Minecraft

S5 E191 Machini-ick: Happy Wheels (July 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 23, 2025 Leave a reply

In days of yore, when Machinima ruled the digiwaves, they commissioned stuff like this week’s pick… we have a rather more heated discussion than usual about the pros and cons of the choice and the commissioning strategy. Check out our thoughts and let us know what you think. Maybe you were caught up in this mess, we certainly hope not… or at least, we hope the lesson was well learned. Ricky tells it from his experience, as part of the Hollywood set – seen it all before. Enjoy the show!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Happy Wheels: The Series (machinima), released 15 November 2016 by BMP Digital – episodes available on the Internet Archive here.

Eps 1-4 on JeffX Zavier’s channel –

This was the trailer for the original series –

Information sources worth checking out –

‘Happy Wheels’ Series Trailer Litters the Street With Blood and Guts, Bloody Disgusting.com, 2 Nov 2016 https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3413174/happy-wheels-series-trailer-litters-street-blood-guts-exclusive/
Creators Going Pro: CEO Ryan McNulty Is “A Serial Entrepreneur” Whose First Business Was His Own YouTube Channel, 28 Aug 2019 https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/08/28/creators-going-pro-ryan-mcnulty/

About Bunim/Murray Productions – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunim/Murray

John P Roberts https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10847638/

Gil Goldschein https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2251455/

About go90 channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go90

About Happy Wheels: The Series https://happywheels.fandom.com/wiki/Happy_Wheels:_The_Series

S4 Completely Machinima Interview: Phil Rice, funny man (June 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 15, 2024 Leave a reply

Welcome to our latest bonus episode. We had the pleasure of catching up with Phil Rice aka zsOverman to talk exclusively about his latest machinima, called Being Moses. If there’s such as thing as a parody of a Let’s Play, this film is it! Check out Phil’s comments and watch the film.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes and Links

Being Moses – a Vintage Story #machinima tale by zsOverman aka Phil Rice, released 17 May 2024

Trailer for Vintage Story –

S4 E115 Machinima News Omnibus (Feb 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 8, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we spend some time talking about new tools, emergent topics, AI and copyright (again), with some interesting links for you below. Check out the episode here –



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

New tool releases

iClone’s ‘clumsy moves’ pack, available at $70, can be downloaded here

Crowd simulation tools, including Reallusion’s sim bundle for CC4 and social groups for iClone 8, link here and a nice video here –

and Kenneth MacLean’s MegaHumans plugin WIP. No link for the latter, but here’s a neat show and tell video –

A free new VR mod by Praydog for Unreal Engine – here’s an overview about it –

Mickey and AI discussion

Disney’s Mickey in a horror game called Infestation Origins that will be released later this year –

and an interesting AI generated short that seems to confirm Mickey’s transmogrification into a horror character –

Princeton’s Public Domain Project released an annual report – check it out here for 2024.

Improving the quality of your machinima films with AI, check out Pryda Parx suggestions here –

and you can also check out the restored machinimas Phil did for the Machiniplex channel here, and here’s the trailer for the body of work too –

Google’s VideoPoet that turns prompts into animations without the interim stage of an image and a separate tool like Runway to animate it.  Here’s a neat example of its capabilities, focussing on a travelling raccoon –

Mods and Cockers!

The Convergence mod for Elden Ring (and many others), v 1.4 – a nice overview here –

and here’s a link to the mod for download

A case of corporate bullying? Check out the situation this Minecrafter is facing and if you’re a legal expert, do please get in touch with him to help out!

S3 E88 Minecraft: Wither Storm War (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 2, 2023 Leave a reply

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 –

Bloopers reel for the film –

Projects Update 2 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 26, 2023 Leave a reply

Megabuilds and complexity are increasingly themes being promoted by the creative tool developers, and this week’s selection highlights a few projects that demonstrate what’s possible.

Who would have even thought about building our entire universe in Minecraft, let alone actually done it? This video, released 3 October 2022, is how Chris DaCow went about the project, including his preparatory trip/fall from an aircraft (IRL) for inspiration –

Covering similar themes, MelodySheep discusses Water Worlds, released 28 April (our feature image). This is not a megabuild per se but is a good illustration of the future of inter-planetary reviews. The approach is interesting, drawing inspiration from the discoveries of the James Webb Telescope: think a combination of the style of Sagan and Attenborough –

The next film is a descriptor of a 2D game called Rain World, released in 2017. The video creator, Curious Archive, outlines why he believes this game is one of the most sophisticated and complex virtual worlds ever created. The short (22 mins) is called The Most Complex Ecosystem in any Game, released 22 December 2022…. mmm, 22 is a bit of a theme here too. I’m fairly sure Ricky will disagree on this, with his elder Elden Ring hat on, but check it out and do let us have your thoughts –

Finally, this official music video, released on 5 May, shows an expansive world to tell a visually stunning story that compliments the song. The creators unfortunately do not credit the tools that have been used, which look like Unreal Engine and Blender. The song is called Angels by Frank Polucci, lyrics by Marco Genovesi and the video is by Alex Popescu. Its another short that illustrates the diversity of creative skills now being deployed for increasingly complex visualizations –