tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28678429065683684032011-11-29T14:33:07.673-06:00Armanusnoreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-18801516954568309942011-11-29T14:33:00.000-06:002011-11-29T14:33:07.682-06:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-17864501247981102372011-11-01T16:42:00.000-05:002011-11-01T16:42:36.118-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-37941474635203673722011-08-17T18:08:00.000-05:002011-08-17T18:08:08.909-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-26902573411334520452011-08-14T15:16:00.001-05:002011-08-14T15:20:09.887-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-61663287060972763262011-08-08T10:38:00.000-05:002011-08-08T10:38:19.056-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-88014185449447506742011-07-31T19:44:00.000-05:002011-07-31T19:44:21.650-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-64457822733422266672011-07-29T16:16:00.001-05:002011-07-29T16:20:42.251-05:00

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

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-10331091754587462412011-07-28T14:41:00.000-05:002011-07-28T14:41:26.493-05:00

Writerly over at the Moviestorm forums is on a roll lately. I don't know if it's insane ambition and talent or one too many cups of coffee, but he's been releasing new mods for the program almost daily, and these are some excellent mods! The latest is the Alien from the "Alien" movie franchise. The troublesome terror is rigged to the male puppet rig, which means you can use all the male

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-1379249083801523942011-07-26T16:27:00.000-05:002011-07-26T16:27:52.773-05:00

The latest short by Chat Noir Studios, "The Gift" is an excellent work (as expected from them), and also shows how effective Moviestorm is as a storytelling tool when in good hands. Have a look! The Gift from Chat Noir Studios on Vimeo.

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-29345418290014901792011-02-22T18:21:00.001-06:002011-02-22T18:24:33.168-06:00

Really, how much easier of a competition can you get? Moddingstorm is running a "Stupidly Easy Competition". Winner gets three free addon packs for Moviestorm from Moddingstorm! So how stupidly easy is it? Simple. All you have to do is visit Moddingstorm's facebook page and click like. That's it. Two weeks from today, a name will be chosen at random from the list of people who like the page, and

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-60303987374072913312011-02-08T16:42:00.000-06:002011-02-08T16:42:40.446-06:00

The software company pmG Worldwide is conducting a viral test marketing campaign by selling their award-winning animation/rendering engine Messiah Studio 5 for an incredibly low price. There are two options for purchase, the first being a limited-feature basic edition for $10 (regularly priced at $499), and the full pro version for $40 ($1195 regular price). The offer works as follows. The

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-80266592280215027072011-02-03T17:04:00.000-06:002011-02-03T17:04:18.478-06:00

I'm happy to announce that I have been cast for the role of Special in the independent animated film "The Grey People", a sci-fi epic directed by D.L. Watson. D.L. Watson is a talented and respected director who makes independent animated films (or machinima, depending on how you wish to view it) and live-action films. For this movie, he will be using Moviestorm and iClone4 for the

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-52487101041897940782010-08-08T13:42:00.000-05:002010-08-08T13:42:13.348-05:00

EditShare, the company behind Academy and Emmy award-winning video editing software Lightworks announced plans to release its product under an open source license. Lightworks was most recently used to edit movies like Shutter Island and Centurion, but is also credited with helping create otehr films like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Mission Impossible. This is very exciting, since it

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-6749706035837067152010-07-02T19:20:00.000-05:002010-07-02T19:20:49.253-05:00

I've resisted doing this because it seemed like everyone else was, but realized that I was missing out on an opportunity to network further with people who create machinima, enjoy my machinima, or even introduce people to machinima who may not otherwise know about it. So, I created a facebook page. If you like my movies, now you can "Like" Dark Lord Productions! Find it here. Thanks in

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-58483423951399180452010-06-25T21:50:00.000-05:002010-06-25T21:50:47.153-05:00

If you haven't seen it announced on various forums, tweets, and facebook accounts, there is a new machinima site called Mach3di. Here is how they describe themselves: We are a machinima rating and review site similar to the old Sims99 web site. You link to your machinima movie and receive honest straightforward reviews. You do not upload movies, but rather link to where the movie exists, either

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-75302764561574365402010-06-02T17:48:00.000-05:002010-06-02T17:48:13.278-05:00

Not long ago I posted that, after working out some issues, I was finally able to resume production on "I, Zombie". After working on it again I realized, unfortunately, that I'm not into the idea anymore. I still want to make the movie, but I'm just not feeling the inspiration. My muse is just looking at me and saying "fuggit"! I don't know....maybe it's because of the frustration with things

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-1281746163347610812010-04-18T11:59:00.000-05:002010-04-18T11:59:48.576-05:00

A lot of things happened at once that conspired to delays in continuing to make "I, Zombie", and ultimately release that and move on to bigger and better things. First was a glitch that I couldn't figure out that was causing my copy of After Effects to crash every time I opened it. I couldn't do much without AE. I had already started a lot of post-production work for the movie, and was at the

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-12936174873387737932010-03-26T17:52:00.002-05:002010-03-26T17:56:00.328-05:00

Seems there is quite a stink over the newest content pack released by Moviestorm called "After Dark". The pack is the first content of "adult material" officially released by the company. It contains nude characters, with morphable breast size for the ladies and an erection morph for the dudes. As you might have guessed from the erection bit, this pack also contains some sexual animations. A

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-79330979931895119192010-03-23T17:54:00.004-05:002010-03-23T17:58:11.477-05:00

Recently I had the pleasure of providing my voice-acting mistalent (I just made that word up) for Dulci's newest project, "The Day We Turned Into Aliens". From the looks of things, this is going to be a fun time. The whole thing is deliberately campy , with voice actors assigned to roles where they were to intentionally underact or overact. I signed up to be a part of this, and asked to be an

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-64672448668201000392010-02-01T17:15:00.001-06:002010-02-01T17:17:18.323-06:00

Recently, Moviestorm announced that they have implemented the long-requested feature to gift or share MS points with other members. This feature was originally requested as a way to say thank you to modders who created exceptional mods or other members who have made a significant contribution to the MS community. Since it's been put into place though, it's interesting to see how it is being used,

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-80479164232873054712010-01-18T19:16:00.000-06:002010-01-18T19:16:39.792-06:00

Lately there have been numerous blogs that are attempting to find an acceptable definition of what machinima is. This attempt is nothing new, as it has been occurring ever since "machinima" has expanded beyond the use of game engines. It's a daunting task, to be sure, and I am not going to try to devise this definition. In fact, I have to wonder if, by current standards, an acceptable definition

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-14726228652874984112009-12-31T12:28:00.000-06:002009-12-31T12:28:13.557-06:00

I just wanted to blog quick and wish each and every one of you a happy and safe 2010!

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-81425426851934757912009-12-29T14:34:00.000-06:002009-12-29T14:34:35.026-06:00

October. I really thought I could do it. Finish a movie I was only halfway done with? No problem. Film a 3 minute short for Halloween on top of it? Piece of cake! Oops! So here I sit with both movies still unfinished and egg on my face. Why? Several reasons, actually. First is a small laundry list of personal flaws. I bite off more then I can chew. I put the cart before the horse sometimes. I

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-64987153726202050232009-12-24T20:41:00.002-06:002009-12-24T20:42:34.922-06:00

So Moviestorm announces a Holiday Movie Contest, and this being my favorite time of year, I couldn't resist entering. After 1 1/2 weeks of intense ranting and wrangling, I've put together what I think is a pretty good movie. At nearly 17 minutes long, this is a story with a very important holiday message. Here is the description: Michelle is very naughty. After a big snow storm, she finds a

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-87852958317029409242009-10-18T12:19:00.001-05:002009-10-18T12:21:14.404-05:00

As some of you may know, since 2006 I was a moderator on Sims99. During that time I put forth a lot of effort with my fellow mods to make the site friendly, welcoming, helpful, informative, and fun. From the time I joined that site all through my time as a mod, I've always felt that the 99 community was one of the nicest and closest communities I have ever seen on the internet. Sims99 is where I

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-76129713737132688472009-09-18T15:32:00.000-05:002009-09-18T15:32:57.836-05:00

Due to a recent bout of hecticosity in life, I've been forced to postpone the release date of "I, Zombie" until sometime in October...which is fine with me, since it seems to be better suited for the Halloween season anyway. As soon as I have a solid release date planned, I will let you know :) In the meantime, I am also working on another October release, coming out on Halloween. This short

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-21251752693326159262009-09-14T16:05:00.000-05:002009-09-14T16:05:01.044-05:00

I'm sure someone out there read that title and read this blog just hoping to catch some dirty laundry lol I did let out a secret that I've been keeping on the show, but before I get to that I just want to comment on the show itself. First, I had a lot of fun! We talked for near an hour and a half, but it certainly didn't feel like it. Ken and Roger are very good at making you feel right at home,

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-76975503812135458052009-09-11T17:38:00.002-05:002009-09-11T18:13:37.596-05:00

I have been invited by Roger from "The Ken and Roger Show" on TMOA to go on their show this sunday to discuss my movies.It should be a real fun time, and I look forward to it.The show is broadcast from 2pm - 7pm EST (GMT-5) on http://www.tmoaradio.com/news.php . I will be on sometime between 4pm - 5:30pm.

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-36220339203415122822009-08-07T17:03:00.006-05:002009-08-07T19:37:20.598-05:00

As many of you know, I used to make machinima with The Sims 2, until learning about Moviestorm and eagerly switching to that software.Over the past several months I have been telling people about the potential of Moviestorm, and some people were interested, some were dismissive of it.It's really hard to describe the potential of a tool using visual media, because let's face it, the key word is "

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-45594258534509023162009-08-04T17:53:00.002-05:002009-08-05T15:59:15.991-05:00

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-31529665538704970722009-07-30T15:48:00.002-05:002009-07-30T16:00:02.307-05:00

Production of my latest eyesore is going rather splendidly, and I'm pretty much right on track for release at the end of August.But sometimes, you just don't want to do it. Sometimes, you'd rather do other things. For the last few days I've been doing just that.See, I've recently gotten Adobe After Effects, and spent several days watching tutorials on how to actually use the thing lol! It's a

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-64048909375204518462009-07-13T19:00:00.004-05:002009-07-13T19:17:01.194-05:00

If you feel like humoring me, let me bore you with some babbling about production of the new movie so far I am working on.First, this is my first true Moviestorm movie (I don't count Christmas, I don't really know why), and it is the first movie I've made that I actually (gasp) wrote a script for! The scary thing is, the script is really, really good! But now, that's just added pressure to make a

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-56659892072263847742009-06-29T19:36:00.002-05:002009-06-29T19:55:19.262-05:00

When I was finishing the new design of my website, I renewed my commitment to machinima, with the goal that I was always going to be at least currently working on a movie. No more sitting for several months until I got around to it. Let me tell you, I'm pretty damn excited about that!As I sat and pondered this, I realized I really wanted to expand my avenues, put my movies out there more and

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-45488367512853170222009-06-21T11:39:00.002-05:002009-06-21T11:57:18.523-05:00

Now that the main part of my web site is done, it's time to start doing what all of this is all about...making movies.Some of you may know that I have been working quite a bit with Moviestorm, and since I started using it I have come up with all sorts of ideas!I'm just tired of making movies with Sims games. Let's face it, despite all of it's charms and how brilliantly it works for machinima, it

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2867842906568368403.post-44692442281498626972009-06-21T11:32:00.003-05:002009-06-21T11:36:46.303-05:00

Hello there!If you're reading this, that means that after what seems like forever I have finally finished my web site! Check it out here!Once weekly, this blog will contain new information about new projects I am working on, news about the web site, and/or news about machinima in general.I hope you like the site, and stay tuned right here for more cool stuff!

Armanusnoreply@blogger.com0