, I think it's a decent recording. There are some SL sounds that come and go, but nothing too distracting. For those who would like to listen to the Q&A session with Phil and Ian (about 60 minutes) you can stream it here:

Or, if you'd like to download the mp3 file you can do that here (right-click, save link as). You can also watch and/or download the film in a variety of formats at our Machiniplex site. My thanks to Phil for providing the excellent encoded streaming version of Clear Skies 2. What can't you do, Phil?

Phil on the left; Ian on the right.

At the end of the session, Ian indicated he felt he was at a crossroads with his career. He had learned so much over the last three years while making Clear Skies and Clear Skies 2 that he didn't want to chuck it away and so he's looking to figure out how to work animated filmmaking into some sort of career. He's not sure what direction he'll go in, but with his talent and personality, I have a feeling he'll do very well.

Here's wishing you the best, Ian, and your entire crew. Clear Skies 2 is a film to be proud of.

Clear Skies 2 Premiere this Sunday, June 28th

Just a quick reminder that Machiniplex will be Premiering director Ian Chisholm's Clear Skies 2 this Sunday, June 28th at 8AM (Pacific Time) / 11AM (Eastern Time) / 4PM (Great Britain) at Hathead's Screening Room in the virtual world Second Life.

We will screen the film (which is about 46 minutes long) and then have a Q&A with the director and members of his crew. We also hope to show some outtakes from the production (time permitting). Phil Rice will be moderating

Clear Skies 2 will be added to the Machiniplex.net collection on Sunday. You'll be able to stream and/or download the film in high-quality formats.

A good site to check the time in your are is here:

World Clock

And the slurl for Hathead's Screening Room is here:

Screening Room

I'll be there early to help those who are new to Second Life. My Second Life name is

gToon Jun

Remember, you can join in the discussion either using text chat or voice chat (if you have a headset and microphone).

See you there!

Machiniplex Premiere: Clear Skies 2 on Sunday, June 28th

On Sunday, June 28th at 8AM (Pacific Time) / 11AM (Eastern Time), Machiniplex.net will host the premiere of Ian Chisholm's Clear Skies 2 at the screening room on Hathead's Island in Second Life. We will screen the film (approx. 46 minutes long) and then have a Q&A with director Ian Chisholm and members of his team. Ian will be texting a director's commentary during the screening. Phil Rice will moderate the discussion.

For those who haven't seen the first chapter in the Clear Skies saga, James Egan's comments at Massively.com describes the plot quite succinctly:

“Clear Skies follows a trio of down-and-out misfits who've seen no end of bad luck. John Rourke is the obstinate captain of the Clear Skies, a Tempest class battleship manufactured by the downtrodden Minmatar race of New Eden. Rourke's attitude toward his hazardous chosen lifestyle is cavalier, although this does not sit well with his friends among the crew. Solomon Burke is the pessimistic ship's engineer, while Charlie Fodder -- a gunner with an ironic name -- does his best to keep the crew alive. Typical of life in New Eden, Fodder is doomed to remain a rather busy man.

These likeable dropouts from the entrenched corporate lifestyle of New Eden eke out a meager living on trade runs and the odd courier job here and there. Still, they manage to find humor in their grim lot as they narrowly avoid being blown out of the stars by pirates, hired thugs, or whatever threat awaits them on the other side of the next jump gate. This is life aboard the Clear Skies. It's not a comfortable lifestyle by any means, but the crew is free to live and die by their own terms. Of course, their exploits do make for some good stories.”

-James Egan, Massively.com
massively.com/2008/06/09/eve-online-meets-half-life-2-in-machinima-masterpiece


Clear Skies 2 improves on already excellent production values and adds impressive writing and characterization. Ian Chisholm and his team challenged themselves to improve on the hugely popular first film and have done a truly remarkable job. The combination of Eve Online for exterior scenes and Half Life 2 for interior shots is creative and high successful. The Faceposer work alone is at the highest level of machinima animation.

We'll be streaming Clear Skies 2 at our Machiniplex.com site several days before the June 28th Premiere. In the meantime, you can stream our download both films at Vimeo.com. Ian has recently added an amusing "Outtakes Bucket" for Clear Skies 2.

Machiniplex premiered the first Clear Skies film at the first annual Machinima Expo in November of 2008. We are proud to present the second film in an ongoing series.


If you've never been to one of our Premiere's here's how it works: you will need to join up at Second Life (a free virtual community), or simply log in if you are a member. Then you'll need to teleport to the screening room on Hathead's Island. You can follow this link to do so:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead%20II/72/124/1029

Once you arrive at the screening room, you'll find many other people chatting either by voice or by text chat before the screening. After a while, we'll announce the screening and we'll all watch the film on the large screens in the center of the room (be sure to click your "play" button at the bottom of your SL screen). When the film is done, we will talk about the film with director Ian Chisholm and members of his team. Phil Rice will be moderating the discussion. Feel free to ask questions and/or make comments about the film.

Generally, we talk for about an hour or so and then head over to the dance floor to boogie away (this is where the REAL conversations happen). If you've never danced before, just click on the silver ball over the dance floor to initiate the animations.

If you are a beginner, don't be afraid to ask questions; everyone there was a beginner once and we are happy to help you out.

8AM in Los Angeles (Pacific Time) works out to 4PM in London. If you need a time conversion chart, there is a good one here:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

No Altered States

Well... as it turns out, I am in Ecuador during the Altered States conference, so I won't be on the panel. So sad... so disappointing in that regard. I won't need to have the pre-conference discussion (although we really should have some kind of event/discussion soon anyway).

I'll be thinking of machinima and altered states and UCLA and this missed opportunity from 20,000 feet (and the farthest point from the center of the Earth, farther than the peak of Everest), though, so don't cry too hard. Just keep making great films! :)

-- Ingrid

State of “Play”: Narrativity and Gaming

I have been invited as a panelist for the following event at UCLA's first annual Altered States Media Conference next month. In order to prepare myself for an intelligent discussion, I was thinking of hosting a live discussion with machinimators and Machiniplex viewers and anyone else with two cents to contribute on the following topic.

State of “Play”: Narrativity and Gaming
Moderator: Peter Guber (Chairman, Mandalay Entertainment)

Any recent look into the business pages will show a video game industry outpacing the traditional film industry by ever-widening margins. Interactivity is now a common theme whenever discussing the future of narrative storytelling. But concepts such as scarcity, broadcasting, authorship, and predetermination are fundamental to the art of storytelling; can the “narrative” exist in an environment of peer-to-peer authorship? And as stories turn into games, how does one play a story?

I haven't selected a date for the discussion yet but I think 5:00 pm on Sunday, May 31 would work, giving me two weeks (some of which will be me climbing volcanoes in Equador) to ponder and absorb our discussion. I'm not sure if we should do Second Life or something else.

In any case, please let me know if you can attend - and please feel free to send me your thoughts, references, blog entries, etc. related to this panel, or leave a comment.

This panel is Sat. June 13 at UCLA - so if anyone's local, you should consider attending! There are a lot of other very interesting sessions going on and I am definitely going to make a day of it.

-- Ingrid

Looking For New Films to Premiere

It's been a few months since our last Premiere at Machiniplex, so we are looking for new, quality machinima films that would fit for a Premiere. If anyone has suggestions or has seen a machinima film recently that just knocked your socks off, send us a link either in the comments section here at the blog or to me privately at: rgrove@iliadbooks.com

We are also working to develop the "classics" section of our Machiniplex site. We'll be archiving and featuring classic machinima from the earliest Quake period of machinima up to a couple years ago. Admittedly, the "classic" moniker is subjective, but our desire is to present the best of machinima in years past. Any suggestions are welcome!

-Ricky