NBC taps SL Machinima guru for new series

Just came across this blurb over on the Second Life News Network. NBC's new Second Life-powered endeavour Virtual NBC, has hired Pierce Portocarrero for a new Machinima series, involving a family who frequently connect to SL.

For those not familiar with Pierce's award-winning work, check out his site at Oddwadd.com as well as his recently released piece around the film "300." It's really great to see NBC hire someone of his caliber, and I look forward to the series once it released. Huzzah!

Valve Presents: the TF2 Heavy Weapons Guy

Valve released this short late Monday for the upcoming Team Fortress 2, showcasing the Heavy Weapons class in the game. The game's art direction is part FPS, part-Pixar and as a fan of the original TFC, I have to say I'm super excited by this game. Valve's posting speaks of a new facial animation system that allows the game to surpass even filmic-quality results and will be/is (?) available as part of Source. No word yet though if this embellishes the existing FacePoser app currently included with the Source SDK, but its definitely something to keep an eye on.

Also, word from on high says to expect a few more of these TF2 vignettes in the near future.

Enjoy!

Microsoft wades into the Machinima waters

In the middle of my extremely spotty net connection, I've been cruising through the new site by Microsoft around Visual Studio - DefyAllChallenges.com

Clearly aimed at the tech-savvy crowd of current and future VS users, Microsoft takes a page from the RvB playbook and created a number of Machinima works using what looks like their own game content (I havent identified which games the clips are from, but rest assured they own it).

The site itself is retro-2002 in its design, with animated widgets serving as the interface (which I actually like quite a bit), showing both the Machinima works, but also the more pertinent content, videos (with live honest-to-goodness people) speaking about Visual Studio. Also included in the site is a small Flash-based editor, allowing visitors of the site to create their own Machinima works and vote on others.

While there are a number of people out there who are probably appalled at Machinima being used for such blatant marketing efforts, I don't have a problem with it. To me, its all a part of it having cultural and commercial significance as a medium. If Hugh and Anthony are reading this entry, I'd love to hear their take as well - didja ever think you'd see MS using Machinima?