This week, we review a pretender for a new Disney show called Forlorn, by @projectforlorn (aka Alex St Pierre). Well, it may well be at some point in the near future! Starting life as a tech demo, this short has an interesting back story and has evolved into something even more interesting. Check out our review and add your own thoughts!
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
Forlorn | Unreal Engine Short Film by Project Forlorn, released 3 Jan 2024 –
This week’s podcast episode is our curated news omnibus for this month. We cover lots, and enjoy reflecting on the significance of the stories we highlight for the world of machinima and virtual production.
btw, the international internet pipes failed and microwaves fried our apps during this recording session, video corrupted and monsters ran loose among us, so enjoy the voice data we’ve managed to resurrect and video clips we’ve added – we’ll be back next week in full glory!
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
Fan communities under pressure?
Valve’s Steam policy and recent take downs for Team Fortress 2 and Portal fan projects – article on Games Radar here
Half Life 3 aka Entropy Zero (and 2) projects – Fandom.com overview here and video –
New Moviemaking Toolsets
Blockbuster Inc, Prologue version now on Steam here
Demo by Orbital Potato here –
Replikant now in free beta on the Unreal Marketplace.
Replikant has a Youtube channel with plenty of tutorials on it already, and there’s a great demo of it which gives you a sense of the animation quality it produces –
And for those wanting a quick and dirty tutorial on UE5, check this out –
Steamboatin’ Along!
Minecraft Steamboat Willie which is a fun take on it, made by Red and Blue –
Fewture Studios’ trailer for The Return of Steamboat Willie, made in Unreal Engine –
Screams
The origins and impact of the Wilhelm Scream – BBC shorts here
This week, we spend some time talking about new tools, emergent topics, AI and copyright (again), with some interesting links for you below. Check out the episode here –
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
New tool releases
iClone’s ‘clumsy moves’ pack, available at $70, can be downloaded here
Crowd simulation tools, including Reallusion’s sim bundle for CC4 and social groups for iClone 8, link here and a nice video here –
and Kenneth MacLean’s MegaHumans plugin WIP. No link for the latter, but here’s a neat show and tell video –
A free new VR mod by Praydog for Unreal Engine – here’s an overview about it –
Mickey and AI discussion
Disney’s Mickey in a horror game called Infestation Origins that will be released later this year –
and an interesting AI generated short that seems to confirm Mickey’s transmogrification into a horror character –
Princeton’s Public Domain Project released an annual report – check it out here for 2024.
Improving the quality of your machinima films with AI, check out Pryda Parx suggestions here –
and you can also check out the restored machinimas Phil did for the Machiniplex channel here, and here’s the trailer for the body of work too –
Google’s VideoPoet that turns prompts into animations without the interim stage of an image and a separate tool like Runway to animate it. Here’s a neat example of its capabilities, focussing on a travelling raccoon –
Mods and Cockers!
The Convergence mod for Elden Ring (and many others), v 1.4 – a nice overview here –
A case of corporate bullying? Check out the situation this Minecrafter is facing and if you’re a legal expert, do please get in touch with him to help out!
In this episode, Phil introduces the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection, a curated selection of machinimas from the early years. Machiniplex was a site created to host classic machinimas at the point that Machinima [dot] com began to assert its energies over the community as a corporate entity. The site was a community endeavour, with both Ricky and Phil playing a pivitol role in managing the project to preserve the original content the community had contributed to the early original Machinima website… until such time as it ran its course. In this ep, Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.
To celebrate the release of the curated collection, we have each selected a film we recall with particular fondness and discuss its significance. Phil has remastered each of the films using AI, not always a perfect process, so we also discuss his approach and techniques in bringing the original works up to 4K standard.
We encourage machinima fans everywhere to check out these films, not only were they brilliant in their day but in terms of storytelling, remain some of our favourite creative works against which we often draw comparisons when reviewing latest films.
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997 –
BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005? –
Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006 –
The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006 –
Phil’s trailer for the Machiniplex [Remastered] Channel –
Go to the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection on Phil’s Vimeo channel here – website https://bit.ly/machiniplex or access the playlist here –
This week, we highlight three excellent Unreal storytelling projects, and some other interesting storymaking development projects we think you’ll find just as intriguing.
Unreal Stories
Brave Creatures, released on 2 March, is one of the most inventive and magical stories made using Unreal Engine we’ve seen and it’s not been set on an alien planet full of freakish monsters and travellers in space suits. The creative team, Studio Pallanza (none other than Academy award-winning VFX artist, Adam Valdez) was awarded a Mega Grant to bring this project to life, and it has done a truly outstanding job of it. It will surely be the basis of a new children’s series? Here’s the link –
and if you want to hear Adam discuss the work, check out Jae Salina’s interview with him here –
Promise with Dr. (English version), released on 17 Feb by TT Studio, is another magical story, albeit with a completely different aesthetic. Great editing and storytelling, do check this out too –
Miika is an award-winning film by Ugandan director, Nsiimenta Shevon, released on 27 Feb. This is powerful and disturbing, as only tales of African conflict can be. Beautifully animated by Solomon Jagwe, here’s the link –
Storymaking in Other Ways
This is not a film or an animation, but a fascinating insight into the storymaking possibilities of interactive chatbots and animated robots. In this ‘show and tell’ presentation at SXSW 2023 by Disney Parks’ chair of Experiences and Products Josh D’Amaro, Tinker Bell (Peter Pan’s sidekick) is shown as an animated chatbot in a box and a roller-skating child-like robot is emoted using mocap. These are Disney’s ‘greeters’ of the future, embedded with storytelling capabilities through the design process. What is particularly interesting is that, at least for me, the usual uncanny valley effect had somehow disappeared – what do you think?
In our next selection, MidJourney has been used to conflate two very different yet seemingly complementary storyworlds into a series of bizarre images, one being Star Wars and the other being the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. This work, called Star Wars by MidJourney, by AI Visionary Art, was published on 18 Feb and somehow converts the grotesque and nonsensical creatures into a familiar canon (for some, Damien) –
And finally this week, we share an overview of an InWorld AI driven adventure game called Origins (our feature image for this post), animated using Unreal’s Metahuman characters and presented in the style of a film noir (or rather, a neo-noir). This is vaguely reminiscent of some of those very early games that inspired a lot of machinima creators back in the earliest days, Max Payne for those with long memories. InWorld AI has described its approach as the future of NPCs, but its also their DNA too. The chatbot and naturalistic style interface is a really interesting development for storymaking and storytelling and we’re definitely looking forward to seeing what creators do with this kind of creative platform in future. Check this out –
That’s it for this post, thanks for reading and do share with us anything you spot that you think we should be reviewing on the podcast.
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