Fountainhead Boss On Machinima Perils

Thanks to Machinima.com for their interview with Fountainhead Entertainment boss Katherine Anna Kang, in which the ex-id software biz person discusses their "independent production company that specializes in documentaries and animation... our specialty is Machinima" - that is, "filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment", often involving videogame engines. Kang laments: "I'm sad that Machinima isn't as popular as I thought it would be by today... the one thing that worries me is that Machinima will be seen as a hobby and not taken seriously, and that very much annoys me." She also mentions: "We may open-source an academic version of [in-house movie tool] Machinimation in the very near future."

Comments

Video Game animation

[Fux the Penguin]

"I'm sad that Machinima isn't as popular as I thought it would be by today... the one thing that worries me is that Machinima will be seen as a hobby and not taken seriously, and that very much annoys me." She also mentions: "We may open-source an academic version of [in-house movie tool] Machinimation in the very near future."

I agree with the author of this article. I've really enjoyed a lot of the video game animation I've seen from hobbiests and students. I'm a big fan of the Star Wars Kid and Homestar Runner. It's too bad that more people aren't aware of the students and hobbyists who make these highly entertaining shorts available to us, between classes and during time off from their real jobs. Perhaps with the release of the anemic version of their tool, more students and hobbyists will be able to create short works placed on obscure websites for our enjoyment. Who knows, maybe one day they will rival the likes of SpikeTV and The Outdoor Life network for our entertainment dollar.

interesting, but that's about it for me

[jermyjerm]

I'm interested in filmmaking and animation, and the Machinima concept piqued my interest when I first heard about it, but for someone who doesn't have any kind of experience with 3D modeling, it seems just as prohibitive as learning 'regular' 3D animation techniques. Maybe more-so, since I don't have a LAN at my disposal (well, I'm just lacking nearby fellow geeks) and if I was going to spend time gathering voice actors and such, I might as well be spending that time finding actors for live action films.

I can understand the relative ease of use of this compared to keyframe animation, on the other hand its really not something that entices me enough to look into further.

I'm guessing I'm not the type of person this concept targets, although if there was a few programs available that would help me create simple characters and scenes specifically for this purpose, I would definitely try it out. As it is though, I wouldn't be diverted from learning a program like Swift3D, which currently best suits my relatively minimal animation requirements.