New World Notes

Weekend Machinima: Lainy Voom Plays With Time In "Push"

Push (Mini Project 4) from Lainy Voom on Vimeo

Watch this movie now if you want strange dreams, and have your imagination expanded. It's called "Push", Lainy Voom's latest short machinima experiment. In this one, she shot footage in just a week, on an extremely modest budget ($50), without a preconceived plan, improvising around the themes of time and memory. As is often the case with Lainy, those limitations were an advantage, yielding a surreal, visually spectacular mood piece. Using a viewer running dynamic shadows was also a great boon in that regard, but Lainy also employs some brilliant technical trickery: in shots 1:17, 1:22, 1:25, and 1:33, for example, she's actually using Second Life water as a moving backdrop. She adjusted the water's size and shape, and replaced the waves with other textures. That way, she tells me, "you can just film it straight in Second Life without post-prodding it." Here's much more of Ms. Lainy's work; my personal favorites that I've written about are "Tale from Midnight City", "Fall", and "The Stolen Child". (Is this the SL machinima Chris Marker watches? I surely hope so.)

Why Simulcast a Shareholder Meeting Into Second Life?

What you're watching in this video is a recent shareholder meeting of NIC, a 600 employee-strong, Kansas-based provider of eGovernment web portals, streamed via audio into Second Life, delivered by an avatar representing NIC's CEO Harry Herington, to an audience of ten or so in-world. (In addition to audiences getting the simulcast via the web and speakerphone.) "Our business is based on making information easily available through a variety of communication channels," NIC's Nolan Jones told me via email, so adding a Second Life aspect to the meeting was a natural extension of their in-world activities. "We used a media presentation tool developed by Cranial Tap," for the Powerpoint display, Jones added. "I managed the CEO’s avatar so he could focus on presenting to the live audience. Using the media player while controlling the avatar was extremely easy."

But is this a cost-effective way of broadcasting a shareholder meeting?

The Hidden Armies of Second Life

By one estimate from a leading member, roleplayers in the various Second Life military clans range in the several thousands, and count a couple dozen affiliations. (Some allied, others at a tentative truce, but many in fierce blood feuds.) Despite those relatively low numbers, the high attention to detail and the culture that's evolved around it is deep, detailed, and passionate. Via Nexii Malthus, here's a well-produced machinima from MJ Katsu that depicts one the leading militaries, Ordo Imperialis. Also: looks a bit like something Leni Riefenstahl would make, if the Axis was largely comprised of furries.

Weekend Machinima: Tribe Islands' Endless Summer

Tribe Islands - A Thriving Second Live Community from Drift on Vimeo

Here's some fun and facile machinima viewing for the Summer: created by Ariella Languish, it's a tribute to the community of Tribe Islands (Kai Island, Cougar Caye, and Cape Shore), and the tropical paradise fun they've created there. Even if the beer commercial-esque visuals aren't necessarily to your taste, you'll admire Ms. Languish's great editing and inventive camerawork. Hat tip: Epredator.

Lainy Voom Archives Great SL Spaces With Machinima

Blackspot - Historical Ships and Adventure from The VBA on Vimeo

A couple months ago, machinima auteur Lainy Voom quietly launched an ongoing project with Gala Charron: the Virtual Build Archive, a growing compilation of great Second Life spaces, documented with machinima narrated by Ms. Charron. (Above, one of the latest videos, featuring Blackspot, a cove for authentically produced tall ships.) As with everything Lainy shoots, these are some visually arresting and gemlike videos, and the narration should further inspire you to visit and explore first hand. Though they may not know it, Lainy and Gala's Archive tracks nicely with a Stanford project funded by the US Library of Congress to document and archive virtual worlds, so they'll be remembered over the years. As we saw recently, obsolescence can suddenly come to even the best places in Second Life. See them all here.

Weekend Open Forum: What SL6B Exhibits Should We Make Sure To Catch?

Next week Second Life celebrates its sixth birthday, and I've been painfully slow to follow all the activities and exhibits planned. (Then again, I usually space on real world birthdays too.) There's over 300 SL6B exhibits listed here, based around the theme of "The Future of Virtual Worlds". One of them is featured in the machinima above, Loki Eliot's ambitious time-traveling information kiosk. What others should we make an effort to visit? Post descriptions and SLurls in Comments. (Yes, rampant self-promotion encouraged.)

Good Lip Sync Technique For Second Life Machinima

Among my biggest personal irks against most Second Life machinima is excessive use of lip sync, which really got out of hand when VoIP-driven voice animations were introduced last year. In my opinion, we're still several years away from convincingly matching dialog to an avatar's mouth and facial movements; for now, it's distracting and almost always weird. (It's all too often an easy crutch for relating narrative, too.) This isn't to impugn just SL machinima, by the way; even Half-Life 2's vocal animations, still the benchmark, are far from perfect. (If you don't believe me, watch this HL2 version of A Few Good Men.)

Which brings me to this slickly produced machinima advertisement created by Skribe Forti; product aside, Forti employs a clever technique with lip sync, quickly tracking/zooming toward or away from the avatar as she begins to speak. That way, you see enough mouth movement to establish who is speaking, but not enough to feel too niggled by the audio/visual mismatch, when lip sync lacks sync. What other methods works as well to you?

Naruto-Inspired Ninja Combat System & Mini-MMO Coming to Second Life

If you're a gamer or an anime lover or both, you'll definitely want to watch this rousing machinima: it's a preview of a new Naruto-inspired game system and mini-MMO being developed in Second Life, on the region of Hinode Shima. "The combat system is based off of the Japanese manga and Anime hit series called 'Naruto'," the video's creator, Shikai Kanto, tells me. (He also created the game HUD you see in the video, and the in-game sound effects.) Yes yes, NCS is an acronym for "Ninja Combat System".

"This combat system allows it's players to join in ninja-fantasy based combat and roleplay," Kanto continues. "From melee combat, to using ninja techniques called 'jutsu'." That translates into cool gameplay that accomodates water-walking, teleportation, and of course, the firing of giant balls of energy. (The game's key scripters are Puppet Tatsu, Bioblaze Payne, and Kegan Loon.) The game mechanics look suitably complex and ambitious, matched to beautiful, detail rich architecture.

Kanto tells me the large team plans to open their game to the Second Life public "hopefully next week, but definitely by the end of this month." The island is still closed off to outsiders, but if you want an advance peek, IM Shikai Kanto, Bioblaze Payne, or Puppet Tatsu to get on the access list.

Weekend Machinima: Carla Broek's "Follow the Lad"

"Follow the Lad" is Carla Broek's quietly sumptuous montage through Second Life's virtual natural beauty, shot with stately tracking shots, and perfectly complemented by the heartfelt voice of SL musician Jaynine Scarborough. Locations featured in Ms. Broek's movie, perfect for long weekend exploration (just put the locations in Search): Error, Verdigris, Vanguard, Unintended Water, Nidhoegg, and Utopia Portucal XIV.

These Mescaline-Made WindLight Presets Go To Eleven

Remember Mescaline Tammas' awesome machinima "Pipedream", launched a few months back? If not, for the love of god, watch it already. It was redolent with kickass in large part because Mr. Tammas created a custom WindLight preset to shoot it in. Now he's gone and made 11 more presets, and put them online, for everyone to use. Get them here from his Flickr page. Pictured at left, the "MagicHour" preset, which you could use to make machinima the same way Terence Malick made movies. Remember Days of Heaven? If not, for the love of god, watch it already.