Halo Machinima Awards

Yanked from Slashdot:

"It was announced on /. almost two months ago and now, finally, the 3rd Annual 'Rockets on Prisoner' Awards have announced this year's Winners. Several video segments have been produced documenting the Nominees and Winners, along with the acceptance speeches from the lucky few who will be receiving golden Master Chief statues for their excellent work in Machinima. With awards Ceremonies like this, who needs the Oscars?"

Congrats to The Codex guys on their multiple wins.

3rd Annual 'Rockets on Prisoner' Awards

The Machinima mushroom

A DIY guerrilla art form takes the film industry by storm(troopers)
It was only a matter of time until someone realized that movements permitted by in-game cameras closely approximate the visual language of film. Even more exciting possibilities opened up when fans combined this cinematic capability with social spaces such as first-person shooters and massively multiplayer games. A group of players can perform as actors while others can use the camera controls to record their interactions. In this way, gamers transformed a $50 video game into a powerful engine for creating animated videos.

A decent machinima primer to the San Antonio Current readers.

San Antonio Current

30 Days of 3D Studio Max

Snagged from over at Polycount:

The 3DStudio Max 8.0 thirty day demo has been released on the Autodesk site. Thank you to Mister Trepanier for the tip. Also of note, GMax has been canceled as of October 5th.

So if you want to pay homage to your new 3D overlords and check out the latest goods, nows your chance.

3DStudio Max 8.0 thirty day demo

Straight From Video

Long an underground pursuit, machinima has made its way into music videos, TV shows and commercials. Creating a film using video game components not only is cheap, it appeals to both movie buffs and computer game enthusiasts.

"We're broadening the demographic with machinima," said Evan Shapiro, general manager of the Independent Film Channel, which is airing short machinima segments between feature films. "We're taking film purists and introducing them to a new form of entertainment. We're also drawing in a gaming audience."

Actually quite a good article on Machinima over at the LA Times. Intermix of history and introduction to the medium (note its the 'business' section). I definately think machinima is hitting the end of its 'early adopter' crest.

LA Times

Heavy.com Launches Broadband's First-Ever Fall Season Of Programming

Heavy.com, the world's leading broadband network with more than 6 million unique viewers monthly, today announced broadband's first-ever fall season of programming.

The guys at Heavy.com have been busy at work with the game publishers. The whole line-up of 7 series are all machinima, done with various game engines. Bravo on the feat, although I am warrie of the content.

GamesIndustry.biz

Title goes here machinima boy

So it been a while since posting so I've got some catching up to do. This last few weeks has been very difficult. Over a month back I was contacted by BioWare (Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire) to see if I was interested in applying for an open Cinematic Designer position. Hell ya! So I had a phone interview then ended up flying over to Edmonton in September for interviews and testing. It was pretty cool and I had a lot of fun. The best part was that my testing was in Unreal Engine 3 so I got to really dig into it. Just that experience has reaffirmed that I will be sticking with this engine for machinima.

After it was all and done I came home and they offered me a job. Wow, I couldn't believe it. Part of my excitement was obviously that I would be doing cutting edge machinima for a triple A game company. The other part of my excitement was that this would be a huge example that there is a career path in machinima. I have some background in (managing) software developments so this obviously was part of my qualifications, but overall it was my work in machinima which got me noticed and provided the opportunity. I've never done the machinima thing with a final goal in mind. I've always wondered if it would lead to opportunity in the film/tv business or would lean me toward the game industry. But now, from this experience I see at least one career path for machinima filmmakers.

So, for reasons that would take too much explaining here I did not accept the offer. It was a very, very, very, VERY, veryveryvery, tough choice. And it stings like a bitch. But so be it. I don't consider this the be all and end all of my opportunity in machinima.

In other news... I checked out the new Slapdash 2 release by PHW Comics. I don't think I understood one audible line of speech but I find this machinima kicks ass. Its just so stylistically unique you gotta just watch. Its both hilarious and dramatic bundled up in one tight burrito.

Ill Clan is this months (?) guests on This Spartan Life. Funny, funny stuff. As Frank holds the shot gun, "Whats it saying now" hahahaha.

Speaking of the Ill Clan, looks like they've been doing some work for MTV2. Along with Rooster Teeth creating PANIC (panic, panic), it looks like there is opportunity for the business savvy machinima filmmaker with some example work (or a great team). Start knocking on game developers and publishers doors!

The World Of Warcraft machinima short by Rufus Cubed Productions (kewl name), 'The Return' rocks. A must see.

April Hoffmann's, The Awakening raps up with episode 3. This is among the top Sims series out there (that I've seen anyways) and will be posted as a pick shortly.

And finally, Frieze.com has a good machinima article, "Games Without Frontiers - The relationship between cinema and video games is becoming increasingly incestuous"

That should catch me up a bit. Should be posting a little more often now this career drama has settled. Should be lots of machinima hype coming shortly with the 2005 Machinima Film Fest coming soon! I'm looking forward to what gets released in the next few months because of this awesome fest.