We take a look at one of the best machinima series we’ve ever seen this week… from the annals of history. The Fixer series was a crime drama created by Todd Stallkamp (aka Burnt Coffee Productions aka TodNYC28) made in Sims 2 and originally released in 2006. Todd was part of the first brain drain from the world of machinima, and shortly after the release of this series was snapped up by EA Games as a content creator where he still is, ironically now in charge of the Sims amongst other games in its portfolio. We revisit the series in our review, discuss how well its stacked up against contemporary machinima and why its still one of the greatest machinima series we’ve ever seen! Ricky concludes, if Todd hadn’t gone to EA, he’d now be making TV shows and films: ‘… you could take this series, make it live action, use all of the shots that Todd made and put it on Amazon as a series.’
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
The Fixer, Chapters 1, 2 and 3, by Burnt Coffee Productions (Todd Stallkamp) – remastered versions on Phil’s Vimeo channel for the Machiniplex classics –
The Fixer, Ep 1 – Fat Men Run
The Fixer, Ep 2 – Guns, Ghandi and Getting Some
The Fixer, Chapt 3 – One Digit Off
Todd Stallkamp talking about the importance of machinima –
An example of Todd’s machinima projects for EA expansion packs –
The first part of the ITV Westcountry news documentary filmed by Todd and Trace Sanderson –
Celebrating our 100th episode on the CM podcast/YouTube show, we reflect on how far machinima has come and some of the recent trends we’ve observed in our film reviews.
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
We list here a selection of the film review episodes we mention in our discussion during this episode.
In this episode, Phil introduces the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection, a curated selection of machinimas from the early years. Machiniplex was a site created to host classic machinimas at the point that Machinima [dot] com began to assert its energies over the community as a corporate entity. The site was a community endeavour, with both Ricky and Phil playing a pivitol role in managing the project to preserve the original content the community had contributed to the early original Machinima website… until such time as it ran its course. In this ep, Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.
To celebrate the release of the curated collection, we have each selected a film we recall with particular fondness and discuss its significance. Phil has remastered each of the films using AI, not always a perfect process, so we also discuss his approach and techniques in bringing the original works up to 4K standard.
We encourage machinima fans everywhere to check out these films, not only were they brilliant in their day but in terms of storytelling, remain some of our favourite creative works against which we often draw comparisons when reviewing latest films.
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997 –
BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005? –
Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006 –
The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006 –
Phil’s trailer for the Machiniplex [Remastered] Channel –
Go to the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection on Phil’s Vimeo channel here – website https://bit.ly/machiniplex or access the playlist here –
Despite being encouraged to create an episode of just 15 minutes duration by one of our followers, the team have this month extended their coverage – hear Tracy, Damien and Phil discuss vtubing, Ricky’s Duke Henry the Red character in the game Evil Dead, the FTC’s proposed updates to social media guidelines, Unreal’s review of the Matrix Awakens Experience, John Gaeta’s latest exploits, metaquette, Reallusion’s iClone 8 and CC4 and a number of other exciting developments relevant to the world of real-time filmmaking and machinima. Thankfully, you can use the timestamps to jump to the bits your most interested in!
YouTube Version of This Episode
Time stamps, links and show notes
1:34 Feedback from our followers: 3DChick, Al Scotch, Spentaneous, Mike Clements, Circu Virtu, Notagamer3d
8:14 Vtubing and Face Rig app (Steam), VTuber Studio – real time puppeteering using faceware
24:17 Evil Dead and the character Duke Henry the Red played by Ricky Grove and IP generally, Ricky Grove on IMDb
Ricky vs Ricky
39:29 FTC updating ‘disclosures 101 for social media infuencers’ guide’ discussion, the relationship between brands, platforms and influencers and see also [Company] Rulez! (Phil Rice aka zsOverman & Evan Ryan aka Krad Productions). Here is PC Gamers’ comments and proposals to update the guidelines
screencap Behind the Scene of Matrix Awakens Experience
1:00:16 Pooky Amsterdam’s blog on metaverse etiquette, called Metaquette website link
1:00:39 Reallusion’s iClone 8 character animation processes including Character Creator 4 Launch by Reallusion (released 26 May 2022) and iClone 8 Demo Video by Reallusion (released 26 May 2022)
1:16:48 Jonathon Nimmons WriteSeen.com, launched June 2022, website connecting creative writers with industry professionals (upload written content, attach a video pitch, audio clips, video clips and a link to a prototype if required)
In this episode, Phil leads the month’s news for machinima creators. We kick off with the Nvidia’s Machinima Contest, the Omniverse Create and Machinima apps, GTC conference recordings, the addition of Reallusion’s ActorCore library to the Omniverse platform and ask ‘how well do laptops cope with RTX cards’ (what do you think)? Damien reviews Concert Creator AI for piano with a rendition of Battlestar Galactica’s Kara Remembers piece, Tracy talks about another of her projects demonstrating creative applications of AI (the Art AI Festival) and Ricky highlight’s Phil Tippett’s completed Mad God film project. Other film contests reviewed are the Real Time Shorts Challenge and the Milan Machinima Film Festival and the news of an upcoming Shakespearean performance in GTA Online by Sam Crane. Tracy reviews Draxtor Dupres’ major pandemic machinima film project comparing virtual life in Second Life and Animal Crossing. We discuss the Unreal 5 City Sample, Unity’s Enemies (hiding under the UE bushel) and Ricky’s Paperback Show. Phil also teases us with rumours about GTA6.
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