Ill Clan

S4 E124 Machinima News Omnibus (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 10, 2024 Leave a reply

A packed review this month, with some sad 🙁 better 😐 and happy news 🙂



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Endings

The long-anticipated demise of Rooster Teeth and has been announced – as has the much anticipated final season of Red Vs Blue in this trailer –

If you are a die hard RTer, here’s a link to the Rooster Teeth team response to Warner’s announcement, its ‘Not a Final Goodbye’ –

Tracy and Ben’s Pioneers in Machinima book chapter is here too, Chapter 4: Rooster Teeth Bites.

Here’s the link to the 2007 Special Ep, Going Global, released at the First European Machinima Festival in 2007 (in Leicester, UK) –

Articles, Variety, Deadline and IGN.

Another ending, Draxtor Dupres’ Second Life series supported by Linden Labs, Drax Files: World Makers. Here’s his final report and here’s a link to a livestream he did to celebrate the achievements of the show –

Accolades

Sam Crane’s Hamlet in GTA5 won a Jury prize for best documentary at SXSW 2024, link to news coverage here, and the distribution deal awarded here.

Electro League and Weta’s War is Over has become the first UE5 film to win an Oscar, Best Animated Short –

Aye AI AI…

YouTube has updated its T&Cs, a nice article here

ConvAI has announced a partnership with Unity for NPCs, and also teamed up with Second Life. Here’s a link to Wagner James Au’s New World Notes blog – and here’s a couple of useful links –

Stability AI has introduced a 3D video generator, information here

RunwayML has partnered with Musixmatch to generate video to lyrics, link to information here

and it has also announced a new lipsync feature for generative audio, currently on early access to its creators programme members

Hume has a demo of a voice-to-voice generator, described as an Empathic Voice Interface – link to sign-up for early access here

and if you need a little overview of how all things generative AI are developing, here’s a nice video summary by Henrik Kniberg

Inspiration

To celebrate the phenomenal success of Gozilla Minus One at the 2024 Oscars, Nelson Escobar, the VFX creator of the Godzilla model, has released it as a free download for Blender. Link here –

Blockbuster Inc has announced its release date: 6 June 2024. Here’s the official gameplay trailer –

and here’s the link to Prologue on Steam

Finally, here’s the link to the interview with Denis Villeneuve, discussing his approach to making the latest Dune films –

Post Script

We are super excited to see our Podcast make the Top 3 listing of indie filmmaking podcasts on Goodpods in March 2024 – how cool is that?!

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi: Quake II Machinima

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 17, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Ben reviews the notable machinima films made in the early years of the Quake II engine, including skits, a talk show, music videos and some hard hitting documentaries.  This ep also reviews the first real-time live performance of a machinima by The ILL Clan at the Florida Film Festival (2003), which was based on their earlier created characters of Cook Carl and Lenny & Larry Lumberjack. 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

0:36 Hardly Workin’ by The ILL Clan, released 22 August 2000

1:57 Eschaton: Nightfall by Strange Company, released 1 Sept 1999

4:27 Late Nite With Toxy and Essobie, Ep 1, released 24 August 1998

Late Nite with Toxy and Essobie

6:50 Rebel Versus Thug by Ken “3D Filmmaker” Thain, released 10 May 2006

8:10 Rick Jones 2 by Bryan “CrustaR” Henderson, released 25 Nov 1999

9:35 Father Frags Best by Phil Rice (ZS Overman), released 1999

Father Frags Best

13:09 Circus Life Part 1 & Part 2 by Andre “Donnovan” Luis, released August 1998

17:20 Common Sense Cooking With Carl The Cook, realtime performance by The ILL Clan at Florida Film Festival 16 March 2003

The ILL Clan

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi: Quake I Machinima

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 24, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Ben reminds us where the story of machinima originated in those early Quake movies which have become classic game-based films.  He talks us through the most notable contributions by the pioneers using the Quake 1 engine.  Tune in next month when Ben concludes the history of Quake with reviews of notables in Quake 2 and 3.  You can find links to the films on our blog and some in our YouTube playlist for History of Machinima.



YouTube Version of Episode

Show Notes & Links

Ben reviews classic Quake 1 films from the machinima archives –

0.48 Diary of a Camper by The Rangers, released 26 October 1996

2.00 Torn Apart series by The Rangers, first released 6 November 1996

2.28 Apartment Huntin’ by The ILL Clan, released 17 May 1998

3.23 Eschaton: Darkness Twilight by Strange Company, released 20 January 1998 (by Walking Wounded)

Hugh Hancock, Strange Company

4.30 Blahbalicious by Avatar & Wendigo, released 9 December 1997

5.40 Devil’s Covenant by Clan Phantasm, released 2 August 1998

6.59 Operation Bayshield by Clan Undead, released 24 January 1997

8.02 Zerstorer by Nihilism Unlimited, released 27 September 1997

9.06 Seal of Nehahra by Nehahra Team, released 6 August 2000

9.46 Scourge Done Slick by Quake Done Quick Team, released 25 July 1998

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi (January)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 27, 2022 2 Comments

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during the month of January in the early days of machinima. Starting with 1997 there’s Operation Bay-Shield. 1998 has the First Quake 2 movie – The Mad Bomber. Rematic, a machinima tool by Anthony Bailey is released in 1999. Also in this year Phil Rice released his notable film, Father Frags Best – a machinima classic. 2000 sees Machinima.com founded and Quad God film was released along with several other notable films. 2002 saw the Reel-Time Challenge contest along with Psyk’s Popcorn Jungle retiring (a big machinima review site). 2003 Anachronox the Movie Part 1 was released. 2004 Red vs Blue second season launched. In 2005 the first noveletta about machinima was written by Mike Hoefflinger called Moving Pictures. In 2006, Hugh Hancock, founder of Machinima.com stepped away from the site to focus on his filmmaking.



youtube version of podcast

Operation Bay-shield (1997) by WendCA

Eschaton: Darkness Twilight (1998) by Strange Company

First Quake 2 Movie: The Mad Bomber (1998)

Rematic (1999) tool created by Anthony Bailey (Quake Done Quick Team). The tool enabled reshoots of existing Quake (1) demos from new perspectives

Father Frags Best (1999) by Phil Rice aka ZS Overman

Quad God (2000) by Tritin Films

A Warrior’s Life (2000) by Donnovan

Ozymandias (2000) by Strange Company

Anachronox: The Movie Part 1 (2003) by Jake Hughes

Rebel Vs Thug (2003) by Ken “3DFilmmaker” Thain – a commercial project with Public Enemy’s Chuck D side project

The Gamer’s Benchmark (2003) by Futuremark released a teaser movies for 3DMark03 – the link is to the full movie after release

Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts (17 Jan to 4 April 2004) and The Game Scenes exhibition was created by Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University presented on ‘the pervasive influence of computer game culture’, curated by Galen Davis and Henry Lowood.

Lenny and Larry Lumberjack (2004) by The ILL Clan – a video of excerpts from their premiere performance of On The Campaign Trail at Void in New York City

“Moving Pictures” (2005), a novelette by Mike Hoefflinger, published by Packet Switched Press – the novel is about a group of people who start their own machinima production with the desire to make it to the big time!

I Surrender (2005) by Tristan Pope is mentioned on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft main website page

The Los Angeles Machinima Collective (LAMC) announces their first machinima production William Shakespear’s Mechbeth – the film was never produced!  Ricky was here?!

Ricky Was Here!

Epic Games’ winners of the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal Contest (MSUC) for the Non-Interactive Movie Category 2005 –

– The Journey, 1st Place ($25,000)

– Bot, 2nd Place ($15,000)

– Sparked Memory, 3rd Place ($5,000)

– Scrap, 4th Place ($3,000)

– Damnation, 5th Place ($1,500)

Adventures in Dating, first episode (PG13 series) entitled Frustration (2005) by Decorgal

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi (November)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes November 25, 2021 Leave a reply

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during November in the early days of machinima, including Phil and Damien’s first contributions; release of legendary machinima games Halo 2, HalfLife 2, World of Warcraft & GTA San Andreas.  Red vs Blue Season 1 went gold and Second Life’s release of copyright statement are highlighted during this month, plus Hugh Hancock and Paul Marino made it to British TV Channel 4’s ‘The Toon Commandments’. Also a notable mention to Nvidia, whose GeForce FX series of graphics cards was launched in November 2002, signaling the dawn of cinematic computing.  Listen up and follow the links on our blog post.

[buzzsprout episode=’9587827′ player=’true’]

Machinima Gold: Strange Company (L-R: Sally Brewer, James Payne, Hugh Hancock, Steve Wallace, a descendant of William Wallace (Braveheart), and Gordon McDonald) & Paul Marino on Channel 4’s The Toon Commandments (2000)

Show Note Links –

Torn Apart (1) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN_kpxctijA

Quake 2 (Standing in for original trailer the RTX upgrade trailer instead) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unGtBbhaPeU

Half-Life – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wavn29LMrs

Unreal Tournament 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJU9oSSPDs

ILL Robinson (Paul Marino) and Hugh ‘Nomad’ Hancock are interviewed on National UK TV Channel 4’s “The Toon Commandments” – https://archive.org/details/channel-4-machinima-toon-commandments

Halo: Combat Evolved (Halo 1) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0kHiEME0Vk

IL-2 Sturmovik – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EttVIq9Pig

ILL Clan teaser trailer for their upcoming episode series Lenny and Larry on the Campaign Trail – https://archive.org/details/illclan-Lennyandlarrycampaigntrailer

Jason Choi’s Max Payne tribute video – https://vimeo.com/63995463

Halo 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ycOwVPqbxA

Half-Life 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID1dWN3n7q4

World of Warcraft – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlVSJ0AvZe0

Tristan Pope (The Godfather), I Surrender, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVUoVVNnFc

GTA: San Andreas soundtrack to be released December 7th 2004 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daw8xhaGj2s&t=172s

Matt Kelland, Dave Morris & Dave Lloyd’s book