A love letter to Cyberpunk 2077? In this week’s episode, the CM crew discuss a cinematic music video that perfectly captures a uniquely human feeling of people watching… and reflects on the phenomenal creativity of procedurally generated character content in the Cyberpunk world. The film is called Don’t Fall Down by Puttefnask and the song it accompanies is Pray by Haelos – it is perhaps a more fitting video than the original.
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
Film, by Puttefnask, released 23 February 2023 –
Made using Cyberpunk 2077 Photo Mode mod v 1.0.20 by Otis_Inf, link here
Original music video, Haelos – Pray, released 26 Oct 2015 –
Our review of inspirational projects often includes work which is NOT machinima, and this week we have picked out a couple that we’re sure our followers will enjoy too… of course, interspersed with examples of great machinima projects. Not least, this includes the podcast’s Damien’s (aka Darth Angelus) Star Wars fan series, a stalwart of the Second Life machinima creator community, Tutsy NAvArAthnA, whom Tracy interviewed a couple of years back here, and the only stereoscopic machinima we’ve actually seen!
The Classics: from Star Trek to Star Wars
Firstly, a parody of the original Star Trek series, this is the latest episode of Mark Largent’s long-running Stalled Trek project. The ep is called The City of the Edge of Foreclosure (released on YT on 25 April). It is based on Harlan Ellison’s epic episode called The City on the Edge of Forever, which originally aired in 1969 should you want to look it up on IMdB. As Largent says in those importal words ‘You cannot have your fate, and Edith too’!
Damien’s Star Wars series, Heir to the Empire, is featured on SFW Magazine’s website here. The article explains Damien’s process for animating the original novel by Timothy Zahn. You can watch the whole series on his channel, or the latest episode here –
and plus, given the recent pap interest in Damien, we can confirm that he is NOT married, or at least, he’s never declared that status to us!
Stop Mo
This is a great fun short stop-mo by Winga (released 4 May). Yes its an ad for an AI-using mobile phone image tracking stabilizer called Insta360, but definitely worth a view. The back end of the vid is an explainer of the kit and how Winga shot the film, also worth a view –
The REAL Metaverse
In this short, Mon Metaverse (released 16 Jan 2022), well-known Second Life creator and documentarian Tutsy NAvArAthna, discusses his observations on the metaverse, the promise of Second Life and the sinister ways in which some are turning the ‘digital screw’ by orchestrating our online experiences. The film features the creative work on dozens of creators (see the film credits for details). There’s an advisory warning with this but, then again, that’s the point being made (its also our featured image for this post). With Second Life having recently celebrated its 20th year, its timely to share the work too –
Double Vision?
I knew if we waited awhile someone would share a stereoscopic machinima with us… if you recall, Tracy highlighted there were very few (if any) that had been made, a point arising from the panel discussion at the Oberhausen International Film Festival earlier this year (reported here). Well, here you go. This short has been made by the uber-talented Second Life creator Ataro Asbrink. It is called Mandala Moods 3D and is a hypnotising example of what’s possible. You will need anaglyph glasses to appreciate it of course –
This week’s review is of 12 minutes of the wackiest of Wacky Wests we could ever imagine! BedBananas has used a a whole host of mods, created by Weds_Garbageday, to devise this truly surrealist Red Dead American dream machinima. Seeing is believing – and its probably one of the best machinimas of all time!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
Film, by BedBananas, released 10 June 2020 –
Mods creator, Glynn JKW – link to his Github page here and his Twitter here
Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr, available as a public domain movie here –
Link to critique of Dali and discussion of the meaning of his work here
Lainy Voom’s Push on Phil’s Machiniplex Remastered collection channel (Vimeo) here –
and Tracy’s discussion of surrealist machinima in the Journal of Visual Culture (2011) here
This week, we’ve got a few things for you to add to your tools list and some info about things you’ll be keen to watch out for… but before you check those out, we share with you a showcase of Unreal’s MetaHuman and a rather creepy demo of tendons in Blender!
Showcase
This is a creative piece, made using Unreal’s MetaHuman, that will give you goosebumps – note the very detail of the facial animation and especially the whistfulness captured in eyes of the character. You could almost see this guy opening a bank account using facial recognition tech! The short, based on a poem by Mike Antic, is called Blue Dot and has been created by Epic’s 3Lateral team in collaboration with Serbian artist Radivoje Bukvic (released 15 June) –
In this uncanny valley special demo created in Blender, Chris Jones‘ shows a ‘throwaway WIP’ – its great but if this is modelled on someone’s actual hand, well, I don’t really want to know more…
Out Now
Reallusion has released free ZBrush and Character Creator plugins. Both are excellent tools for refining your animations, and the ability to link these together makes for exciting new possibilities for improving your workflow. Here’s the link to the downloads and here’s a video explainer –
The popular open world game, No Man’s Sky is now also available for Mac. This may or not make it more accessible to creators because, of course, most of the tools folks have are still only PC but nonetheless its a start!
Onwards and Upwards
Unity, in collaboration with Apple, has devised a Beta programe for creating ‘spatial experiences’, intended to support development of content for the Apple Vision Pro. You can sign up to participate here.
Unreal features a neat demo of its massively scalable procedural generation framework (PGC), which ships with version release 5.2. This looks great – the demo is called Electric Dreams, and also illustrates its amazing Substate system. Video link here –
Worth Waiting For
Blockbuster Inc., seemingly made in the mold of that well-known machinima creator studio released way back in 2005 called The Movies, has released a demo which is now on Steam (it is being developed by indie studio, Super Sly Fox). Here’s the link – the full release date is reported as being later this year.
We’re all eagerly awaiting Blender 4.0, right (due November 2023)? As part of the release, Grease Pencil 3.0 will be included in its 2D animation toolset, originally an annotation tool that has evolved to do quite a bit more. You can read the update on Blender’s develop blog here.
Nope, its not ‘just a game’, its one of the most visually stunning Gothic story open worlds ever created (according to Ricky)! In this ep, we discuss GraysonFlows’ tribute to the world of Elden Ring, set to Max Richter’s November composition, which highlights the beauty of the game from the exhausting open sequence to the final prize, creatures, battles and voice acting.
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
Its Just A Game | Elden Ring ‘The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story…’ by GraysonFlows, released 19 May 2022
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