Examining the street/traffic scenes from Nine Inch Nails: Only as an example of a heavily fabricated scene using compositing. ZS Dissection Lab #3 - Sims 2 City Streets from Overman on Vimeo. Intro music is “Impulse” by Processor, from their album “Are You For Real?”, available at Magnatune.com    Read Full Story

Those of you on The ZS Forum have probably already seen the posts I’ve been doing recently, highlighting some of my favorite work submitted at the Bitfilm Festival this year. I don’t typically post a lot about entries in the machinima category, mainly because you are likely more familiar with those anyway. I will say there are some really excellent machinima entries this year, some which you’ve probably never heard of and need to see, so go look at ‘em and vote. Here are some films which... Read Full Story

Hugh over at Machinima For Dummies has posted an article titled “The non-game speedbump,” in which he tries to make sense of the relationship between some machinima films and their audience size. The conclusion, in brief, was that those leaving game worlds to produce independent machinima had best be prepared for the de facto loss in audience they will encounter. My first reaction was, “Where have you been?” (The answer, of course, is Bloodspell). My second reaction was, “Where did Kate... Read Full Story

With the buzz about Ghosts I-IV still going strong, Trent Reznor has dropped another bomb. Nine Inch Nails have just released another album - this one a full length with vocals titled The Slip - under Creative Commons license. What’s different this time is that the entire album is available for free, even the ultra quality versions. There will be a physical release around July, we’re told, but unlike Ghosts you don’t have to buy something to get the CD-quality audio. However, I wouldn’t... Read Full Story

What a stellar lineup! Voting starts today at the Bitfilm Festival site. Nominees: Tobias ‘Dopefish’ Lundmark - Among Fables and Men Olibith - The Ballad of the Sex Junkie Robert Stoneman - Rusty Whispers: Dennis Bertrand Le Cabec, Frédéric Servant, Sébastien Savine - Bill & John Episode 2: Danger Attacks at Dawn Markus Rupprecht - idealistic Egils Mednis - The Ship Billy Chang, Tony Chang, Indy Liu - Real People, Real Jobs: Patrick Winters, Parking Warden Trace Sanderson - The Dumb Man... Read Full Story

Last night, while I was sifting through my Google Reader stack for the evening, a message came from a friend across a Gmail chat channel. “Microsoft has dropped the hammer.” “Huh?” “… just confirmed, Machinima.com is suspended from YouTube…” Oh my. I needed to contact some people who are “in the know” and might be able to corroborate the rumor. Immediately, I powered up Skype to flag down Moo Money… no answer. Grrr, I fired up Twitter and sent an unintentionally overcryptic message to... Read Full Story

This is precisely two weeks after 52 starts on 5/2. (Those dates are May 16th and May 2nd for those of you from dd/mm land.) After a hiatus which calls into question my machinima podcast’s “approxi-weekly” designation, the overcast will return to the airwaves on Friday, May 16, at which time the winner of The Overcast Machinima Contest (entry deadline is APRIL 27!!) will be announced… and that will be the last show of its kind for a very long time. Why? Some big changes are coming to the... Read Full Story

As Johnnie Ingram indicated today, the old faithful topic of “what is machinima” has arisen again, this time over at GamerzTheatre. Rather than make yet another impassioned argument regarding the definition, I wanted to share some thoughts that came to me as I read through the various opinions being shared on mrdougan’s post. Anyone who has talked with more than a few people about machinima has probably observed that the definition seems to be uncertain - some would say “in flux.” That is... Read Full Story

After an education which included tutelage under the one and only Fyodor Khitruk (whose work you can see in the Masters of Russian Animation Vol. 1), Konstantin Bronzit has been animating for around fifteen years now, scooping up dozens of awards along the way. Most recently, he grabbed the Best Scenario Award at the 12th Open Russian Festival of Animated Film for his 2007 piece, Lavatory Lovestory. Below is a piece from 2003 by Bronzit, titled The God. I love the look of this film, and... Read Full Story

The next Machinima Audio Conference will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 2:00pm PST (that’s 5:00pm EST and 10:00pm GMT). While this is a bit early for the California people, I’m hoping this ends up being a time where we can get a good representation of participants on both sides of the pond. We’ll continue to keep the time fluid for future meetings until we find just the right pocket. Speaking of the right pocket, there’s been some lively discussion of the choice of Second Life... Read Full Story