Yearly Archives: 2023

S3 E82 Machinima by Ally Kustera (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 22, 2023 Leave a reply

This week’s film review looks at a work by Ally Kustera. The work artfully conveys a sense of feminism without the politics through snippets of video game character cutscenes from Lara Croft to Ellie (The Last of Us) and others in between.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Daniel Grove’s Kitbash for Blender of Back Rooms assets here.

Ally Kustera’s Machinima, released 7 Feb 2023 –

Projects Update 1 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 19, 2023 Leave a reply

Not machinima but some great projects to share with you this week.

This has to be SFX rather than cinematic… right? From what I can ascertain, this new game release trailer/taster, called Off the Grid by none other than the infamous Neil Blomkamp (District 9 director), was captured with Technoprops and edited with Dynamixyz Performer –

The short is called SWITCHER, and was released on 3 May. The game will apparently be launched later in 2023 so we can check out the stunning cinematics in more detail then, and hopefully see more shorts from this world in due course.

Our next film this week is a stop-mo Samurai spectacular. Its called Hidari, being based on the work of wooden sculpture Jingoro Hidari. It is presented in the style of a ‘Japanimation’ and is promoted as a pilot for a long-form feature film although its unclear whether or when the release will happen. Its creators are attempting to devise new visual effects that make use of the wooden materials to show texture and joints and, for example, to use sawdust gushing out instead of blood when the characters are being attacked. Here’s the short, released on 8 March –

From one horror to another, this creator has re-imagined Alien as a Pixar movie using Midjourney, ElevenLabs and ChatGPT tools – yep, you read that correctly! The short is by Yellow Medusa and was released on 27 March. Its not animation, but is an interesting visualization nonetheless – maybe all horror movies should be transformed in this way, for those with a more sensitive pallet? Here’s the link –

Finally this week, Tenacious D’s hilarious music vid about video games, is a must watch and which has apparently been so already by more than 18M viewers. Its called Tenacious D – Video Games (our feature image for this post) and was a collaboration with Oney Play, released on 11 May. Enjoy –

S3 E81 Still Here (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 15, 2023 Leave a reply

Still Here… a chilling dystopian tale of a world devasted by climate crisis and wealth inequality. This week’s review is of a film by Guido Ekker, featured on the Film Shortage Channel (YouTube), and is one of the few shorts we’ve seen that attempts to make a point beyond pure entertainment. We identify some of the stereotypical tropes used and discuss the creative potential of machinima and virtual production for this kind of political messaging – all with our usual critical bonhomie.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film, released 17 April on the Film Shortage Channel, YouTube –

and also available on The Panics website here

The Orville, TV show

Tech Update 2 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 12, 2023 1 Comment

Its a week of mono|meta|omni-versal updates!

Mono

We’ve been following the debate on copyright, fair use and transformative use of IP for what seems like 30 years in the world of machinima (see some of our posts here, here and here) – oh, actually its 27 years…! On 18 May, the world was exercised a little further on the issue of transformative use when the Supreme Court (US) reached its decision on Andy Warhol’s use of a photograph of Prince in a magazine – a case that’s been running since 2016, following Prince’s death. Many suggested this decision is the beginning of end of transformative use – or at least ‘narrows the ‘fair use’ doctrine‘ – and will have massive detrimental impacts on all things created, such as machinima from games engines… however, with the particular scenario fully outlined, this was probably the right outcome for this case. The scenario relates to an unattributed use of an image from a private collecton of works (created and held by Warhol/foundation), where other works involving the same creatives in the collection had previously been attributed and the photographer recompensed when having been used in magazines, and the fact that both Warhol and the photographer (Lynn Goldsmith) made money from selling images individually. So, this decision is about context of use involving the individuals as much as it is ‘fair use’ per se. Justice Sotomayor stated the important factor in the fair-use analysis was that “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes” pushed the decision in favour of the photographer, arguing that “licenses, for photographs or derivatives of them, are how photographers like Goldsmith make a living. They provide an economic incentive to create original works, which is the goal of copyright.” You can read the ruling in full here – or use your favorite search tool for a link to any one of the numerous news articles covering the case.

So, until such time as the principle applied in this case is actually applied to a creator context, where income is rarely a goal of productions beyond individual recognition and perhaps the meagre YouTube % share for eyeballs it receives, and transformation is generally well beyond that originally intended by say a game dev, it feels like there’s nothing to see here.

Meta

On 23 June, Second Life turns 20 years old! There will be virtual parties, exhibitions, product sales and more – for 20 days of course, and you can find out more on the community website here. Happy Birthday to all the Lindens – the first open world environment to truly embrace metaversal themes.

If you want to catch up on some light reading, then its also worth noting that Wagner James Au’s new book releases a week later on 27 June, called Making a Metaverse that Matters. Au also regularly writes some great updates for what has to be one of the longest-running metaverse blogs. Its called New World Notes, which he founded in 2006. Au was the first metaverse journalist and marketer for SL back in 2003. Links to the book here –


Omni

Nvidia are releasing a monthly update on its blog of all things Omniverse, including latest advancements for the OpenUSD framework that has so quickly become the gold standard for integrating a wide range of creator tools in a 3D workflow. Here‘s the link to the first part of the ‘Into the Omniverse’ series (our feature image for this post) which includes an overview of an update to the connector for Adobe Substance 3D Painter. Substance 3D releases its latest version 203.0 in mid June. This series is a must follow for all content creators, whether or not you own an RTX!

-Versal

For those seeking advice on devising a virtual production pipeline, Unreal Engine has helpfully released a visualisation guide here and a nice vid here –

Unreal Engine released version 5.2 on 11 May, which includes some fab new features including a preview of its still in dev Procedural Content Generation framework, enabling creators to populate large scenes more efficiently; Substrate, that supports a greater range of surface appearances such as the opalescent finish showcased in this vid –

an enhanced virtual production set of tools for realtime filmmaking support; enhanced VCam system for multi-camera control; and nDisplay extended support, which is setting the scene for the next version 5.3. A link to the release notes is here.

We also spotted a useful tool in the UE Marketplace albeit pricey at $249 for indies: MetaShoot. It includes lighting and render presets for assistance with creating sophisticated lighting setups in your VP studio, released by VINZI – Code Plugins, link here.

Also super helpful is Kitbash3D’s new Cargo asset browser, including some 10,000 searchable assets. The basic account, which is free, allows you to 1-click upload content to your project and manage the assets you have but for a fee of $65/month, the pro version will let you search and access the full model and media library. Its another layer of cost so do check out the small print.

Completely Machinima Interview: Vladimir Nadein & Dmitry Frolov, curators (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 7, 2023 Leave a reply

In this bonus episode, Tracy talks to the curators of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Vladimir Nadein and Dmitry Frolov.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Tracy’s blog post about the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, including links to newspaper reviews about the festival’s machinima programme, Against Gravity

CM team discuss Oberhausen –

Sam Crane’s article: ‘Making movies in video games: why the film world is finally ready to take ‘machinima’ seriously’ in The Conversation, 16 May

Chris Marker’s machinima on Second Life –

Visions du Reel Swiss Film Festival 2023 special jury prize winner, Knit’s Island by Square Eyes –

Against Gravity showcase at Norway Film Festival link

Milan Machinima Film Festival link

Phil’s project to restore Machiniplex films starts with the release of his own Male Restroom Etiquette (originally released in 2006), with a hosted premiere of the HD remastered version on 11 June. The film was listed in the Guinness Book of Record’s Gamer’s Edition in 2009 as the most viewed machinima on YouTube at the time. Link here –