Machinima for Dummies

Rather than the traditional Guess what? I’m not dead! type of blog post, I’m going to break our recent hiatus by giving you a short list of exciting machinima-related happenings of recent times. If you subscribe to the indispensable Machinifeed, a lot of this will be old news, but I’m aware that not everyone does¹.

• The Machinima Expo, in its moved-to-Second-Life-at-the-last-minute state, was a huge success. I get the impression that it was even more successful than the organisational team dared to hope. The legendary workaholic gestalt that is Phil “Overman” Rice did a monumental job of constructing a multi-exhibit, feature-packed virtual theme park in Second Life, including a very fitting – and rather moving – tribute to the late Peter Rasmussen. Congratulations (and thanks) to Phil, Ricky, Ingrid, Damien and the Expo elves. If you weren’t able to make it to the live event, take a look at some of the footage captured by living machinima database Ben Grussi.

• Antics3D is dead. Long live Antics3D. Actually, rumours of Antics’ death are somewhat exaggerated, but the company has announced that the Antics3D software will no longer be offered for purchase or download, and that subscriptions will not be able to be renewed after 28th November 2008. The move came, seemingly, out of nowhere, and has caused some serious ripples in the machinima pond. If you’re an Antics user, there’s no need to panic. Your current copy of Antics is not going to stop working, but there’ll be no more updates for the program, and official support will cease around June 2009. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at one of the alternative machinima-capable engines instead.

• Linux Insider’s series on intellectual property law finished with a very interesting post on copyright law as it pertains to virtual worlds. SLifers, you’ll want to read this one.

• Not breaking news, but a gentle reminder: the monthly machinima-themed audio conference Talk The Machinima Talk is back again this month. If you’ve never been, this is the perfect time to pop in to Second Life and meet some like-minded people. The audio conference is not a cliquey thing at all. Whatever your experience, you’ll be made welcome.

• The 2009 AMAS Machinima Film Festival is on! In New York, at Eyebeam again! Fo’ shizzle! Wait – no it’s not. Yes it is. Erm … it might be.

• Have you backed up your data recently? Are you sure? Go check. Go back up right now – losing data hurts as Zachariah Scott knows all too well².

Sorry for the quiet time at the moment. Hugh and I are both as busy as bees who’ve discovered that the entire hive is off sick and they have to do two-hundredweight of pollen by the end of the day and the pollen-sorting machine is on the blink again so they have to do the whole thing by hand and it’s their wedding anniversary and they forgot to buy flowers for Mrs Bee and she’s a bee so she really likes flowers and oh my god is that the time? In other words, we’ve both very little free time at the moment, and that’s got nothing to do with the recent release of the World of Warcraft Wrath Of The Lich King expansion³.

¹ You’d better have a darned good excuse.

² Big love to Zach – we feel your pain, man.

³ Okay, maybe a little. How great are the Howling Fjord questlines?