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Projects Update 2 (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog August 28, 2023 Leave a reply

What do AI, 48 hours and Second Life have in common? Not a lot, beyond some stunningly creative pieces that we found for you this week!

AI films are now beginning to come through and we have two very interesting ones for you to take a look at. The first is created/prompted by Matt Mayle (our feature image for this post) and has been made using Elevenlabs (voice), Runwayml’s GEN2 (animation) and ChatGPT4 (text concept) and is described an ‘AI assisted short’, called The Mass (released 26 April) –

The second is called The Frost, by Waymark Creative Labs (released 5 June). This has a distinct aesthetic to it, encapsulates a curious message, and overall reflects the state of AI animation at this stage, but its nonetheless a gripping piece. Its been created with DALLE-2 and D-ID –

Our next pick was made in 48 hours (well, with a bit of tweaking on top) and has been made in Unreal Engine, called Dude Where’s My Ship by Megasteakman. To be frank, the speed of its creation does show in the final quality of film, but its nonetheless an interesting development, especially given that I was a regular judge on the 48 Hour Filmmaking Contest a few years ago. The machinima version of that contest was managed and supported by Chantal Harvey for several years and its astonishing to think that this is the next generation of that process –

Finally, this week, a film made in Second Life, which lends itself to flash production, based on content from a plethera of creators on whom its content relies. The film is called The Doll Maker (released 27 May) and has been made by FeorieFrimon using various models and Paragon Dance Animations movements to a Beats Antique music composition called Flip –

S3 E91 No Man’s Sky: Origins (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 23, 2023 Leave a reply

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 –

Projects Update 1 (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog August 21, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, we share a selection of Blender projects we’ve seen about dragons, myths, dreams and soup making!

We start with a fascinating concept piece called Wayward Gods, featuring a mechanical worm/dragon-like creature tamed by an electric guitar and a character called Tetsugun, by Create! Nate! Create! (released 24 February) – the color contrast and the themes are spectacular –

A mythical tale from another dimension, Crest (released 30 May) by Zertox, also explores the relationship between humans and beasts, this time a strange flying dragon –

A film by nobodycaresaboutyou called Limits of Perception (released 11 May) is a magical take on a stream of consciousness shared with us as we watch. A grainy patina is applied to the images to create the sensation of daydreaming through this piece –

Finally, a film that was nominated for the 2023 FIN Kids Youth Film Competition and Best Director at the Barcelona Indie Filmmakers Fest. It was also a finalist at the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival. The film is called The Soup (our feature image for this post), by John Torres3D, and focusses on the farming life of a robot waiting for vegetables to grow so it can make soup –

S3 E90 Unreal Engine: The Crown | Hunt (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 16, 2023 Leave a reply

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 M achiniplex 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 –

Update (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog August 14, 2023 Leave a reply

This week’s update is all about the virtual production pipeline and digital cultural history.

VP Pipeline

DaVinci Resolve 18.5 (and .1 fixes) has finally released, and Blackmagic Design have a comprehensive support centre you can make use of here (only for the pro version license holders). The version includes a bunch of new features for integrating AI genie content and collaboration. Here’s an overview, courtesty of MrAlexTech –

Unreal Engine has an ever-expanding and truly talented community. In this tut, Jonathan Winbush (our feature image this week) shares his approach to creating procedurally generated towns using PCG and blueprints inside UE and Cargo (Kitbash3D). Winbush has a wealth of material on his channel, all free, for anyone to pick up and work with, so there’s really no excuse not to learn Unreal Engine –

Boundless Entertainment has release a course for filmmaking, pre-viz and VFX. Its designed for taking beginners to more professional levels in 10 days… mmm, lets see! Its not free, like many of the YouTube tutorials, but for $180 it will undoubtedly suit some learning styles.

Finally, if you want to share your VP process and also learn from others, Nvidia has a new #StartToFinish challenge running til the end of August. Its focussed on those working with the Omniverse platform, with a chance to be showcased on their social media channels. You can find out more about it on their Discord server.

Digital Culture History

We were interested to see a post on the BBC’s website that reported on NoClip’s Danny O’Dwyer rescue of hundreds of hours worth video content of gaming history from landfill. The collection mostly pre-dates YouTube, and comprises of footage and media clips that were cut from being shown on TV or websites. You can see Danny talk about his gold strike here –

We look forward to seeing what Danny digs up as he goes through the material over the next 10 years or so.

Back to the Future, that classic 1980s trilogy we all love for a whole range of reasons, is BACK again. This time, its as a Musical at the Alephi Theatre in London’s West End and the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, and in 2024, a North American tour. Its also fascinating to hear the rejection story of Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ original film script – rejected over 40 times before finally being signed. There are certainly many lessons in here for creatives today, not least the process of adapting film FX to theatre, for which MoveAI/Disguise for mocap and virtual production techniques are being employed –