Recent dispatches from the outside world...
The 2007 Academy Award nominations were announced today, and contrary to my prediction, the machinima "My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva" was passed over in the "Best animated short film" category. I thought the backing of HBO would give it a fighting chance, but just last week, an animation industry insider gently dispelled that hope: The nominations are made by animators, she explained, and it's a tight-knit community who don't understand machinima. After it airs on Home Box Office, however, I suspect that'll change some.
What a shame. Even if it didn't win (and that would probably have been a long shot), I really wanted to see it nominated, to advance machinima as an art form, equal to, and perhaps ultimately surpassing animation. Or perhaps some type of hybrid of the two forms might occur. Sort of like the next evolution of the film medium.
Posted by: Princess Ivory | Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 07:43 PM
Animators form a tight-knit community indeed, however they DO understand machinima darn well... or at least enough to know one thing: SL lowers the barrier to entry to their jobs - a fact they don't find too thrilling!
Posted by: Christophe Hugo | Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 09:15 PM
Sorry to disagree Chris, though it may only be by a matter of degree but not kind. SL provides a different kind of platform for creating CG film, but does not replace professional software packages. It does lower the barrier to entry for people to do story telling, however that is a different beast than animating.
To create a truly high-quality machinima piece that will be on par with more traditional CG work *still* requires animators. If anything, animators are more limited in what they can do in Second Life due to the inherent graphical limitations imposed by the platform. Its possible to do some amazing work in SL, but it doesn't make the process any easier for animators.
Machinima is evolving in its own story-telling niche right now and isn't going to merge or replace full-blown CG anytime in the next few years. That is actually good for us, because it gives us time to become our own thing, rather than being lumped in with Pixar-style animation movies.
Second Life and other virtual worlds are lowering the barrier to entry for CG-type story telling. Just as the overwhelming adoption of Flash has enabled a new generation of cartoon animator to develop a new style, SL is gradually doing the same for CG.
Posted by: Geuis Dassin | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 12:59 AM
Was it even eligible for an Oscar? I thought AMPAS required a cinematic release.
Posted by: skribe Forti | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 01:29 AM
Maybe I should read before posting.
Posted by: skribe Forti | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 01:31 AM
Sorry, are nominations supposed to be about the medium used alone or does it sort of involve the quality of the work too? I don't say it's bad, haven't seen it, but may be it is. May be not. And if it is bad it's not necessarily "advancing machinima as an artform". It's like being excited by any coverage of SL in the mainstream media just because it's about SL regardless of the quality of the story.
Posted by: Yung Kakapo | Saturday, February 02, 2008 at 10:57 AM