Machinima

S5 E153 Forbidden Planet – Children of the Krell (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 23, 2024 1 Comment

This week, we review a machinima that has taken its inspiration and cue from the original movie Forbidden Planet, released in 1956. This is the animated and stylized sequel we’ve all been waiting for, set immediately after the events reported in the film. It has been written and directed by Biggs Trek, aka Philip Browne, whose creative talent shines through in this.



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Show Notes & Links

Forbidden Planet – Children of The Krell (Chapter One) by Biggs Trek aka Philip Browne, released 23 August 2024 –

The original voice is by Marvin Miller, see here

Reallusion interview article here

S5 E152 Kitbashing Away (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 16, 2024 Leave a reply

News update: interjecting our normal weekly service for a short special – Damien discusses the latest Kitbash contest.



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Show Notes & Links

Link to the contest here

A nice video about the contest here –

S5 E151 Machinima News Omnibus (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 9, 2024 Leave a reply

This month, we have another packed episode, iClone 8 update, Balder’s Gate 3 modding tools, Starfield expansion, projects, projects, projects, Sketchfab, Backrooms, YouTube AI disclosure and more. Check out the ep and be sure to comment too.



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Show Notes & Links

iClone 8 update

Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools, news item here

Starfield expansion pack –

Documentary machinima: focus on TF2 –

Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreesson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!). Check out the article here

Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance –

Denuvo’s release of Unbotify –

YouTube app update discussion

Nice projects: Runway Gen3 Steampunk –

Metropius deiselpunk –

Mad Max memes –

Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun –

Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

YouTube AI disclosure rules, described here

Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article here

Shameless plug: Phil’s livestream show and Damien’s livestream show

S5 E150 Dead on Cue: Fake Science

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 4, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we take a deep dive into a film from one of the original machinima creator studios, Dead on Cue. This comprised the duo Mike Holochwost and Brian Mayberry. The film, Fake Science, had a couple more iterations, including one that allowed it to be played in the game itself, which was Half Life. It was released some 3 years before YouTube, and is another great example of how games could be used to produce artworks. Its wide recognition led to careers in games dev and production for both Mike and Brian, the former working on RoosterTeeth’s RWBY series and the latter on cinematics for games like the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and Defiance. Brian is still active in the games dev industry and is working on his first game, called Gone Camping. Check out the discussion and memories we share.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Dead on Cue, made in Half Life, was released on 13 Sept 2002 – the original versions can be found on the Internet Archive here.

BuddyDoQ (Brian Mayberry) has posted a YouTube version of the film here –

S4 E149 Special: Season Finale 2024

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 27, 2024 1 Comment

In this ep, we reflect on the key trends in #machinima we’ve observed during Season 4 of the Completely Machinima podcast. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the year too, so do add comments below.

During the past year, we have reviewed over 22 hours of content, and presented detailed analysis of over 50 films on this channel. As vets of the original community practices (that’s pre YouTube and the M.com/Inc days), one of the great pleasures we take in this podcast is that we get to look at machinima and virtual production across the breadth of genres and engines, by creators from anywhere in the world, and reflect on where its come from, how its evolved and is developing.

This year, we have seen amazing quality films made in popular games such as Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, Star Citizen, Warhammer 40K and Team Fortress 2; have had the pleasure of exploring work made in entirely new games, like BeamNG and Deep Rock Galactic; and others made using engines in their base form such as Unreal, iClone and Source. We’ve also started to see #genAIs become integrated into processes and works. What a year for creatives and creativity!

Our main observation is that we have noted a resurgence of interest in machinima as a terms for the creative form, and we feel creators are at long last focussing on creative practices rather than their channel return. Of course its great when these things collide but it was never what machinima was about originally: it was the passion for great storytelling, using novel processes to achieve a desired outcome and to share that with a community of equally passionate others. Other observations are why we are not seeing as many traditional short stories as we used to…

We hope you enjoy this ep as much as we have making it.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Key trends observed –

  • The highest quality of machinima we’ve ever seen
  • Unreal, by comparison, doesn’t actually really compare!
  • Experimentation
  • Meme’s
  • Distribution channels
  • Generative AIs

Our reviews, mentioned during discussion in order –

And, check out the bonus episode of our very own RickyAI –