Vol. 3 of 'Making Better Movies..." Released, and other Moviestorm News.

Moviestorm has released Volume 3 of their excellent "Making Better Movies With Moviestorm" e-book series, written by Matt Kelland.
If you missed my last blog post, this series is a great asset for all filmmakers that gives you exercises to find and improve your own style, without imposing any preconceived rules or attitudes.
Volume 3 concerns sound and lighting, and as usual the content is both revealing and instructive.
If you've been using these ebooks to improve your skills, then this volume is a worthy addition. If you haven't checked out this series yet, then I heartily recommend it. It's free and it's good. What more could you want?

Download Volumes 1 - 3

In other Moviestorm news, it was announced on the company's Dev Blog that they are aiming for an early December release of Moviestorm 1.5 , which is loaded with a great many new features and enhancements. Soon after the release, the much-anticipated Swordfighting pack will be released, along with a pack themed on Indian culture (as in India, not Native Americans).

More on these as they are released. Exciting!

Moviestorm releases second second free netbook, "Making Better Movies With Moviestorm, Vol 2"

I like to think after making a few movies that I have a little understanding of the art of doing so. Not necessarily an expertise, except maybe on my more delusional days, but a bit of understanding that allows me to make something that passes as good film.
But I'm always looking to improve and learn, and I often read articles that analyze the styles of other directors and different techniques that can be used. Helpful, to be sure, but never presented in a way that allows me to easily understand the "whys" of each technique.

That's why I love the new net-books written by Matt Kelland and released for free by Moviestorm. They're easy to get through and understand, but more importantly they give concise, easily digestible explanations about the techniques. Better still, it's real mechanic of getting you to understand technique is by giving you scenarios and having you film them in many different ways, then making comparisons and drawing your own conclusions. This method allows you to both understand how to perform a technique and why you would use it, but more importantly does so without stifling you with the notion of imitating someone else. On the contrary, it allows you the freedom to create, explore, and expand your own style and technical palette.
And that is a good thing for any artist, even those who think they know something.

Go now and get Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, then click on the fancy banner on the right to get Moviestorm. I guarantee you will improve your art.

Camera got you down?

All too often I see machinima movies that contain weird camera issues that never appear in professional films. They are annoying in a sense, not only because they are blatantly obvious and easy to fix, but because they immediately take me out of the story and tend to lose interest (which is a big oopsie if you are looking for views, and who isn't?)
I've never been able to name them, and describing them often was more of frustrated grunts and groans then anything.
But Kate Fosk over at MachinExpo managed to do both quite nicely, giving great advise with a great sense of humor. Even if you're an experienced director, it's worth checking out:

Kate Fosk on Machinima Camera Problems

Star Wars Fan-Fic archived online!

Those who know me know I'm a pretty big Star Wars fanboy. Yes, I tend to quote the movies a lot, have several comics, novels, collectibles, etc. littered throughout my house. I believe there may even be a photo of myself playing pattycake with my youngest daughter (around 2 years old at the time) while I was wearing a Darth Vader mask. Did I mention the same daughter when she was even younger had a onesie with a picture of Darth Vader and the quote "Who's Your Daddy?" on it?
Yup, big-time fanboy.
Back around 2005, in excited anticipation of the imminent release of "Revenge of the Sith" I was spending a lot of time on the forums the Star Wars web site, speculating on what the final movie may bring, the finer points of each movie and their characters...you know, fanboy stuff.
Anyway, along the way I met a few like-minded individuals and we developed friendships among us that carry on to this day. We had similar tastes and POVs, but we were a literal rogues gallery of personalities, the sith (myself), the jedi (Aaron Sinner aka Ki-Aaron-Mundi), the mercenary (Erick Osuna, aka N11ORDO), the rogue (Tim Dunlap aka Echo7Solo), and the soldier (Enver Klychak aka KilledBeforeAction of KBA for short). We called ourselves, fittingly, the Rogues Gallery, and we would choose topics we would become engaged in and pretty much take it over, debating with each other (and occasionally against) in an effort to show the other fans there, well, what made sense and what didn't, why we were right, etc.
All in good fun, and we did have fun! We soon expanded our correspondence to emails and phone calls. One year we exchanged gifts during Christmas.
After the movies release we had some questions that we debated, like who was Darth Plagueis the Wise, how did Palpatine become a sith...you know, hardcore fan questions. We also wanted to keep having fun and were seeking ways to do it.
Somebody (don't remember who, I think it was Aaron) sent us an email with a couple paragraphs of a story (they are the first paragraphs in the fan-fic, but I'll get to that), and next thing you know each of us had devised a character and were taking turns, back and forth, adding to the story.
Before long we had a pretty good fan story that added a lot of answers and kept a few mysteries.
Every fanboy is familiar with a site called TheForce.net, a great archive of both canon material (from the films) and Expanded Universe material (from the novels, games, etc.), and they also archive fan fiction.
Aaron began the process of getting our fan-fic archived, submitting it, coordinating with the test readers on the site, and taking their feedback and letting the rest of us know what they had to say. Aaron did a lot of rewriting, I added some new ideas, proofread for continuity and did some rewriting, and Erick did the cover art (Erick is an artist and founder of Urban Myth Studios.)
Today I got the email that all the work payed off, and the story is now online for all to enjoy. Take a read, I hope you like it!

Dark Side Rising

It's a fun, dark story that fills in some holes from the movies, uses some EU (expanded universe material), and shows our love for a galaxy far, far away. It's something we're all quite proud of, and we hope you like it.
Special thanks to Aaron for getting the ball rolling, keeping it rolling, and being the driving force.

The Moviestorm staff are such teases!

Although many have felt that the relative quiet (in terms of updates and new official content) over at Moviestorm Towers was a bad omen for the future of the software, recent posts in their development blog indicate that anyone's fears could not be further from the truth.
Today, our intrepid heroes posted another look into a long-awaited content pack that is finally nearing release, the sword fighting pack.
From the Dev Blog:

"The last couple of weeks have been pretty exciting here at Moviestorm Towers, with the checklist of bugs and features for the next version of Moviestorm being slowly crossed off.
One major piece of functionality that we've been promising for a while is the ability for two characters to interact with one another whilst using held props. Moviestorm uses animation blending to fill in the gaps between poses so that the characters don't "snap" from one pose to another, but when a character moves out of position and has to blend back to "Idle" all sorts of horrible things happen. Add the extra complexity of held props claiming a characters joint resources and the system often gets confused ...
Well, the times are a-changin'.
The code is now in place to support the Fantasy Swords pack (among others), meaning that held prop activities can be used to their full potential!"

Obviously, this will eventually open new doors in storytelling and content development.
Along with this bit of information, there was posted a teaser video of the swordfighting content. What little they show us leaves me eager in antici-


-pation!



I know I've said it before, but it looks like exciting days ahead for Moviestorm users.

Chronicles of Humanity

In case you didn't know about this incredible series, "Chronicles of Humanity" is something you simply must see.

"Set in the year  2340, The Chronicles of Humanity follows
Katherine  McDonald,  A journalist and the  only person to
survive  the  destruction  of  a  mining  colony.
Convinced the  government is  behind the  disaster,  she
embarks  on a mission to uncover the  conspiracy."

The series is both visually stunning with an incredible story. It also boasts an impressive cast, including the well-known talents of Rick Grove and Ingrid Moon, and also Felicia Day.
Yes, that Felicia Day.

Check out the site and watch some episodes. I guarantee you will be impressed.

Upcoming new feature of Moviestorm unveiled.

Today at the Moviestorm Dev Blog, the fine folks there shared a video showing the results of playing around with the nearly-developed Terrain Editor. According to the Dev Blog:

"The user interface has now been decided for this feature and the functionality is around 90% complete so it's time to move onto the other areas of improvement. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates!"

On the forums, more information was given, such as*:

• The default mountains are now editable with the new tools so you can keep them if you want or edit them to produce a new landscape.
• (The staff) have been experimenting with a larger grid, and have plans to include it in the next version of Moviestorm. It's worth noting that nav meshes can be used in conjunction with the terrain to make navigable areas outside of the grid if you like.
• Characters are still, unfortunately, restricted to navigating on flat surfaces. However, characters are able to traverse stairs with nav meshes, so you could place a nav mesh under the terrain to make it look like that character was climbing a hill.
• The terrain editor can only be used on the existing terrain mesh (which is relatively large anyway.
• The terrain tools include a raise brush, a lower brush and tools to flatten, smooth and paint textures.
• The terrain will ultimately be saved in stock sets for use by directors and as an example of what is possible with the new editor.

Here is the video:



Looks exciting! This certainly will open up new doors in set design, and the ability to flatten the entire terrain mesh will be of great benefit to those who wish to create more complex sets (such as a cityscape). Stay tuned!

*I largely quoted Amos over at Moviestorm, which explains the better prose. Anyway, the tool is still in development, and all things mentioned may change.