Machinima round-up

I have been checking out a few things over the last days.

First off, I watched the collaborated efforts of the Ill Clan and Rooster Teeth over at the Independent Film Channel site. Those are some of the most entertaining machinima shorts I've seen in a while. They were just fun because they played on the Hollywood bigwig stereotypes and kind of brought the point home of the independently free reign of expression we have with this medium. You don't want a multi-million dollar budget, trust me.

Speaking of Hollywood bigwig stereotypes, I read a good article over at The Escapist on Warren Spector (long time game design guru) on working with Hollywood (or moreso the media conglomerates who own Hollywood) who are focused on getting a piece of the gaming pie and using their many creative property licenses with the same 'safety in numbers' content and brand weathervane. More reason for the machinima maker to stay punk, eh Hugh?

And finally, speaking of Hugh. Make sure to drop by the Loaded Inc. site to grab your MP3 of Paul Marino and Hugh Hancock presenting Machinima at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival. If you have not seen/heard a presentation by Paul or Hugh on Machinima here's your chance to imagine what it would be like, with bootleg audio! The quality sucks and the dude with the heavy breathing through the first 5 minutes or so drove me nuts (wake up dude!) but overall it was a good listen.