Erunno’s Thoughts…

The title explains everything… For those who actually read this and want to keep on reading, the blog moved to Myndfalme.com!

So redicrect your old feed to the new, improved, even more random Thougts! - http://myndflame.gameriot.com/blogs/Erunnos-Thoughts (fu, WordPress)

Okay, this errors are really getting annoying. The blog will be moved somewhere else! -.-

I haven’t wrote anything on the blog for quite a while now but for the past few days I’ve been thinking a bit about the good ol’ times of WoW machinima. When Return was the »OMG, advanced« and Tales of the Past done completely in-game. That made me wonder; it already seems that we reached the border of pure-machinima. Only step next is hybrid machinima and 3D animations.

So, what might we expect from the pure machinima genre in the near future?

Let’s look at the current state of it:
Machinima now is mostly made comletely with model viewer and map viewer/private servers. Visual and audio aspects reached Hollywood quality (but clearly that’s just in a few projects). So, the only thing there remains is the story aspect. The art of making the PvP fanatics heads hurt… Okay, I’ll stop poking the PvP community. Or else they might beat me p with their massive e-peens *rimshot*. I guess now it’s the time to show how inovative the community can get on the story parts…. Unless they start making THREE-DEE movies (no, not 3D animations. Movies that require 3D glasses).

I guess the one thing they can start researching is using creatures that are not playable races as main characters. Hell, why not make a kids-movie ala. Disney style. With rats, cats and stuff as main characters. Don’t recall any great tries in this field… I guess Oxhorn with Barney the Crab and X-Cross with Kippo did the most out of this perspective of storytelling.

According to some statistics, 40% of the gamer base is female (not WoW only)! So ,where are chick-flicks and romance comedies and anime style episodic stories for the more gentle sex? Okay, I might be talking rubish and all female machinima watchers love gore, epic wars and Over 9k jokes but why are there so many female oriented machinima movies made with the Sims and Second Life. Seriously, I’d love to see a movie talking about a love triangle between an Orc, Undead and a Blood Elf. Only good examples I remeber here are most of Selserene machinima and Stonefalcons Snacky's Journal, Ep. 1

.

Horror movies. I’ve seen tries but most of them are more »wtf« than scary. There have been some nice tries in verious halloween machinima contests but I yet have to see a horror machinima that would make me crap my pants.

FU good, long live evil. Just exactly, how many machinima ended up with the evil side winning? Let’s spice things up and kill off the protagoists in the final battle. Let the Scourge destroy the »only hope«, let us make our heroes screw up things and turn evil or corrupt. Cut the revenge/love/fate aspects. Just give me a kick ass antagonist killing off the good guys and then use them as a sword rack.

Porn. Seriously. Night elf threesome? Erh, scratch that. It ain’t PG 13. And we got Whorecraft for that. NO, NO, No! Bad Erunno! We aren’t going trough this again.

That’s only a few examples. People can come up with a lot more interesting stuff. Theres actually genres I haven’t mentioned but are being already produced but I don’t want to ruin the suprise since some are a »secret«.
Then theres the way in which you will present the story to the audience. Will you rely heavily on audio or use just a narrator to tell it, or perhaps you can do it comic style like Max Payne Noir Undercity: Chapter 1 - The darkness inside

. Theres more ways to transmit your message to the audience, not just the clasic character dialoges.

You can do a silent movie. Explaining the story only visually. Or with emotions or short letters that characters are reading/writing. A example is Racing the Grimtotem

by Oxhorn.

Or trough a 3rd persons perspective. A hunters pet… an object, you get the idea. Make the watchers angle of watching more »immersive«.

I already mentioned a comic like style. For those who do not know what that is, it is basically a movie with lot of still pictures flying around. Though this kind of editing can be a real pain since the line between »interesting concept« and »slideshow« is really blur.

Than theres the all knowing narrator. A background voice explaining everything when characters are not talking or don’t have dialogue at all. It’s mostly used in tales or bard songs. Oxhorn (again) has a whole bunch of them.

Of couse the cumminity can just send the pure machinima to hell and start doing hybrid machinima. Most of the WoW machinima communities (who do not read my blog *e-peen extending action*) don’t seem to gasp the diference anyway… I’m looking at you, the regular WoW (Insider) commenter.

Seriously, the next person linking the first paragraph of the wiki article about machinima get’s a plate boot showed up his behind. Blind is not machinima….!

Seriously…. I am aware of the wierd titles but I swear it was not intended (at least the hkey_blabla stuff) and I’m still trying to fix this. It’s either a) WCM screwed up their database somehow or b) WordPress is striking on WCM and doesn’t wants to work.

As for not writting anything new… I got things towrite but I’m too lazy. Perhaps I should get a co-blogger…

Or just move the whole blog off of WCM somewhere else.

Runchy <3

PS: I’m aware of the links not working. Theres something seriously wrong with my WordPress… I apologize for that.

Yup, scales. Today I’ll rant a bit more about the potential that dragon oreinted movies have (yeah, the horse is not dead enough for me), Blizzcon and throw out some “grats” to people.

For the past week or so, I’ve been doing some more serious reading of the dragon lore in the Warcraft universe. Some might not care about the lore in movies but I find it important. What I want to explain is that dragons in WoW have more potential than people think. Let me just give you a quote for the start about Dragonspawns:

Wyrmkin usually carry shields and swords (usually longswords) or spears provided by their patrons. These weapons are magical, with an enhancement or other minor feature. Wyrmkin are clever fighters, well trained and organized. Wyrmkin are trained to setup ambushes, use hit-and-run tactics, and generally do everything they can to gain the upper hand in a battle. They employ advanced battle strategies and capable of performing advanced maneuvers utilizing terrain, ambush, and flanking, as well as distinctive formations for different foes. Most wyrmkin fight in large units, they known for flanking their enemies or taking specific formations, but they rarely think of strategies on their own. Their one critical flaw is a lack of initiative and creative, independent thinking. Despite this shortcoming, they are a feared battle unit, capable of wreaking much havoc. Fortunately, most of these groups are lead by higher-ranking dragonspawn, to whom the wyrmkin looks for orders. Wyrmkin are almost always fighters, although some sorcerers are found within their ranks, but very rarely — those who show such talent are promoted to the flametongue legions.

While most wyrmkin are content — and often eager — to serve their dragon patrons, some strike out on more adventurous paths. Sometimes, a dragonspawn rebels against her oppressive culture, while other times a wyrmkin’s patron or dragonflight offers its blessings on her quest. Some adventuring wyrmkin are on lengthy missions for the dragonflight, exploring new places and discovering new magic.

See what I mean. You can get a story going just by reading this. Let me give you examples of a story: A Wyrmkin traveling across Azeroth in searh for artifacts, a group of elite rebel Dragonkins ambushing their kin, open warfare; dragons against dragons! Let’s not even mention the hate of the Black Dragonflight and the Chromatic flight. We’ve seen drama in the mortal soceity of Azeroth… Someone kills his father, the son seeks revenge, etc. But why use this concept on an overused race while you could bring some freshness by making up drama amongst dragons? They’re exotic, haven’t been shown from the more “human” side yet, they’re kind of mysterious and you’d be doing furries a favour (yeah, dragons still fall under furries somehow. Don’t ask me why… And no, I’m not talking of the dirty furries but this ones).

Blizzcon is comming in august and as always theres a Machinma contest there. For those who still do not know, here is the link.

So this year the limits are:
-3 minutes of length maximum
-The maximum size of 100 MB
-“.wmv,” “.avi” or “.mov” formats
-And you can use digital animation tools to some extends. But not for the whole movie (so no The Craft of War: BLIND

people)
-The movie needs to be new - not shown on any site or festival before Blizzcon

All fair and good. Some of the machinimators I know say that 3 minutes is really not enough but I would disagree. It’s completely fine for a short story or sketch. Drama movies might have some problems due to their storytelling style. But the biggest change this year is… Slovenians can participate! I can participate! Yes, this year I’m joining! I’ll do what I can to get another short about the White Drake to Blizzcon. I don’t care about the prizes, so long my movie gets played on Blizzcon I have bragging rights to be the first (and only) Slovenian machinimator who got played there (e-peen power! Hoooooo!). Let’s just hope ther will be no “Snacky’s Journal scandal” like last time.

In other news…

I’d just like to say a few congratulations for the end. First off, congratulation Jesse Cox for winning the 3rd place onWoW Idol! I personally think that he should get 2nd placed, behind Brewguy. Yeah, I didn’t liked Fatty’s song. I hated it. Also regarding WoW Idol, I’d like to congratulate and wish luck to X-Cross for getting “punished” to make a music video for the WoW Idol winner, Fatty…
Last but not least, congratultions to Azuna from Kazzak EU, my buddy and voice actor, for finnaly getting back into WoW after a good year of inactivity. Now go level so we can raid together!

PS: The WCM blog is currently having some strange issues. I’m aware of the strange errors and stuff.

Ah yes, I got myself a new PC. And whats better than starting to play with your new toy and just enjoying the hobby you’ve been doing for a while already…

The White Drake is a direct result of that and since the short film was just playing around with stuff the quality of it is also more “meh”. Yes, I read your comments and I know that the plot is not comletely understandable and that there is no voice acting and that the movie would be way more kick-ass with voices. And I don’t give a damn about those comments. And why? Because I freakin’ wrote that in the descripion of the movie.

“This was actually ment as a test film to try out the power of my new PC. Like in Von’zul, I decided to do the whole movie without voice actors again because I didn’t intend to do something big out of this.”

If you’re too stupid to even read the intention of the movie then you’re insisting that I ignore your comment. Some people seem to like it though, so I guess I’m going towards the right direction.

Alright, besides testing out my new hardware, I used the movie to try out a new concept and to reinforce a new one. Dragons. Yes, the loot pînatas that everyone loves to kill will get more attention from me. Way more. The whole idea is to implement some more dragons to machinima. We had Scourge, Alliance vs Horde, the Burning Legion, raid boses etc. but not that much about dragons. We had them shows as über creatures or passive characters but I never saw a machinima with a dragon as a main character (if you do know a movie with a dragons as a lead role, please let me know…). The White Drake was just a prelude, the real thing is in it’s planing phase. The other aspect I mentioned were silent movies. I am aware that Mr. Imsol33t says “Movies with voices are so awesome, loololol”, but voice acting is the easiest medium to send emotions to the watcher. Don’t get me wrong, I really respect voice actors and their contribution (hell, working with some of them was the most satisfying thing I did in this hobby) but having the skill to create heavy emotions only by using characters, from a game, thats’ skill. And that’s what my true goal is. I will keep on trying till I make even the most annoying douchebag commenters and watchers cry. I mean, think of the deaf people. What would they take out of a machinima with awesome voice acting? Nothing is my guess. But the question is if deaf people even watch machinima.

But before I waste my whole summer holiday for this, I need to take care of a few other projects first.

I promissed that I’ll give you a more “fair” ending to Stratholme. Now, I wasn’t lying and was just slacking the past few months, I have the movie finished. Only problem is that I am not satisfied with it’s video quality at all. Let me explain… The “second” part of Stratholme was made as a project from one of my final exams. It was my first (and possibly my last) use of custom 3D animation and it’s main purpose was showing my 3D animation skill. Because of that and the fact that that project was still done on my old PC is the quality complete crap. I mean, a 800×600 resolution, awful fps rate and bad coloring of the objects? I’m sorry, but such crap is not approved even by me.
So I’m keeping the original quality as a warning to never do machinima on a single core processor again, and I’ll try and release a completely fresh version in high-def as soon as possible.

And yes, this movie will have voice actors. “Famous” ones even. Damn WCM community and their wannabe critics…

Before I start with my classic rants…

Whaaaaaay, I’m back! I have my masters degree, so screw you, irl!

Now where was I? Oh yes… ranting… Mmmmm…

As an “opening” post after a few months of inactivity I’ve decided to talk a bit about the place I live in, Slovenia. Or as our guild joke goes: “In Soviet Slovenia, raid wipes you!”… I don’t get it either. Apparently there’s something with my accent.
But I won’t talk about the lovely hills, grasslands and cows that we have here, oh no. I’m going to rant about the fact that I’m actually the only machinimator in this damn place?!

Slovenia has a quite large geek community. Though it’s not that active “around the globe” we still have one. We got those pesky Anime (and Hentai) geeks, Sci-Fi wannabe Picards, the undead that are the WoW community (I’m so dead if one of them reads that…), Tech geeks etc. we got a bit of everything.

Except machinimators.

And not just WoW machinima in general, but everything! No Sims, Half-Life/Garry’s Mod, Halo, Hello Kitty Island Adventures machinimators, nothing! I tried to find at least one. I scouted all the geeky forums, web sites and portals. I’ve search trough several Slovenian video stream sites. Now there can be only three explanations for this. Either the other machinimators are really, really good at hiding, or they are releasing stuff as a Slovakian or I am indeed the only one. And I’m not amused by it at all.

Yeah sure, I could brag myself as the only one but that’s kinda stupid since half of the people don’t even know what exactly I’m doing. And I’m not a really good example to be the head of the whole community (and only member and admin and manager and contributor…). Whenever I mention what I do, people mostly think of silly gameplay movies and 12 year old boys yelling obscenities at each other. Guess that most of the gaming community consists of uneducated (in the field of geekdom, harharhar) idiots, smashing keyboards and yelling “Boom headshot!” and not actually realizing that some games actually have stories. Good ones even. So the people who actually look at games as art and not only as a way to see gore and to feel like a “lover of mothers”, I salute you.

Anyway, back to the point, machinima. I know that machinima is not a “must have” for every country, but I think it kinda mirrors the imagination and “education” of the gaming community in a land. There have already been mentions of machinima in Slovenian press. There have been articles about the art in several gaming and technology magazines, TV shows and even in some of the serious and big weekly newspapers. And still, people don’t look at it as a way to do movies, but as, ugh, frag-movies.

So if anyone who is reading this is Slovenian, try it out. Do a short machinima in the game of your choice or kidnap some friends and let them watch Tales of the Past III on a big ass TV! Don’t leave me here alone. I’m a horrible representative for my country.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t write much lately. For those bunch of wierd people who actually want a daily dose of my rants (call a doctor, seriously) stay calm, classes will soon end!

Okay let’s get to the point. A fellow machinimator, X-Cross (he recently made a bit more out of his name with Breaking and FI5VE - Deleted Opening ;)) opened a new machinima oriented forum in hopes of making the already existing WoW machinima community even better! The site is getting new members every day and it keeps on growing while you’re reading this!

The forum promises a polite and helpful community which will help you with your problems related to machinima. Need a good tip for editing a scene? Need a voice actor? Or do you just want to spotlight your movie and get some more detailed comments?

Then go to http://www.machinimaniac.tk/ and join the fun!

Personally I like the enthusiasm and support the idea. Theres never enough help and if done right we might even see some interesting team projects. The forum is not that big currently. But if it get’s more support, and this is where you come into play, it might become something really useful!

For those who do not visit the official WoW page that much, Blizzard just released a trailer for Ulduar!

Comments…?

It’s freakin’ great! The Blizzard machinima crew did some great improvements story telling wise and visually. I think this is the second Blizzard machinima that used several character dialogs instead of just a narrator (anyone remember this). Also updating the character faces was a great idea, especially Jainas. Let’s be honest, why should a main character look like an ordinary player character?

I wish we’d get more such goodies from Blizzard more frequently.

Weeee, Friday! The most awesome day of the week. And today I also decided to post some more random goodness and news in the world of WoW machinima and beyond! (aka. my life… Hmm, haven’t I said something about “no RL stuff here”? Damn. I’m breaking my own rules)

Machinima first? Okay.

In the past week or two a few interesting movies came out…

Max Payne Noir Undercity: Chapter 1 - The darkness inside

came out finally, 5 months after it’s prologue. Personally, I haven’t took the time to watch it yet, but according to numerous tips and comments from my machinima buddies you’ll surely like it if you liked the story in Max Payne. I promise I’ll watch it this weekend and give you some more thoughts.

Also, Baron Soosdon released a new music video called A.D.I.D.A.W.

. This I did watch and I enjoyed it. Visually, the video is top notch (like all Baron Soosdons videos are), and so is the music, A.D.I.D.A.W. by Electric Sex Pants. If you like WoW inspired music, music videos in general or are just a Soosdon fan, this is something for you.
Oh and adding “famous” characters into the video was also a neat idea. But that’s something that Soosdon likes to do (Psst! If you need a Night Elf or something… You know where to find me. *wink, wink*)

The last I’d like to add are two updates for my machinima projects.
The first one is a short sketch that I made in the past week, Erunno’s Shorties: Born to be…. This might become a daily “series” if I keep on getting new stupid ideas. Or guildies who want a movie about themself.
The second one is this. If you are interested in voice acting a few really small roles, send me a mail at verya_atan@msn.com (you can write into the comments too, but keep in mind that I cannot contact you without any contact inforamtion!)

Got a suggestion or tip? Send me a mail at verya_atan@msn.com and perhaps I’ll spotlight it!

Now to the non-machinima part.

Blind Man Studios are expanding! We’re adding a game development wing! Now we make machinima, “RL” movies, action figures, cars and video games! Kinda.
Some of you might know that I’m studying Computer Engineering (sorry if this is not the right term for my education but the Slovenian school system is more wierd than the Forum trolls in WoW) and since I’m close to finishing this level of education, I have to do a few projects and write some exams (we call it Matura).

Anyway, one of the projects is a machinima… Yes, I’m gonna advertise this “art form” everywhere I can! The other project is a video game. Yes, I’m coding a game. It wont be Gears of War 3 or World of Warcraft II but I’ll try my best to make it fun and enjoyable. And if everything goes as planed I will release this video game as freeware and actually keep on developing and upgrading it. Keep in mind that I’m working at the game alone and that everything in the game will be made by either myself or supporting individuals (audio, graphics, etc.). But! This isn’t final! I might never release it for the public if I feel like it but you never know.
Ah and the game will be something in the style of an RPG/Puzzle game (yes, I’m original. Heh) for those who are curious.

The title says it all. Time to get back into machinima. And the best way to start it, is by translating the script into an audio form!

The projects storyline is currently kept a secret, for more information you’ll need to either voice act or have a damn good reason to hear more.

List of open spots:
-1 female voice actor (1 line) for the role of a mother/wife -TAKEN!
-1 male voice for the role of an Officer (3, 4 lines)
-1 male voice for the role of Baron Rivendare (3 lines) - TAKEN!
-1 male/female voice for the role of a Cryptstalker (2 lines) -TAKEN!
-1 male voice for the role of an Acolyte (3 lines) -TAKEN!

The list is not small, though all roles are sideroles and therefore have only a few lines. The project is hoped to be finished before the end of May! The reason is that the project is also part of my final exams!

I cannot promise that the movie will be a great success, visually in the top and make you famous. I completely rely on the voice acting comminities kindness and wilness to help out. There is also no payment (seriously… I’m not making a Blockbuster).

If you are interested or know someone who might be ready to help meout, send a mail to verya_atan@msn.com or leave a comment at the end of this article. Voice demos are welcome.

EDIT: Okay, okay, okay! I’ll give you some lines. Geez, like it’s hard to say “I like dancing in the rain” in an undead-like voice…

Acolyte: “As you’ve ordered, Lord Rivendare. The Scourge is about to crush Tyr’s Hand.”
Officer: “Order the men to pack their equipment. We’re moving out!”
Cryptstalker:(laugh) “We will feast on their corpses at the tower, minions!”
Wife/Mother: “I’ve never thought I’ll see you alive!”