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Quake-Based 'Anna' Machinima Publically Released
TheNomad writes "Made in Fountainhead Entertainment's Quake III-based tool, Machinimation, 'Anna' is a real-time generated machinima showing the story of a single flower's life, from birth to - well, I won't spoil it for you. There's a showcase of the film over at Machinima.com, and they also have a download page, as well as a FilePlanet mirror." We've recently run an interview with Katherine Anna Kang, Fountainhead boss and ex-id software employee, and also discussed the 2003 Machinima Film Festival Awards, in which 'Anna' won several awards.
I'll repost my comments from [H]ard|OCP on the flick.
I'll get accusations of "not getting it" but... I want those 7 minutes and 48 seconds of my life back. The story of a little girl devastating the ecosystem of a forest with a viral plant just isn't for me.
I'll "critique" this on two levels: The story, themes and concept; and the use of the Quake III engine itself. Spoilers ahead!
I get all the artsy "flower must overcome obstacles" theme, but it also shows why computer scientists aren't very good at art... or botany for that matter. From the moment that our flapper '30s girl traipses through the forest, devoid of light or grass, we know something is going to happen. Perhaps it's the goosestepping of her walk or the Roland MT-32 music that clues us in that nothing can be this happy for this long.
Sure enough, just like my five year-old who can trip over an ant, she tumbles to the ground, spilling her six peach-pit sized seeds of radioactivity. The girl cries probably because the radioactivity has stricken her blind because she doesn't pick up her precious seeds despite them glowing brighter than the Las Vegas strip. With the haunting crying of a Disney chipmunk, the scene rotates from above focusing on the now seven seeds on the ground. Fade to black.
Sometime later a maple leaf falls from an elm tree and covers one of the seeds. An albino crow decides to play god and eat six of the seeds. The radioactivity doesn't sit well with the crow, so he doesn't eat the seventh seed under the leaf, despite it's blinding glare. This allows the demon seed to take root and grow despite the lack of sun and water.
Bambi's mom, who didn't die at the hand of the hunter enters the scene. Mom carries the scars of the incident because she walks with tiny baby steps. With a crack of thunder, she steps on the budding weed. Not one to throw in the towel, a rainstorm revives the flower. With a "Feed me Seymour!" battle cry the plant stands upright once more.
Not all is well however. During the night, noxious weeds sprout up choking our hero. As he withers, the weeds taunt him with names, calling him "root" and "stamen". But our little plant has a trick up his sleeve. He sits there and takes it, distracting the weeds from their one true enemy! The sun! Yes, all weeds hate the sun. The weeds all promptly wither from the Vitamin K deathray while our plant soaks it in like a sponge.
With the weeds dispatched and our plant feeling like a hero, he waits until the sun leaves to unfurl his petals in triumph. He's on top of the world. He's conquered all. He's no pansy! Wait... those petals, those colors. Damn it, he is a pansy. He double checks Google Image Search. Yep, he's a pansy. He weaves around in disgust like a drunken sailor. Why me? Why was I born this way?
After a few drunken hours, the pansy suddenly finds himself in the death grip on the little girl. After being stricken with cancer, she came back to the woods to find tree back from yew trees to make Taxol when she stumbled upon the flower. Yanking with all her might, she tears the flower from his roots. Knowing it's just a matter of time now, the flower spews pollen in the futile hope that the girl has allergies. The pollen flows like blood in a Monty Python sketch complete with slow motion. It covers the forest in a Claritin haze that makes the forest ferns want to sneeze.
The pansy ends up in a vase with other flower corpses. With his last dying moments, the flower decides to make his last stand defying gravity by staying upright in the large open mouthed vase and convincing the others not to lose their petals. It's all for naught as they lose their color and end up resembling a Ted Turner colorized black and white movie.
Despite the tragedy, the happy music and scene at the end let us know that the girl only triggered a pansy infestation in the forest. Pansies don't need peach pits to spread! How silly! It only takes a single radioactive pansy to vomit enough pollen to spread in a dense forest. Ful