Telltale brings the holiday special (and innovation) to Machinima

One machinima production that I've often wanted to write about, but became equally-oft sidetracked is Telltale's wonderful Sam and Max series. Yesterday (December 19th), they released their Sam and Max holiday special, Sam and Max Nearly Save Christmas, which I found to be a great hoot as usual. The episode, built from the Sam and Max Ice Station Santa game, weighs in at a bit over 20 minutes (an interesting length, given a typical TV half-hour show is 22 minutes long).


Spoiler Alert!
This machinima includes various reveals tied into the Ice Station Santa game.

Telltale deserves some major props for this series. They are one of the few developers, if not the only, who are creating high-quality Machinima episodes in tandem with their game episodes - both of which assist each other in generating overall visibility. I had the pleasure of meeting with Telltale CEO Dan Connors at this year's GDC and he gave me some insights into Sam and Max's production. There are two teams developing content - a game dev team putting together the gameplay episodes, plus their machinima team, which produces their work using all the in-game assets/animations with their own custom Machinima tool. The entire Sam & Max series, is extremely polished--with clever writing, rewarding gameplay and a great visual aesthetic.

The Sam and Max franchise was long overdue for some love and Telltale has really stepped up in that regard. Not only have they revitalized a great property, but they're also paving the way into new territory - one I hope more game developers consider. These grand steps aside, I'm seflishly looking forward to even more Sam and Max machinima in the coming year.

New TF2 Machinima tools on the way?

An interesting blip over on ShackNews: it sounds like Valve will be releasing some new machinima-focused/friendly SDK tools that were used in creating their "Meet The ____" series of shorts around Team Fortress 2. The post by a Valve employee (signed Robin - I'll assume it's designer Robin Walker) makes mention of the tools, though its timeframe is a bit indefinite (sigh). He doesn't get into specifics around what tools these will be, but I imagine they're most likely pipeline/middleware stuff that allows transparent production between Maya/XSI and Source.

With Hammer/ModelViewer/FacePoser already supporting TF2, that seems to be the missing link in the SDK. However, this blogger is hoping for something more along the lines of Demo Editor/Smoother 2.0 or the like.

The ILL Clan Speaks in Second Life - Will You Be There?

The ILL Clan, makers of Tra5hTa1k and some recently renowned machinima in collaboration with the Electric Sheep Company (including CSI:NY), will be speaking to a Second Life audience on December 14th at 9 AM Pacific time. Some of the speakers include Frank Dellario, Matt Dominianni, Paul Jannicola and Kerria Seabrooke. For your convenience, click here to teleport to the event location.

For those of you who don't use SL very much, I highly recommend testing your voice capabilities early on to make sure you can both hear and talk using your headset. Occasionally, it takes some time to troubleshoot and you may miss out on participating in the conversation. There is a nice video tutorial on setting up your audio by the Eduserv Foundation or you can check out the voice feature wiki.

Thanks, Rik!

Free Pixel: Sex in Machinima

Just a quick post about a new entry into one of my fave blogs, Free Pixel. Prof. Michael Nitsche speaks about sex and Machinima - how the subject matter is extremely polarized with either nary a mention, or the full-on explicit.

Read on...

Machinima for Mourning

One of the virtues I often share about Machinima is how easy it is to reach. Because of this accessibility, it gives people - often not filmmakers by trade or practice - a platform for expression.

This Halo 3-based machinima, posted by Skatedawg27, retells the horrible events of this past April, taking place at Virginia Tech.



Definitively a successor to Alex Chan's The French Democracy from a couple of years back. And brings with it the same unanswered questions about Machinima as form of creative expression: Are the lines between the reflective and subversiveness too blurred? Can we watch a video made in Halo 3 and really feel the impact of the subject matter?

A couple of blogs have surfaced over the last 24 hours with their views on this video and it seems to have resonated for both. For me, it puts picture to the events but strangely, I'm not personally moved by the machinima (even with manipulative music in place) - though the video footage of Cho himself is still profoundly impactful and I find the video as a whole hard to watch. However, I found The French Democracy to be a much more powerful piece, simply because it was Alex Chan's POV and it was created soon after the actual event (which also brings up the question of how time impacts reception).

Granted the student probably wasn't looking to create a subjective work and wanted to let the objectivity be the storyteller - so points for that. Ultimately, I find it rather interesting short and can understand how some would find a message if they were looking for one.

There's a healthy discussion happening over at Hawtymcbloggy.com about the video. Whatever your take, kudos to the filmmaker and his Criminal Justice class piece for giving us all something to consider.