In what must be one of the most potentially exciting developments for independent machinima creators in a long time, we’ve just heard that Winch Gate Properties Ltd., the creators of the online MMORPG Ryzom, will be releasing the entire game as an open-source project. It sounds like the developers are keen to work with the community, and will be accepting the best 3rd-party developments into the main Ryzom codebase. Projects already underway include ports of the game to both Mac OSX and Linux.

This is fabulous news for machinima and anymation. An open-source licence like this gives the double benefit of a game that’s easy to modify (because the entire source code can be studied and adapted) and a game without the usual copyright restrictions on use.

The code for both the game client and server, as well as several content creation tools, will be released under the GNU Affero GPL licence. The assets (textures, sounds, etc) will be under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence.

I’ll have to be honest now and say that I wasn’t familiar with Ryzom before this announcement, but I’ll definitely be taking a look now! Open-sourcing a game like this is an incredibly bold move, which deserves the highest praise. It’s crucial that we take advantage of the opportunity, and use this resource to create things which Winch Gate could never have imagined. In doing so, we validate their decision to release the code, we provide exciting tools and assets for the rest of the community to use, and we’ll have yet another tool in our anymation library. Although Ryzom is not the most graphically sophisticated game on the market, the flexibility of an open-source codebase more than make up for that. So, here’s a challenge to the community: go make something cool.

Original press release.

Favourite films of 2008 - Hugh

As I mentioned in my review of the year yesterday, it’s been rather a quiet year for Machinima. Nonetheless, there have been some simply fantastic films released, several of which haven’t recieved the kind of widespread acclaim that they deserve. Indeed, I’d say all of my favourite films this year deserve to have viewing figures in the hundreds of thousands - yet only one has, and that’s only barely over 100,000.

Warrior’s Dream

Good god this piece of World of Warcraft Machinima is good. A very simple tale of a young man - or Tauren, as the case may be - and his dream, it’s probably my favourite piece of the year. The editing and cinematography are amongst the best I’ve ever seen in any Machinima - incredibly cinematic. The story itself is both surprising, moving and touching - there’s even a love story in there, all in 4 minutes or so. Made for the Blizzard Machinima contest this year, it won third place, proving once again that the ones to watch in the Blizz contests are never the winners. (The Demise just missed out on winning last year).

The film was inspired by Fantasia, and is certainly led by the stunning musical score. It’s got absolutely none of the clunks you’d normally expect with a WoW movie, and a lot of subtle post-production touches (check out the sunbeam) that really make it stand out.

If you don’t play WoW, you’ll need to know that the cow people are called Taurens, they’re the enemies of the humans in plate armour, and that they can choose, amongst other things, to be either a warrior (sword, shield) or a druid (shapechanging and magic) at the start of the game. That should do you. Now go watch this incredible movie.

Clockwork

If there’s one thing that’s rare in Machinima creation - or anywhere in filmmaking - it’s the ability to tell a serious, complex story. On that front, 2009 has been a very good year.

Clockwork’s a Clockwork Orange-inspired dystopian short. I can’t really say more than that without spoiling the plot, save to say this - it’s possibly the best piece of storytelling in Moviestorm so far. It’s not perfect, by any means - it’s a bit overwritten in places, the acting occasionally has flaws, and the Moviestorm engine rears its uglier head from time to time with flickering shadows and flat lighting. But its strengths far outweight its weaknesses.

The visual aesthetic and camerawork, for starters, are both fantastic. Iain Friar, the director, has managed to put together a sophsticated, coherent noir visual that puts many broadcast efforts to shame. There’s some genuinely iconic shots here, whether you’re talking about the droogs heading across the landscape or government meeting shot mostly in moving shadows.

The writing takes risks - sometimes it gets it wrong, but far more often it gets it right. And the world Iain presents is interesting and complicated. It’s not subtle - the future has abolished democracy - but it’s moody, it’s more complicated than a 10-minute short has any right to manage, and it’s compelling. And the lead character’s a genuinely memorable figure.

Machinima storytelling that, frankly, puts most of the BBC’s efforts this Christmas to shame? More of this, please.

Shelf Life Part 1

And talking of TV-quality storytelling - Shelf Life.

It’s an enormous pity that Valve aren’t more interested in licensing Source to Machinima creators, because some of the most watchable Machinima of the last few years has used it for its startlingly detailed, expressive characters. Pixel Eyes appear to have picked up the mantle of Lit Fuze, and are running with it to even more interesting places.

Shelf Life, of which only the first part (approximately 16 minutes) is available, appears to be a TV-style drama treading somewhere between The Prisoner and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Complex, detailed, with fantastic action sequences, great voice work, and a genuinely intriguing plot involving memory downloading and dubious science, it’s moody, atmospheric, and thanks to great Faceposer work, easily as watchable as any other TV or film. I can’t wait for the next part - I want to know what’s going on - and I could really see it, if only there was some kind of commercial possibility for the engine, turning into a full-length TV-style series.

Occasionally it feels a little too slow, and the action sequence in part 2 is a bit protracted. But it’s deliberately moody, it’s tremendously well-acted and edited, and it fulfils something I’m always looking out for - Machinima enabling people who don’t have a Hollywood studio to outdo the so-called professionals at their own game.

Honourable Mentions

• Phil “Overman” Rice has produced about a million films this year, but I was a particular fan of Blast Supper, a spot-on parody of Hollywood trailers.
• Lainy Voom’s Fall really showed off just how beautiful Second Life Machinima can be.
• And lastly, an odd choice - Slashdance’s Slashdance vs Ulduar. It’s contentless, it’s basically a guild promo, but it’s just SO damn atmospherically shot.

And so, it’s that time again - time for a round-up of the last year in Machinima.

It’s quiet in here…

It’s been a very quiet year, overall. We’ve seen a few notable additions to the Machinima world (Pixel Eyes Productions), but overall, as far as I know there have been less films that broke out of their Machinima area this year than any year previously.

Why? I don’t have any answers on that one, just a few suggestions.

• The Machinima communities have now entirely separated. The world of WoW Machinima and Moviestorm Machinima cross over only insomuch as there are a few Moviestormers who play WoW. No-one’s watching Halo movies except Halo players. The Second Life/Anymation/Moviestorm communities are still crossing over, but that’s about it. That makes the likelihood of finding out about really good stuff from any community you’re not involved in much smaller. For example, I only found Warrior’s Dream, probably my pick of the year, when I was specifically looking for 2009 Machinima.

• That there’s a glass ceiling in Machinima is now well-understood. I don’t have any hard evidence that’s having a chilling effect on game-based Machinima, but it seems a plausible theory. A budding filmmaker can, with a little Googling, discover that if he makes a film in the Source Engine, for example, he’s effectively giving up any chance not just of money, but also of TV or other widespread distribution outside YouTube. That reduces what used to be a significant intake into Machinima - that of the frustrated professional. (Obviously, Second Life and Moviestorm don’t have that problem, but they’re also not as well-known as World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2).

• It’s been a very slow year for new technology, and new tech drives Machinima. World of Warcraft Model Viewer is limping along, sadly. Second Life hasn’t had many graphics improvements I’m aware of. The only new Machinima tool that appeared (MachinimaDev) seems to have stalled. IClone 4 arrived this year, I believe, but still doesn’t seem to have much of a hold on the Machinima world. Only Moviestorm and OpenSim saw significant technical developments.

• There aren’t many sources of recommendations out there, either - at least not that one can reliably expect to recommend really good work. WoW.com has Moviewatch, but the frequency of posting there means that the quality can be variable. The Movies Underground is starting to gain traction, but is still finding its feet. Machiniplex is good, but pretty infrequent. There hasn’t been a physical-world Machinima festival this year. I’ve not checked Machinima.com’s recommendations in a while, I must admit. Maybe there is good work out there, but we’re missing it.

Will 2010 see a speed-up in Machinima production? Perhaps. But if it does, it’ll largely be because of…

The Year Of Moviestorm

If we hadn’t had Moviestorm, it would have been a near-silent year, not just a quiet one. Moviestorm’s supplied several of the best movies of the year, including one of my personal favourites, Clockwork. It’s had a steady stream of technical improvements, it’s grown exponentially, and it’s moved from borderline-credible as a tool to very capable indeed.

Of course, it’s also supplied a few controversies, most notably the move to a subscription model. Apparently most of the noise from that has died down by now, and I’ve heard informally that Moviestorm will be addressing both lifetime subscriptions and an End-Of-Life (or “What happens if you go bust?”) policy.

Next year will be the really interesting year for Moviestorm. I have a sense, as I’ve mentioned before, that this is the make-or-break year for Moviestorm. There’s a reason they’ve been the source of all the interesting news this year, and that’s that they’re the only seriously funded company (20 or so employees) who are solely focussed on Machinima. Sooner or later, they’ve got to start making that money back, and from the move to subscriptions, my feeling is this is the year. Will they manage to turn the promise of this year into them becoming the next Photoshop, the first easy and powerful 3D moviemaking tool? I think they’ve got a hard fight, but it ain’t impossible.

Games Companies to Machinima creators: “Bugger off.”

Valve doesn’t want anything to do with legitimising Source Machinima. We’ve not been able to find a single person who’s had film festival permission from Blizzard Entertainment (although you might not need to). Even producers of tremedously successful Machinima, like Clint Hackleman, haven’t been able to strike a deal with the games companies.

With the recent news about Valve, it seems that 2009 has put the nail in the coffin of a breakout hit ever launching a commercial Machinima career using game engines. Maybe a future game engine creator will have a more optimistic attitude (and it’s worth noting, again, that Microsoft are very interested in discussing commercial Machinima production), but right now it seems the big names - Blizzard, Valve, EA - are, pretty definitively, not interested.

What effect will that have on Machinima production? I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like a real pity. I’ve ranted about the glass ceiling in Machinima before, and it’s still very frustrating - there are so many great films that could be made in these engines, but with the controlling attitude currently in place, I can’t see them happening.

(As a side note - it might seem like a funny time for me to be working on a very high production value WoW short. There are reasons for that…)

No New Engines

In 2007, the big engines of note were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. In 2008, the big engines were World of Warcraft, the Source engine, Halo, Second Life and Moviestorm. And in 2009? WoW, Source, Halo, SL, Moviestorm. For a fast-moving technology-based medium, we ain’t doing much fast moving.

For several years now there has been a notable lack of Machinima being created in new engines, despite a fair number of promising options arriving. Medieval Total War 2 never got any traction, nor did Empire Total War. Uncharted 2’s Machinima mode doesn’t seem to have produced much at all. I’m not hearing anything about Conan Machinima, Lord of the Rings Online Machinima, Aion Machinima.

Why? Well, for starters, even engines that try to be Machinima-friendly seem to have an appalling tendancy toward making really bone-dumb decisions. Take GTA4, with its movie editor, but no way to lipsynch characters. Or Playstation Home’s Machinima mode, which looks awesome, if only there was some way to record the video it produces and make, you know, a film out of it.

Added to that, Machinima communities are more and more centering themselves around their tool of choice. The World of Warcraft Machinima community isn’t, by and large, interested in making films so much as it is interested in making WoW films. Most Machinima creators just aren’t looking for a new tool.

And the old-time Machinima creators have become jaded by years of promising-but-flawed games, not to those of us with the experience to get into a new engine and make films in it are by and large now reluctant to touch a commercial game engine without really good reason, because of the legal issues.

One possibility for a new Machinima engine in 2010 seems to be Dragon Age. It’s developed and supported by a team including a bunch of very experienced ex-community Machinima creators. (Michelle Petit-Mee, for example, Leo Lucian-Bay, Paul Marino and Ken Thain, to name but a few). Initial tests show that Bioware are interested in supporting Machinima creators actively, and tests seem to reveal that the toolset actually has sensible, well-thought-out tools for film creation. The only downside will be that, owned as they are by EA, we really shouldn’t expect commercial possibilities. But of all the games of 2010, Dragon Age looks to be the one that might take off in Machinima.

The other quiet contender for Machinima creation is OpenSim, the open-source Second Life clone. Currently it’s in the very early development stages, but the world that Pineapple Pictures have been doing with it looks very promising indeed. The idea of a truly Open-Source Machinima creation toolkit has been floating around for years, and whilst it’s not as developed as Dragon Age (and realistically I wouldn’t expect to see any really impressive work in it until 2011), it IS commercially usable. it’s the other engine to keep an eye on.

Mocap on the Horizon

And the other big elephant of Machinima ain’t exactly in the room yet, but you can certainly hear its feet pounding closer if you listen closely. Mocap is coming to the home, and it’ll be sooner rather than later. Microsoft have announced Project Natal, which allegedly includes full-body motioncapture for the X-Box. The PS3 is getting mocap controls too. IPISoft now offer a motion capture program for a few hundred dollars. And the first Machinima production company - mine, Strange Company - has just invested in the higher-end but still low-priced NaturalPoint mocap tech.

Will we see a low-budget Avataralike from the Machinima community in 2010? Well, if we don’t I’ll be very, very frustrated this time next year, since we’re in pre-production already, and it’s only a short, dammit. But I don’t think we’ll see much of a rush on the tech for a while - maybe more than one homegrown Mocap flick next year, but realistically, I see Mocap becoming important to Machinima in 2012-2014.

Why that long? Well, Natal won’t turn up before the summer at the earliest. The first version will utterly suck. IPISoft’s software currently doesn’t, from the tests I’ve seen, produce usable results, but by the end of 2010, if they survive, they’ll be getting there. There will be announcements of more low-cost mocap in 2010, but no actual releases.

In 2011 I’d expect us to see the first usable prosumer-level mocap, but probably near the end of the year. Maybe it’ll be an update of Natal, maybe it’ll be the rumoured games mocap device from Animazoo. But by 2012, Machinima creators will be able to afford mocap that works.

Then we’ve got the fabled Machinima lag. Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen that it takes new technology an average of one to two years to be incorporated into Machinima production on a wide scale. This is the first year we’ve seen lots of Moviestorm production, for example. It was two years before Half-Life 2 saw lots of Machinima. It takes that long to work the bugs out, for people to become aware of the tech, and for the production process to grind its way through.

Given all that - look for Machinima mocap in 2012-2014.

Of course, 2010 will, if all goes well, also usher in another new era of Machinima - the era of arguing about whether performance capture is Machinima. I look forward to it…

How was 2009 for you? What trends did you see in Machinima?

The big news this month in the Machinima world has been Moviestorm’s introduction of a subscription plan, the most controversial aspect of which is its lockout feature for mods.

Obviously, Johnnie can’t really comment on this, what with being Product Manager for Moviestorm and all, so it’s just me.

The highlights:

• A subscription costs $79 a year or $7.99 a month.
• Without a subscription, Moviestorm will not allow you to use third-party mods - apparently including ones you’ve created in the past.
• A subscription gives you access to the Mod Shop and 800 Moviestorm points a month.
• Many long-term Moviestorm users are elegible for a free subscription (although MS do ask for your credit card number) for the next year.

There has been quite a bit of chatter on the subject, much of it negative. A large number of long-term Moviestorm users, including AngriBuddhist and award-winner Iain Friar were concerned about the new plan on the official forums, and there was a similarly heated debate on TMO Radio - both attracting official comments from Jeff Zie, the CEO of Moviestorm, and Matt Kelland, the Creative Director. by contrast, Phil “Overman” Rice reacted strongly against detractors on his blog, saying “Let’s save that kind of action and drama (and comedy) for our screenplays, where it’s actually fun to see”. And Kate Fosk provided a rather balanced commentary over at Pineapple Pictures, ending up with the decision that she won’t subscribe for now.

I don’t have a hard angle on this change yet. From a business perspective, subscriptions are obviously extremely attractive as they provide steady, predictable revenue stream, rather than one-off sales. On the other hand, consumers have traditionally been very reluctant to invest in software, particularly creation software, which is subscription-based - the threat of the software stopping working, either through business change or the user stopping paying, and denying the user access to their work is a serious one. My current feeling is that this is a make-or-break decision for MS on a business level - it’ll either give them a steady revenue stream or cut them off from their early adopters and evangelists, and only time will tell which.

As far as users go, there are a whole raft of issues here:

• MS has always had a Digital Rights Management system in place, but before it has effectively been invisible. However, now it has the capability to lock a user out of his own created mods, the usual problems with DRM become more obvious. What happens if MS goes out of business? What happens if MS’s management changes? Do users have any assurance that they’ll be able to access their software at any price? Commercial usage, in particular, of MS for any long-term project must now take into account that it might, perhaps, some day stop working, and that’s a non-trivial risk. There is currently some discussion of a “lifetime” subscription for MS, which, depending on how it works, might eliminate a lot of these concerns, but as it stands, if the MS authentication servers go away, MS stops working. (That’s not very likely, however.)

• It seems that MS have put their good reputation directly on the line as security for this change. Most of the defenders of this policy are currently defending it on the basis that Moviestorm have a great reputation for supporting Machinima and generally being cool, which is currently true - if that changes (as can happen, as most old-time Machinima creators will be aware), expect to see confidence in MS’s value sink rapidly. On the other hand, it may well be that the only way to make a subscription like this work is to maintain a reputation for trustworthiness - the only other successful example I can think of is Fog Creek, who run several subscription-based developer tools, and are also very well-known and trusted thanks to the efforts of their founder, Joel Spotsky.

• I don’t have deep insight into Moviestorm’s current finances, but it seems pretty obvious to me that some kind of additional monetisation was going to be required if the company was to continue developing MS. From that point of view, a subscription ain’t the worst deal in the world, and fits with their “low-cost” principles. An iClone-like $300 or so sticker price would probably have attracted a worse reaction.

• MS will also now have to deal with security on a notoriously tricky problem - that of controlling a program running on a computer under the control of someone else. I wonder how long it will be before someone publishes information on how to re-enable the mod shop for free, and what MS will do about that? (I’m not going to discuss the technical issues behind that further, but I know if I was contemplating a large-scale project with MS, I’d make damn sure that in worst case I could crack the control, Just In Case.)

• The big issue here is clearly the control over third-party mods, including those that were created before their creators knew about this upcoming change. Many creators are feeling betrayed or insecure. It’s early days yet, and I’m unsure as to whether MS’s management team anticipated the outcry that has resulted. Hence, I’m watching this space to see if they can find a good way to resolve those concerns. Again, watch this space on the lifetime subscription issue.

• There are two ways to look at the risk represented by MS’s subscription model. On the one hand, film projects always overrun. If we’d decided to use MS at the start of making BLoodSpell, would we really have thought that we’d still need it 5 years ahead? Would we have budgeted for that? On the other hand, whilst I always make sure I can still access and use old film production material, I haven’t touched the assets for any of my films in the last 12 years after production was complete. It’s important to remember that MS’s license controls the 3D assets, not the 2D footage, which at the end of the day is more important for film production.

Personally, I’m finding this entire episode fascinating. I’m not using Moviestorm at the moment, nor am I likely to be for a while (until there’s an easy import route for motion capture data, basically), so I’ve not got a dog in this race. As a businessman, it’s really interesting to watch as more experienced biz people (Matt and Jeff, amongst others) try new models to find one that works for their business. Almost makes me wish I was in the boardroom with them.

(Almost. I learned a long time ago that amongst the things I’m very good at, software development ain’t.)

And as a Machinima commentator, it’ll be fascinating to see how this all plays out. Will it turn out to be a damp squib? Will subscriptions prove themselves worth it? Will the mod tools for Moviestorm improve now that they’re driving revenue? Or will the discontent turn into an en masse rebellion? Will MS decide to make changes to their policies, or will they stick to their guns? In particular, will they find a way to solve the “but it might die on me some day” problem, or the “but I want control of my content” problem?

What do you think?

(Some full disclosures on this article: I’ve consulted on Moviestorm several times and used it professionally, and many of the people involved in its development are personal friends of mine. I have also consulted for their competitors, although that company is no longer in business. Finally, I’m involved with several organisations whom are heavily critical of restrictive software licensing and DRM in general.)

It’s time for another Machinima for Dummies podcast, and this one’s focussing on that perennial bugbear of the Machinima creator, The Law.

For once, we’re talking mostly about UK rather than US law, but there’s lots of bits and pieces of interest for everyone in this podcast, which is with Simon Bradshaw, one of the guys who supports the Open Rights Group with legal analysis and and an English barrister specialising in Intellectual Property Law.

You should listen to this if:

• You want to know under what circumstances you might get sued for your Machinima - it’s not just about what IP law says.
• You’d like ideas on how to make arrangements with games companies to make cool Machinima, and when to do so.
• You want to know if making Machinima is actually illegal, and the complexities of copyright law as it relates to Machinima in the UK.
• You want to know if you can make money with Machinima in the UK, and what’s standing in the way of that.
• You want to know what to do if a Cease and Desist letter arrives on your door.

Listen to the podcast here and let us know what you think! If you’ve got any other questions, stick ‘em in the comments too.

A quick question for the assembled masses - has anyone ever corresponded with Blizzard via their machinima@blizzard address, and if so, what was their response? In particular, has anyone received permission to embark on commercial activity with WoW, or to enter or show Machinima made with WoW at a film festival?

We’re about to do a roundup of Machinima licensing in 2009, and I’d be really interested to know how responsive they were.

LATEST UPDATE: Feb 28th 2009 - If you’ve been a victim of the take-downs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to hear from you.

I don’t have many details on this, but Obilith reports that YouTube have started taking down Machinima using commercial music:

“Another bad news is Youtube that is taking down some of my machinimas for copyrighted reasons. First it was “Why Do Birds” and now it’s “Something Stupid”. I guess both the Carpenters and the Sinatras needed money for the cryochamber and they might have thought I was stealing from them.”

Further investigation reveals that this is a widespread mass takedown. It’s badly damaging the Sims music video community amongst others. That really sucks. I know some people aren’t too fond of Sims music videos, but they’re as valid a form of expression as any other, and the best ones are stunningly impressive. I’d hate to see “The Highwayman” removed from YouTube, for example.

Apparently a similar thing is happening in the world of Anime Music Videos. It looks like this is the result of an automated scanning process - Russell Boyd says

“One of mine has even been pulled right after the upload, so it’s an automatic process. Another couple have dropped off at random periods, probably the time it takes for the fingerprinting software to scan the archives.”

Whose stuff has been taken down?

This has been going on for a few weeks now, and it’s ENORMOUSLY widespread. People who’ve had their movies pulled include:

• Obilith (top World of Warcraft filmmaker)
• Trace Henderson aka Lainy Voom (top Second Life filmmaker producing truly stunning stuff)
• Russell Boyd (Director of the feature-length “Faith Hope and Charity”)
• JayDee (creator of possibly the most successful Sims 2 movie ever, approaching 10 million views. )
• Warhawke (another very popular Sims 2 moviemaker)
• Wagner James Au (journalist and “embedded” SL blogger)
• James Thorpe (well-known Moviestorm creator)
• I don’t know the name of the creator, but the first-ever Little Big Planet Machinima has been taken down just a couple of weeks after release.
• Sasha Rudie aka moo Money (Second Life / World of Warcraft filmmaker and journalist)
• Selserene (World of Warcraft filmmaker, creator of the popular “In for a Penny” series)
• Dxvid (longtime Machinima creator in multiple engines, founder of Machinima Premiere and the Online Machinima Film Festival).
• Phil “Overman” Rice, creator of possibly the most successful Machinima piece ever, Male Restroom Etiquette.

(List constantly being updated)

This is potentially tragic; a case of genuine artistic creation being censored. Sure, many of these creators will upload their films elsewhere, but some won’t, links won’t update, and so on - this is art being lost, possibly forever.

More information

Z-Studios forum post

Sims99 forum thread - apparently one of many.

Several Warcraft Movies threads: here, here

Obilith’s original post

Halo movies reposted with altered music: here and here

Decorgal has posted a summary of her findings from the Sims 3 Creator’s Camp, where she and a whole bunch of other people got to play around with the new Sims 3 engine, in her case looking at Machinima in it.

If you’re interested in Sims moviemaking, you should definitely read through the whole thing.

The executive summary, however, is that out of the box, Decorgal believes that Sims 3 will be great for music videos, but that she “can’t imagine” making talkies with it.

” It’s difficult enough to make them using Sims 2 with all the hacks we have at our disposal but without them, I don’t think it’s something I’d even attempt with Sims 3. I suppose you can use 3rd party programs for animating lips but I prefer to use the in-game talking. ”

Another year, another Machinima review of the year.

In many ways, 2008 has sucked. Badly. But rather than focus on the bad, I’m going to pick up a couple of interesting trends within the world of Machinima.

Machinima - a silent medium?

2008 has really been the year where Machinima stopped doing dialogue. Of the top films of the year, more than ever before have been wordless or voice-over only (The Demise, The Dumb Man, Spinning Plates, and numerous music videos), and of the remainder, we’ve seen a couple of monologues (Apology and Jill’s Song, which is effectively a monologue), and only a very few films that feature actual dialogue (Clear Skies, The Monad).

There’s an obvious reason for this trend, of course: several of the top Machinima engines right now can’t produce anything resembling effective facial animation. Neither WoW nor Second Life are really capable of any kind of even simple lipsynch at this point. (Snacky’s Journal 4, which was a dialogue-heavy piece in WoW, suffered from the lack of useful talking animations.) As a result, filmmakers in both are tending toward silent movies.

By the same token, it’s very noticable that the only engine out there that’s currently capable of really great facial expression, Source (AKA Half-Life 2) is also the engine hosting the vast majority of dialogue-based films. Lit Fuze, in particular, have continued to produce great facial animation this year. (I am rather surprised at the lack of work in any other Source-based game - any ideas, anyone?)

At the same time, we’re seeing more and more single-person productions, which may be another reason for the preponderance of voiceover, silence or monologue. It has always been an odd disconnect in Machinima that, at least for a short production, it’s possible to create everything by yourself without talking to another human being - except dialogue. I think we’re seeing a natural routing around that disconnect by individual creators at the moment.

With both GTA4 and 2009’s Big Game, The Sims 3, likely having no lipsynch or dialogue capabilities, I’d expect another dialogue-free year next year.

(Postscript on this one- I’ve seen a GTA4 film with lipsynch now - uglyish lipsynch, but it’s there. Anyone know if this was a hack, or if we’re likely to see more?)

Short-Form Wins

There have been no publically available feature-length Machinima pieces in 2008, marking the first year where that has been the case for a few years. The longest 2008 work that I’m aware of has been “Clear Skies”, weighing in about 40 minutes.

Why? Well, it might just be a coincidence. But it might also be the case that filmmakers in general are adapting to this new medium, and all the evidence suggests that shorter films are more popular, as likely to gain a response, and, of course, far less work to produce. The dialogue problem above weighs in here, too - it’s fairly easy to hold attention to a silent film or one with VO for two or three minutes, but it’s close to impossible to do it for 90 minutes. And, of course, one of the greatest long-form Machinima pioneers, Peter Rasmussen, tragically died this year.

I’ve heard nothing about Machinima feature-length pieces in production for 2009, either (at least, not that I’m free to disclose), aside from a few high-budget commercial projects, so the drought of indie Machinima features may go on for a while yet.

Engine Licenses - a Damp Squib?

There was a lot of excitement in the first half of the year about Microsoft and Blizzard’s coming out with official Machinima licenses. We expected to see more announcements, perhaps more games companies following suit, and more dialogue with the Machinima community. None of that has happened.

The Microsoft license is still a great thing, genuinely extending Machinima creators’ rights in a useful way - notably, allowing us to enter film festivals free and clear. The Blizzard license, which is self-contradictory in places and still distinctly control-freaky (filmmakers have to apply individually to enter any film festival, for example), is less useful.

But we’ve not seen any advance or change, and the effect of the licenses, apart perhaps from within the Halo 3 community, has been minimal. Certainly, the WoW community has just kept right on doing what it was doing anyway, with no noticable change apart from the occasional dig at Blizzard’s rather draconian content standards. And we’ve not seen any advance to license content from, say, EA, Activision, or Valve.

Will EA step up next with the launch of The Sims 3? Will someone finally be brave enough to offer a commercial license in some form? Who knows?

Soundbites

• You can’t keep up. I said a few years ago that the Machinima community was going to split into a bunch of seperate communities, and that has finally really happened this year. There’s so much content being produced that it’s impossible to keep up with it all, and the communities are seperate enough that it can take weeks or months for celebrated Machinima in one community to make it to another. WoW Machinima creators are almost completely ignorant of Moviestorm work, I’ve got no idea what’s happening in the world of Halo 3, Sims 2 or The Movies, Second Life Machinima creators and Halo 3 filmmakers don’t talk at all.

• Machinima = Games? The eternal “is Machinima filmmaking with games” argument shows no sign of abating. Notably, “The Craft Of War: Blind” has recently attracted a lot of attention as a great Machinima piece, despite being entirely conventionally animated, just using game models from World of Warcraft. Machinima.com’s games focus (which is, by the way, very sensible from a business standpoint) and the movement from non-game Machinima tools to avoid the use of the term “Machinima” is contributing to this trend. When mocapped Machinima becomes more common and the line between Machinima and performance capture starts to blur, expect the “Machinima = games filmmaking” definition to gain strength.

• Next Year’s Engine. 2009 is shaping up to be the Year of the Real-Time Strategy game on PCs. Whilst engines like the Total War engine can produce fantastic Machinima, we’ve seen very little of it ever created, and there’s no reason to expect that trend to change. Thus, I’d expect 2009 to be dominated by the existing contenders, plus GTA4 (although I remain dubious about its larger-scale Machinima capabilities unless heavily modded) and of course The Sims 3. The latter will be the 300-lb gorilla of Machinima next year, in all likelihood: I’d expect the existing Sims moviemaking community to produce much the same as their classic work in the new engine. Again, of course, probably no lipsynching. Music videos ahoy! (Postscript - obviously, this all changes if GTA4 Machinima gains facial animation capabilities, particularly if GTA4 faces can look good.)

What strengths and weaknesses does Machinima have right now? Well, we can learn a lot by attempting to copy other media.

I ran across this parody of the Neon Genesis Evangelion intro sequence yesterday, via WoWInsider, and found it absolutely fascinating. Let me start by linking both the parody and the original:

Parody:

Original:

Lessons

So - how do the two compare, and why, and what can that show us?

Firstly - the Machinima version looks great. If I saw that as an intro sequence to a Machinima piece, I’d be intrigued and psyched. I’d be expecting a very high-quality production. And that tells us some interesting stuff about how much sophistication it’s possible to get out of a Machinima piece - that by pastiching the work of another medium it’s possible to produce such a good piece, better than 95% of the title sequence efforts out there.

(It also heavily implies that we should be looking to Anime for clues on how best to use Machinima. I’d have to say a big “yes” to that. Machinima bears a lot of resemblance to limited-animation styles like most Anime, and they’ve got a whole lot of tricks over there.)

Secondly - whilst it looks good, there are large parts of the Machinima version that just don’t work. And the reasons why they don’t work are really good indicators of the problems that Machinima’s having right now, and potentially the ways it can get to the next level, and what we should be looking for from tool developers.

Firstly - the various face shots don’t really work, at least for me. In particular, the first shot, of the lead character (I assume), works really well in the original, but not at all in the parody. That’s purely down to the artwork - the lead character’s image in the original tells us a lot about his character, and the subtle animation helps to bring him to life. But more than that - the character looks involved, vulnerable, readable. We can empathise with him and feel for him. By contrast, the WoW character has the same blank, dead-eyed stare that all WoW characters have, and is clearly a generic WoW male - it doesn’t suggest anything, it doesn’t imply an inner life, and that stops the shot from working.

Even worse is the silhouette shot that overlays on that, and this really zeroes in on one of the fundemental points of Machinima right now. The Evangelion character’s image strongly suggests character. He’s a small guy, his stance, with the cocked head and the weight on one foot, suggests that he’s unsure of himself, but curious. By contrast, the WoW character - is just a WoW character. There’s no information there at all. No pose, no emotion, no accessibility.

By contrast, the shot that works is a few moments later - the female seated silhouette. It’s strong, it looks relaxed, alert, curious, and sexy. (And well done for that! It’s long been my feeling that “sexy” is something Machinima could do with a lot more of - but that’s a different blog post.) Interestingly, the message of the shot is completely different to that of the equivalent shot in the original title sequence, but it still works.

And so on. I could go through the rest of the parody, but the point is the same. I’m not criticising the Annoying Quest guys - this is a great piece - but using it to point at some problems common to most Machinima right now.

It’s very hard to get Machinima characters to suggest anything right now just from their appearance. Never having watched Evangelion, I already have ideas about the characters as people just from the Evangelion title sequence. It’s something that Machinima is sorely missing.

What Machinima is lacking right now, beyond whiz-bang effects, beyond terrain and realistic rendering and enormous banks of assets, is the ability to make character expressions and particularly body language and silhouettes - two of the key instruments for the traditional animator - emotional. It’s a hard problem.

I can see two solutions that would be practical to non-multimillion productions. Firstly, motion capture of face and body will solve a lot of these problems. Better rigging will be enormously helpful for facial animation anyway - look at Lit Fuze’s fantastic work with the Half-Life 2 engine to see the results of a talented crew combined with great facial rigging, and Moviestorm’s getting there too - but for body animation, motion capture is probably the most practical solution, and it’s set to get very cheap.

Failing that, the kind of “emotional animation” work that people like Ken Perlin and the NaturalMotion guys are doing might well help. No-one’s yet unveiled any kind of animation control system that will allow characters to suggest emotion through their movements, but if it comes, it’ll be a huge leap for Machinima.

I’ve been playing the new console game Mirror’s Edge recently, and the closing cinematic there (near the end, warning - spoilers) is a brilliant example of what could revolutionise Machinima if it was available to normal users. It’s very simple, really - after a horrible event, one character puts her arm around her sister, and they both look out over a city. But the silhouettes, the emotion that’s conveyed by the protective stance of the one and the huddled stance of the other - that’s storytelling. And that’s done in Machinima. It’s doable - we just need to bring it down to the level where non-multimillion productions can access it.