"The Wizard & The Ozimal" is the latest machinima from Pyewacket Bellman, and it's a lush and breathtaking tour through Second Life at its most magically strange. Watch:
The story is essentially a framing device for our hero to travel through several amazing SL locations, while encountering the full diversity of avatars made by Grendel's Children. I love how Pyewacket lets scenes play out in long, perfectly composed shots, giving us a chance to absorb all the multi-hued, hushed whimsy in the frame. That also keeps the machinima from getting overly cloy and sentimental -- no mean feat when your hero is a bunny wizard.
Update, 11:30AM: Pyewacket just told me more about "The Wizard & The Ozimal", much of which was shot improvisationally in single takes:
"The machinima was inspired by hanging around over at Avaria, the four sims belonging to Grendel's Children. [SLurl teleport at this link] As you can see, Flea Bussy and Company have been doing some amazing work. Interestingly, they put a great deal of thought and hard work into making the sims easy on graphics cards -- which makes it a perfect place for machinima. Avaria is an amazing place to play with Windlight."
Here's most of the avatars featured in the machinima:
"The avatars are, in order of appearance, Flea's original Dragon, Dryads, Wendocampi, Krakenite, Ungals, Crab, Pampathere (the furry guy with the birds), Avarian MacCaw and Parrots, RaptonX's Iguana, Barkside Wyvern, Avarian Crow, Troll (I forgot to get the names of the humanoids in the opening Troll scene.) Some of the chickens are avatars. The dancers are The Horror, Spawn of Sotek, Trilobitus... The butterfly at the end, and the toys running around are also avatars.
"The actual filming was all done in one or two takes, but I had copies of all the avatars, which I wore around and experimented with and pre-lit, so that none of the actors had to stand around waiting for me to figure it out. But, no matter how much I planned, the Grendel's staff were constantly surprising me with their performances and I kept rewriting the story around their 'acting'."
Hat tip: Toady Nakamura, whose plants and landscapes, as it happens, are featured in "Wizard".
Lovely! Perfect to share the whimsey and incredible creativity of Second Life;-D
Posted by: Gwenette Writer Sinclair | Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 06:16 PM