Fall (Mini Project 3) from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.
Here's the latest short from my occasional machinima collaborator, the extraordinary Lainy Voom. I am biased, yes yes, but I think it's lyrical, lovely. See for yourself. She worked intuitively, using a Creative Commons-licensed song by Claire Fitch to shape the imagery. "It kind of made itself through the music," as she puts it. Still, many of the visuals were crafted with some smart technical and mechanical trickery; watch the movie, and read more about how she did it after the break.
To shoot the imagery, she used the latest Second Life release candidate, adjusting the WindLight settings for every shot. "Normal WindLight daytime or evening with the gamma and ambient slightly turned up or down. The water scenes were the Gellatto setting with the gamma turned up, and the sun position moved." The painterly background was acheived with two mega-prims with a sky textured added. "One of the prims was 80% transparent and not moving, the other one behind had a moving texture script in it."
And the plentiful air bubbles? I first thought those were added in post-production, but no: "It's an aquarium rock made by Supa Shang from her aquarium shop, attached to the mouth or nose."
Impressive! Well shot, there were only a few moments which caught me and caused me to realize "oh yeah, this was done it SL" which is a good sign. Frankly I'm glad to see more machinimators producing very professional looking works using SL. The platform has such potential for machinima.
Posted by: Echelon | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 02:00 PM
It's indeed amazing, we have done *quantum leaps* in machinimas in the past few years... SL is closely coming to the point where it's a "replacement" for 3D computer graphics animation...
I wonder if Shrek IV will be done in SL ;)
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 02:21 PM
(obviously, by "we" I mean "the residents who have an amazing talent")
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 02:21 PM
Excellent work.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 02:22 PM
Spectacular; Elevates the art form...
Posted by: piercep | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 10:12 PM
Lovely Job Lainy - Well done.
Posted by: Robbie D | Friday, January 09, 2009 at 02:06 AM
That was beautiful! So much emotion.
Posted by: Clarrice | Friday, January 09, 2009 at 02:42 AM
This is truly amazing - conceptually and in its implementation. Great job, Lainy!
Posted by: Thea | Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 05:49 PM
great vid--Lainy rocks the machinima
Posted by: rightasrain | Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 02:11 PM
I just realised that I hadn't replied here, thank you for your comments on this, very much appreciated.
Posted by: Lainy | Monday, January 19, 2009 at 05:57 PM