This week’s selection is a stunning cinematic imaginary by Unknown Dino, focussing on the next version of Half Life (soon to be released… er, well, possibly in the next 10 years or so?). There is a lot of craft in this film, called HL: Overworld and made in Blender, which has taken its inspiration both from the HL Reddit community and the HL2 Artbook ‘Raising The Bar’. We also talk about the positioning of the new world portrayed as being the next obvious logical step in the story arc for Half Life – HL1 being a portal through which aliens jump to Earth, HL2 being a kind of survival against the odds, Alyx being the prequel, and HL3 being the fight back taken to those hateful Combine… yeah, we wish!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
E142 Half Life: OVERWORLD by Unknown Dino, released 27 May 2024 –
This week’s episode reviews a film by Fandom Games called Half Life 3: Honest Game Trailers, released 31 March 2015. The film is a throwback style of satire and even if you’ve not been following Valve’s Half Life developments, you’ll enjoy this. For those less in the know, HL3 is a game that never made it beyond the hype, despite its avid fan base waiting patiently (or impatiently) to play it for 20 years! We reflect on Fandom Games origins in Jimmy Wale’s Wiki technology. We also discuss our approach to ‘healthy criticism’ on the podcast.
This week’s Projects Update on machinima, virtual production and content creation:
The Crow
One of the most interesting creative projects we’ve seen so far using MidJourney, a creative AI generator is the The Crow (by Glenn Marshall Neural Art). Here the generator has been used to recreate a version of the ballet performance portrayed in the short film, Painted (by Duncan McDowall and Dorotea Saykaly). Stunning to say the least and we recommend you play it at least once side-by-side against the original performance too for added insight.
We’re so impressed with the potential of AI generators, whether that’s DALL-E, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion or any of the others that are now emerging, that we’re going to dedicate a special episode of the podcast to the subject next month, so watch out for that!
Jim Henson Company
Jim Henson Company is using real-time animation on their new show, Earth to Ned. Characters are created with Unreal (its the AI in the background) but JHC has been so impressed with the workflow and no post production requirement that it is looking to use the virtual production method more. What’s interesting is the level of feedback in the process that guests experience – they are not aware of the puppeteering in the background, just the virtual actor on the screen, performing naturalistically in real-time! We’ve not seen much of this kind of machinima before although actually Hugh Hancock did some very early work on this and of course Rooster Teeth have done live performances using similar techniques. We can certainly expect to see a lot more of it, particularly for interactive theatre, VR and AR.
Half Life 3
Half Life 3 was never going to be like the originals? This article on Tech Radar is interesting: the author (Phil Iwanuik) contends the Half Life franchise remakes would never be like the originals because the extreme attention to the world of HL created so much pressure the Valve team could never live up to it. We’re not sure about that, but it’s an interesting idea.
source: Valve
Dune: Awakening
A very impressive MMO has launched using the Dune world, currently in beta, Dune: Awakening. Here’s the trailer – we’re looking forward to seeing machinima made with this –
Dungeons & Dragons?
What does Dungeons and Dragons, typically a game played around a table, have to do with machinima? There’s been a rise in popularity of web based shows where people play the game and act out scenes. This group (Corridor Crew) is using Unreal Engine 5 for virtual production (not quite The Mandalorian but sort of similar) to put their actors, real-time, into the environments of their adventure. Check it out here –
Tracy Harwood and Ben Grussi’s Machinima Book, On Sale Now!
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