With the book coming ever closer (apparently it’s in Wiley’s warehouse now), it’s time to do the press thing.
If you’re doing an event or writing in a publication about Machinima in the near future, and you’d like to feature/review/talk about Machinima for Dummies, mail me at nomad AT strangecompany dot org, andwe’ll try to get you a review copy ASAP.
Meanwhile, I’ve been interviewed about Machinima adaptations, over at Free Pixel - ‘twas an interesting conversation.
Well, with the book coming off the printers tomorrow, I thought I’d do a small contest.
So - the first person to send me a picture of Machinima for Dummies on shop shelves somewhere wins a free copy of the book, signed by me and Johnnie.
Go find us MfD in the wild!
(It’ll probably be a couple of weeks before you can find any!)
Apologies for the silence. Both Johnnie and I are exhausted, somewhat ill with various things, and attending to other projects right now.
However, we have good news: a release date!
Machinima for Dummies will be published on the
7th August, 2007
It should be in stores about 2-3 weeks after that.
Congratulations to Machinima For Dummies’ Technical Reviewer Phil “Overman” Rice. Male Restroom Ettiquette has just hit 4 million YouTube views.
Can anyone stop this man?
We’re assuring Quality. Oh, yes…
A quote from a bug report -
Observed Behaviour:
Black Hair Of Death.
We’re in the final stages of editing, redoing pictures, working on the cover and all the other miscellaneous stuff that you never think about when you’re writing a book.
We had a bit of controversy over what we were or weren’t going to say about Second Life a little while back. I just wanted to reassure Second Life users that our small section on SL has been looked over by none other than Eric Call, the maker of Silver Bells and Golden Spurs, also known as Eric Linden.
Just over two months to release…
I know he’ll be too modest to post about it himself, so I’ll let you all know that Hugh was given the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Machinima at the Online Machinima Film Festival. Congratulations to Hugh on this recognition of the tremendous work he does on behalf on the community, and congratulations to the community for their excellent taste.
You know, normally when people receive Outstanding Contribution awards or Lifetime Achievement awards, it means that the general consensus is that they’re almost dead.
You’ll be relieved to hear that Hugh looks fine this morning.
Yes, we have a price for Moviestorm, the awesome, dedicated, commercially-licensed Machinima toolset that Short Fuze have been working away at for years now, and about which we have blogged effusively.
It’s going to be… Zero pounds, zero pence.
$0
No Yen.
Zilch.
Nothing.
Nada.
Zero.
Free.
Yes, it’s free to download. Totally, utterly free. Without cost.
FREEEEEEEEEEE!
Can you tell we’re a little excited about this?
You might be asking “how the hell will they survive off that?” Well, the answer, I understand, is add-on packs. MovieStorm’s add-on packs will cost a few pounds/dollars each, and will add tons of new content. And the Short Fuze guys reckon that, by making the initial program free to download, they can get a huge userbase installing subsequent packages.
It’s a brave move. I don’t know if it’ll work, although the Short Fuze management team have more experience than I do, and they reckon it will. But it’s darn fine news for Machinima creators anyway.
Oh, which brings us to point 2. Imagine if “Word for Dummies” came with a free copy of Microsoft Word.
That’s going to be the situation with Machinima for Dummies. It’ll come with a copy of Moviestorm right on the cover - everything you need to get started in Machinima, right there.
Rock and, as various people have said, roll.
OK, that treat we promised you might be coming out next week, now. This week has been a bit of a morass of format conversion, and that’s never fun.
The second part of the extended “Overcast” interview is now available.
In this part, Hugh and Johnnie gradually sober up with the aid of strong coffee, and talk about MovieStorm, copyright, AMAS, and more. At one point Hugh remembers channeling the spirit of a famous dead comedian, but hopes he was imagining that.
(No, we haven’t listened to it yet. Tomorrow.)
