This week’s review is of a No Man’s Sky machinima called Origins, produced by Evil Dr.Porkchop. Its a beautiful cinematic travelogue showcasing the vast expansiveness that is No Man’s Sky – a game in which you will almost never have the same experience twice. Of course, Ricky wanted more drama and story but Phil nails it, reflecting on what might be possible if you could use No Man Sky’s environments with Eve Online’s space battles and Star Citizen’s avatars! Yeah… but that’s not this film!
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
Film, Origins by Evil Dr.Porkchop, released 30 November 2020 –
Music soundtrack by Confidential MX and full credits here –
This week we feature two films by Chinese artist collective studio, Motzify Mohua. These two shorts, The Crown and Hunt, are made in Unreal Engine and show extraordinary qualities in very different ways: The Crown is a fairytale made originally for World Children’s Day and illustrates traditional cultural references with gorgeous imagery; Hunt is a cyberpunk anti-hero teaser. Our main ‘complaint’ is that we need more detail from the artists!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
Films, The Crown, released on 1 June 2023
Hunt, released on 5 May 2023
Political references also in our film review E81 Still Here, also made in Unreal Engine
Don’t forget to check out Phil’s Machiniplex Remastered curated machinima site. One we mention in this episode that was particularly inspirational in the context of this week’s film reviews is Snow Witch (Britannica Dreams, released 2006), film link –
A performance by a camera ham, shutterbug or just a plain histrionic narcissist? This week’s review discusses an older machinima that has highly contemporary themes in it: carry-on-regardless, daydreaming, whatever, so long as the virtual camera is rolling. The film is called Daydream (2009) set to the titular song by Lovin’ Spoonful, created by Mystfit and made Valve’s Half Life 2. Needless to say, we loved the humor but what makes this machinima interesting is that it was a scripted production created by running a path sequencer inside the game, harking back to the early days of how machinimas were made but so is reminiscent of how contemporary tools such as iClone and Unreal now work.
This week we also begin with Ricky talking about ultra-wide monitors, using it to play Elden Ring (a mod required) and the #SAGAFTRA strike; and, Phil gives an overview of his remastering project of the Machiniplex collection and his homage to the great Hugh Hancock, founder the #machinima movement, the upcoming showcase of Bloodspell and also his own response to some of the hoopla that Hugh created at the time of its release in 2006!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
Film, Daydream by Mystfit, released 6 January 2009
This week’s film review focusses on a story made with building blocks and without voice acting… and yet, what a spectacular story! The game world is Minecraft of course, and the story is based on Telltale Games’ episodic release called Story Mode. Made by @SquaredMediaAnimations , we discuss the production values emcompassed within the film, why we think adding voice acting would have enhanced the film and a number of other things we nit-picked but conclude that its really no wonder Squared Media are one of the top machinima producers in Minecraft.
YouTube Version of This Episode
Links and Notes
Film, by Squared Media Animations, released 6 May 2023 –
Our final post this month takes a look at more projects made in Unreal Engine. Once again, we are blown away by the incredible diversity of creative work made with this engine and the power it unleases among its ever growing community of users. It is not always cheap to do, but it can sometimes be free! Check these out.
Scaled Up
Planet Earth as an 80K digital recreation, designed for ‘orbital scenes and cinematic scenes of Earth, this model is available as a download in the Unreal Marketplace. It took creator Tuomas Hakala (aka MegaMammoth) two years to create and boy does it show. Its not a cheap asset to buy at £550+, but if this is something you want to include in high fidelity work, its surely worth it –
Leo Torres has re-created and upscaled vision of his beloved Skyrim Whiterun world. He has made some assumptions about what the world might scale to, stating that although its hard to tell just how big the population of the game might be, he is pretty sure it will exceed what was seen in the game! He’s used experience and fan facts to produce something that is ‘lore-scale’ – wonderful, even if its not playable –
Highlighted
Another Unreal short is DISTANCE by Machina Infinitum, a 3D fractal short made using a plugin the creator has built for UE5 called Essence. Their intention for using the tool is create realtime renders, typically for VR. Its on the Marketplace here at a very reasonable $40, and check out the video, released 17 Oct 2022, here –
Freedom!
We’ve been talking about no/low cost movie making since machinima.dot.one (1996 actually) so its great to see that mantra being picked up by others. In this case, Taiyaki Studios have made a short demo, called Airship DJ, in UE5 and another on how they made it. Check out the films here –
Film, released 21 July 2022 –
Explainer featuring Cory Williams, released 21 July 2022, here –
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