Machinima vs. Anymation.... FIGHT!

I was posting some opinions I had on the word "anymation" on Shattered Keyboard's comments. It got a little long, so, I thought I'd dig up this old dinosaur and make a brand new post. It's been a while, why not?

Before I say anything, note that this is just my personal opinion on the subject and is not intended to offend or criticize anyone. Or their opinions. Sometimes I don't communicate that clearly, so there ya go. So don't take it personally. Or go ahead, make controversy, throw onions at me, call me a filthy container of whatever. Up to you.

So what this all boils down to is there are some people that consider the old champion, "machinima", as a word no longer appropriate for what they do. They're starting to side with the challenger and underdog, the newcomer "anymation".

Me, I see the whole anymation thing as unnecessary and trying to define what is already defined, or, doesn't need to be defined.

Here's a long description of what anymation is. And here's a short example from a recent Antics blog post:

"I agree with the ethos of anymation - use any available tool to achieve the effect you want. There are thousands of users out there right now using Antics as one step on their journey to produce their vision in video. You might create your models in Google SketchUp, bring them to life in Antics, then add some polish in After Effects. Anymation in action "

Anymation in action? First of all, let me tell you why that makes no sense to me. A live action filmmaker might cast his actors from Venus, break into a bank on a Sunday to use as his "set", shoot half the shots on a 907mm film camera, half on a super-extreme-turbo-quadruple-fantastic-high-def camera, rob a souvenir store for props, use some stop-motion animation with barbie dolls, film some minature models of space stations so it "looks real" and then blue-screen it onto a matte painting of a desert, hand-rotoscope every frame to give it a "unique" look, and finally throw in a CGI Talking Animal for good measure, cause everybody else is doing it. I won't even go into what goes in the process of creating CGI Talking Animal just by itself. Let's just say it involves more tools than you can count on your fingers.

Anymation in action??

This is what FILMMAKING IS. This is what filmmakers do, they use any and all tools around them to make the final result. When I hear about anymation, all I see is a big circle.

-Films are made using whatever tool is necessary to create the result. Yes, and that includes an orchestra playing in the theater before film had sound.
-Animation is born, specifying a sub-genre of films that predominantly uses hand drawn images.
-CGI is born, specifying a sub-genre of animation that predominantly uses computer generated images.
-Machinima is born, specifying a sub-genre of CGI that predominantly uses real-time computer technology to output images.

And now, anymation is born, using whatever tool is necessary to create the result... and thus the circle. Definitions of the types of films have been specifying and specifying over time, and now when it's back to being generalized, suddenly it's a new concept?

All of those sub-genres are already using "any and all tools" to create the film. CGI film? Concept art may be drawn on paper. It may be scanned using a scanner, and edited on Photoshop. A clay character may be sculpted for reference. Previs may be created with Antics... (no wai!) Character models and environments/props may be created in Maya. It may be animated in Motionbuilder (hello real-time), then brought back to Maya. Textures may be created on Photoshop. Normal maps might be created in Zbrush. It may be color-corrected and 2d effects and filters may be applied in After Effects. So on and so forth.

That's a heck of a lot more "anymation" than someone using Moviestorm, don't you think? The concept is already implied. Let's face it. CGI doesn't use game images or 2D anime cause it looks like shit and doesn't fit in with the style. Not cause its following some unwritten rule that CGI must be this and that. I follow the philosophy that filmmaking decisions should be based on quality, asking "how" and not "what". And really, if you look around, that's what most films follow too. And no, I'm not talking about Uwe Boll.

Now with all that said, once again, this is my personal opinion on the word "anymation". Y'all are free to call whatever you do whatever you want, but me, I don't support it for the above reasons. But the following is really why I rant about this.

I do like the attitude of moving away from game-based filmmaking. That's cool, and I think there is a place for both. What I don't like as much is the supposed abandoning of the word "machinima". In other words, I don't like another segmenting of the community.

Machinima. Yea yea, I can see your face, half frowning and crinkled when I say it. It's indeed a funny and strange word. But it's definitely unique. As unique as "film", "animation", and "CGI". "Anymation", on the other hand, sounds exactly or nearly like "animation" when spoken.

Machine-cinema describes what we all do here perfectly.

All Machinima films are processed by a computer in real-time (that's the politically correct definition of machinima, not 'game movie'). The machine is doing much of the work for us, hence, machine-cinema. Rendered in real time or rendered frame by frame, whatever it is, the point is that the image you see was originally created in a real-time technology environment, using a computer programming language (the engine) to bring the elements together. Thus, the machine does a lot of the non-creative stuff for us in the background.

I consider 'Edge of Remorse' to be purely machinima, even though it was rendered in After Effects. That's because even though the elements (background and characters) were separated, the elements themselves are purely real time. Backgrounds for the scenes weren't rendered out. They were 100% FRAPS'd in WoW. And guess what determined how the wheat field was placed in relation to the sun, and how many polygons that mountain in the distance had? That's right, it wasn't me. That was the machine, a piece of code in the engine that determined that. And that element, the scene, ran in real-time (unlike say, a CGI scene that needs to be rendered first).

Using blue-screen to put the elements together and rendering it out, is I think what some would call "cheating". But I don't think that changes the labelling of the technique altogether.

Anyway, the whole "rendered in real time" thing, haven't we moved way past that already? By that logic all edited machinima films that are in a video avi/wmv/mov format are not machinima because they were rendered frame-by-frame in a video editor! I'm sure you oldies tore some hair out over that when Quad God first came out?

Antics, Moviestorm, iClone, Motionbuilder, Unreal, WoW, Crysis, etc. They all share the same thing: a rendering engine that displays images calculated in real-time on a computer. The only difference between them is the marketing purpose of the product, whether its for previs, filmmaking, or gaming. But its all the same type of technology, and personally I think making a film using one or any combination of the tools is in fact, machinima.

And finally, I'm gonna sneak in some personal rants (a.k.a. no longer respecting your opinions!)

Machinima's got oh, just about the entire gaming audience, that recognizes the word now. Anymation has what, 30 people? I admire the cool punk attitude, but i also admire being practical... I guess I'm an artist because I want people to hear what I have to say. Whether it's something that comes from my emotions or just a cool fight scene in my head. So for me it makes no sense to make an obscure film that gets 500 views. To me that is an utter waste of time and energy especially considering I put unnecessarily large amounts of energy into any short film (which I also think isn't worth doing if you're not gonna put in the effort). To put that much effort and not get reciprocated (positive or negative) is bullshit and you know it. That'll drain your inspiration over time even though you might deny it.

The point is not that quantity > quality, the point is be practical and smart in your decision so YOU GET BOTH. That might mean having to sacrifice some quality to make room for quantity, and sacrificing some quantity for quality till you have a great balance of both. I know not all people think like this, but I'm throwing it at you. Think about it. If you teeter too much into quality and obscurity then don't complain that you didn't get a lot of views. Or don't complain if a lot of people see it but it's got a 4% on Rotten Tomatoes... but if you do want both, well, I'm gonna say that abandoning the church and starting a new religion is not the way to get it. I am unfortunately a greedy man and I personally want both, so, I'll stick with the church for now.

Finally, I'm tired of all this segmenting and separating. Who. Cares. Let's just make some fucking machinima films and tell each other how much they suck. That was way more fun and inspirational than this crap. The community itself was inspirational to me once, but since that doesn't exist anymore, well, as Han Solo once said, "I'm in it for the money, sister". And no, I'm not gonna come back at a critically tense moment and conveniently save your life. Well maybe. Depends how much money they give me.

Maybe if we all stuck together and WORKED together, instead of separating and bickering on each other's blogs (oh the irony...), we might've solved the freaking licensing problem by now? The past is the past but, just a thought...

Blizzcon Recap

Blizzcon was a great experience! Here's a quick recap of the whole event.

On Thursday night, the eve of the event, I met with a bunch of the machinima people attending, as well as a few of Blizzard staffers and had dinner near the convention center. I don't remember everyone who was there but some of the machinimators included Terran and Ezra of Rufus Cubed, Tristan Pope, Jun Falkenstein, and the members of Dead Workers Party.

Ricky and I headed off to the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday and arrived just in time for our time slot in the machinima booth. We carried with us a big box full of Edge of Remorse DVDs. Before the event I ordered 100 retail packaged DVDs, with cases and artwork professionally printed.

We laid them on our table and gave it all away to the people passing by, giving them a quick 10 second low-down on what machinima is. OK it was a little hectic and we probably did a terrible job doing so! But our film was playing on the TV behind us so hopefully people understood.

The DVDs were gone in 20 minutes. I wish I had made more to give out but just the 100 was expensive enough. I even got to autograph a couple! Me being the fool that I usually am, I forgot my fully charged camera at home... hopefully if someone else took pictures I can steal them and post it later. At one point Henry Lowood (from Stanford and archive.org) came by to say hello.

After the booth I played some StarCraft II - more on that later.

We met up with the Xfire staff, and had a live chat along with the other machinimators - John and Ryan from Red Sky Foundry, Ian Beckham, Stone Falcon Productions, Slashdance, and some others I might be forgetting. We didn't have a table so we were actually sprawled on the floor of the convention center lobby typing away on laptops. Here's a picture one of the Xfire guys took (me on the left):



After this we went to dinner with everyone and had a great meal. Ricky had to leave early after this so we called it a night.

On Saturday I went back and allowed my soul to be devoured by StarCraft. I watched the semi-final and finals of the StarCraft tournament. Watching the pro Koreans play was so amazing, it was ridiculous. So ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh when I first saw the speed of their mouse clicks - some of the TVs showed a direct feed of the player's monitor, so every mouse movement was visible.

After that me and my friend went straight to the StarCraft II area and played it over, and over, and over again until the day was done!

Even though it was still obviously early in the development, it was extremely polished and very, very playable. And I might even say that it's already the best RTS game I've ever played. I'm having withdrawals right now. I missed the presentation on the single-player but from what I see online it looks to be amazing too.

I see and hear a lot of people complaining about how it looks like an expansion pack or doesn't live up to the hype... well, they couldn't be more wrong. Watching it from a distance and playing and being in the game is so different. It feels like StarCraft which is a very good thing, yet feels newer, more advanced, and overall superior to the old game. Overall everything just felt incredibly smooth. The way the animation plays out and the already polished interface gives everything a very "glidey" feel that's really addicting. Of course balance issues are impossible to judge at this point so who knows if it will live up to the "masterpiece" title that the original owns. Regardless, this game is going to kick some serious ass when it comes out... I'm going to buy like 13 copies just because. =P

I did not get a chance to ask any questions about machinima possibilities. Again I missed the single player presentation so I did not get a chance to see any of the cinematic capabilities either. But one of the trailers playing at the event showed the new Thor unit closeup, with the backdrop out of focus. That gives me hope that Blizzard might be considering machinima possibilities in the new toolset. Regardless I will definitely be doing something with it when it's released. =)

Anyway... that was my experience of Blizzcon in a nutshell. I had a great time, but missed out on a lot of things as well. Next time I'll have to schedule out things a little better.

Blizzcon '07!

A few of us at Riot Films (gToon and myself) will be representing Edge of Remorse over at Blizzcon this Friday, August 3!

We have an hour of time in the machinima booth, at 2pm. Other World of Warcraft machinimators will also be present throughout the day as well as on Saturday.

If you're attending the event, be sure to stop by and say hello!

Golden Compass Trailer

Here's the newly released trailer to The Golden Compass. FYI, it's the film that we at Shiny are creating the game of.

Convince me

Someone convince me why I should continue with machinima. This isn't another "why machinima sucks" rant, but just a slight doubt I've been having lately.

As my skills improve in filmmaking, naturally my ambitions and goals increase with it. The kind of movies and the level of quality I wanted to achieve back in 2004 compared to today, is like night and day. Back then, simple machinima was good enough as long as it was captured well, edited cleverly, and was overall watchable.

From after the release of the first OTSS to right now, what I wanted for OTSS 2 kept growing day by day. At first I knew I had to step the quality up, which meant addressing the main issues with OTSS: emotionless and expressionless faces, looping stock animations, stiff "gamey" motions and graphics, and more importantly, the plot.

All that technical work would go to waste if the plot didn't live up to expectations. In my opinion a great film has all the elements in high quality, including (but not only) the story. Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, etc., I won't get into it. I'm sure a lot of you have heard enough about OTSS 2 rewriting over the last few years.

With all that work and dedication into writing a short film, a film to be created in a game engine, not to be sold and not legally owned, seems somewhat ludicrous. Add to that, all of the custom assets that need to be created: character models, animations, textures, maps, props, weapons, and quality as good as or better than the original game the machinima film is made in.

It all seems way too daunting for the limits of machinima. Visually, I want to achieve a higher quality than the cinematics found in Gears of War. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it won't be possible without a lot of money.

At that point you're taking away the main positive aspect of machinima: money. Time-saving is simply not a factor in custom content films. And when you're spending that much time and effort, why not spend a little more time to render out a full-blown CGI picture instead? If we were on a contract deadline, things would be different, but this is a personal project, one that could be potentially sold after it was completed.

But with machinima that isn't even possible, sometimes it is but still in limited form.

And the most disturbing thing that I've come to realize is this: video game engines become outdated. Fast. When one is obsessed with quality and technology such as myself, one must always strive to keep up with the times and choose the latest game engine on the market.

And everytime a new, stunning game engine is revealed that will "change the way machinima is made", this means you have to take the time to learn this new engine, the way its coded, its scripting language, the way its map editor works, the way lipsyncing works, the way the cameras work, what kind of workarounds or hacks there are, and so on.

In CG every new technology is an evolution of an existing tool, such as Maya or Max. Once you've learned how to use it, you don't need to re-learn it every few years!

So where exactly does time-saving come in, compared to a full CG render, if you're spending all that time learning different game engines?

I'm doubtful because over the course of many years, I would much rather spend that time mastering one tool, than trying to learn many.

Machinimachinimachinima! Arg!

Holy crap look at all that spam on the previous post.

It's been a while since I've last updated this. Ever since I started work at Shiny, machinima in general has been difficult to get back into. Not just machinima, but any other work-related hobby. The so called "brain drain" mentioned by some in the Mprem community is definitely rearing its ugly head.

Every day consists of driving an hour and half, sitting at a computer for 9 hours to create what is essentially machinima, then driving another hour and half back home. So what's the last thing I want to do when I finally come home? That's right... machinima.

On that note, I thought I'd explain a little bit about my job, since it might interest some people (and have been asked on many occasions).

Firstly, they've finally announced which game we're working on:

The Golden Compass.

It's based on a giant film franchise coming out Christmas this year (by giant I mean Lord of the Rings giant... supposedly), which is based on a trilogy of books called His Dark Materials. Apparently it's very popular in the UK (called The Northern Lights over there), but not in the US as much.

Some more information about the game here, here, and here.

So, first we get a bunch of storyboards for a level in the game. At that point the animations and models are mostly unfinished, so we make a quick, rough version of the scene, with temporary models, and temporary animations. We use a tool which allows us to script and chain any existing animation together in a countless number of ways. I believe its mostly used for gameplay, but it works for our needs just as well.

Then we continue to work on the scene as the assets are completed (models, animations, storyboard changes, etc.) or we move onto the next scene while we wait. Most of the time we have multiple ones going on at the same time (currently we have about 15 or so...).

For the first few months, me and a coworker split up the various cinematic scenes in the game, and we each had our "own" cinematic that we began and completed separately. While this was kind of cool because we could call a certain cinematic our own, it wasn't very efficient. As all machinimators know, making even one scene in a machinima film is a combination of many different skills. And most know, that the more skills you try to tackle on yourself, the less the overall result will be.

About a month ago this changed as we hired a third person on our team, a programmer. And so our roles changed a bit, a bit more like an assembly line.
My coworker focuses on blocking the scene into the level (via triggers and keyframes), the new hire focuses on animation scripting, and i focus on what I feel I do best: all of the camerawork.

If I have an 9 hour day, I can now work on a camera for 9 hours, instead of say, 3 hours on cameras, 3 on animation scripting, and 3 on blocking. Technically speaking, the camerawork will be 3 times better than if I attempt the whole scene myself. The animation scripting and blocking will also be 3 times better.

So in the end by doing specialized work in our best talent, we end up with a highly polished scene. And I've always been saying this and this is the clearest example I could possibly make. TEAMWORK > SOLO!!!!

Unreal Delusion

Unfortunately, the long-awaited Only The Strong Survive II: Delusion has been delayed yet again. This time for good reason - OTSS 2 will now be using the Unreal Engine 3!

Meanwhile, we still have a few fun projects lined up before OTSS 2, including Knight Time, Precedent, and a yet unannounced project. More details about these projects are coming soon!