Category Archives: Art

Machinima Night III program part 2

1 November 2009

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MTV GENERATION

I cannot touch on the topic of Machinima without mentioning the music videos. It’s a storytelling format which the MTV-generation understands so well and they’re able to use their literacy of music videos to create their own. It’s a wonderful way to be a fan of both the games and the music. I have a soft spot for the music Machinima that doesn’t have a glossy feel – but rather amateur love.
I showed two very old music Machinima films. The first one is from a very well known machinima artist, who I’m sure wishes that I showed some of his newer stuff. B. Kiddo has been creating machinima for years and his artful skills in The Sims and Second Life are just awesome. But this Machinima film is one of the first I ever saw. I was so touhed by it. Although it isn’t smoothly made – it’s very emotional. I showed this to a girl friend of mine who thinks I’m totally weird for being interested in this stuff and would rather I focus my attention on finding a man and go shopping – and she welled up. Which of course gave me immense satisfaction!

B. Kiddo – Bitter Sweet

Watch here.

The other music Machinima I played is actually Chinese and made Everquest. I stumbled upon it by chance. It is very simple – but the song is just so catchy I can’t help but love it! I’m told the song was a number one hit in China about 10 years ago (thanks KML) and I can understand why. I find myself humming the song several times a day and I enjoy simplisity of the Machinima film.
Peter Tan – Look Over Here!

Machinima Night III

24 October 2009

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I’ve promised to do a write-up of MachinimaNight III to all who attended – share the links to the films and artists. I’m going to do this back to front and start off at the last part. Mostly this is for Scott and Jill who had to leave early. I appreciate your interest and support! Thanks!

So in the course of the night I had introduced the audience to different genres and types of machinima, mostly concentrating on form and not about the creative communities within machinima making communities.
This is the ingredient of machinima that fascinates me the most and there’s one group that I’ve been paying attention to and just downright adore. So first – let me introduce you to Olibith.

Machinima – fan art?

20 February 2009

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I’ve often thought about machinima as fan art – but I’ve never felt completely comfortable with it. I’ve always felt like machinima in itself – was an artform in it’s own right. But then there are such lucious films like this. Which clearly is fan based, but a voyeuristic delight none the less!

Speaking of fan art – I’ve started a little theory about why we’re not talking enough about this in Norway. We have no word for “fan” – seriously – if you can think of something do tell me – but I don’t think we have a word for ‘fan’. We have supporter – which is generally considered to be football fans. But it’s not even that – a football fan is a supporter, although I’m not sure that a WoW machinimator is a supporter of Blizzard. It’s baffled me for a while now and there’s definitely a cultural significance in being wordless on the subject. It’s interesting – and just a thought to share.

Poster Game

21 September 2008

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Molleindustria has come out with a new game called The Free Culture Game. It’s interesting. I couldn’t win it, but I’m sure that’s the whole point behind it.

The Free Culture Game is a game about the struggle between free culture and copyright. Create and defend the common knowledge from the vectorial class. Liberate the passive consumers from the domain of the market.

Ian Bogost notes Paolo Pedercini as describing this as a ‘poster game’ for Exgae. It’s a great new genre or concept. Lots of the flash games we see can be described as poster games. I’m quite amused by the concept.

Grimm – FINALLY!

28 July 2008

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Don’t miss the first episode of American McGee’s Grimm, which is available for free at Gametap on Thursday, 31st of July.

I’ve been looking forward to this for so long. McGee’s an excellent…ehm…I wanna say interactive storyteller…but…fairytale converter, maybe? It’s too easy to say that he’s a great artist. What can I say? He manages to combine the beauty of great storytelling with the joy of wonderful gameplay mechanics in such a delightful and meaningful way.

The game will be available as episodes. This will be the firt episodic game I’ve played and I’m quite eager to see how well games work as episodes. Although, saying that, I’m still playing Play the News – which I suppose is also a form of episodic gaming.

Continue reading →

Steampunk in Second Life

12 July 2008

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It’s such a long time since I’ve been in Second Life – I haven’t even installed it on my current computer.
Cory Doctorow (@BoingBoing) shares a video of a Steampunk island, called New Babbage and this is reason enough for me to hit the install button right away.

I’m curious, though. The steampunk city is supposed to be “bringing together the combined interests of Steampunks from around the world to a place they can roleplay and be creative” – I get the creative – because I adore steampunk art – but how do they roleplay? What’s steampunk roleplaying? Definitely something to check out – I think!

Norwegian folkdance in AoC

7 April 2008

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Well…I guess there’s just no doubt that Age of Conan is going to be released on schedule – May 20th – because Funcom is sneaking in more and more little peaks to the press. I feel like a day doesn’t pass by without there being something in the news about Age of Conan. Funcom is notorious for being super duper freakishly paranoid secretive, so they wouldn’t start releasing stuff unless they knew they were ready.

The funny thing is that I really thought I was bored with it all now. I was very adamant in my opinion that teasing the fans for sooooooo long would slap them in the face because they would just get bored and annoyed by all the delays. I was wrong.

Just look at this – they’re including Hallingdans. It’s a Norwegian folk dance. I’m so impressed. My overly national romantic heart has officially melted. Video bellow is in Norwegian from Aftenposten.no, where you can distinctly hear that the movement director (?) for Age of Conan, who came up with this great idea, is from my neck of the wood – of course he’s a Bergenser!

I’m excited now. I just might get over the testosterone overload feeling I have against Age of Conan and go out and buy it! I adore details like this!

I wouldn’t have noticed this if it wasn’t for Nina’s twittering, so thanks!

Cory Ondrejka’s fabulous slideshow

26 March 2008

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Cory Ondrejka explains the complexities of Virtual Worlds so wonderfully in this slideshow. It’s selfexplanatory – simple – informative – and extremely tidy.This is the third slideshare I’ve seen today – and they’re all great. I sometimes wonder if I have it in me to focus entirely on someone speaking without a beautiful slideshow. Can I learn without visual stimulation anymore?

The art of McGee

28 December 2007

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American McGee’s in Shanghai developing Grimm with his company, Spicy Horse Games. And lucky for the world I live in, McGee’s a blogger! He was quiet there for a while – but he’s now frequently sharing his brilliant creations with us, his fans. One clue as to why I like McGee’s work is to be found on his ‘about’ page:
His stated mission is

“to create a unified production method for story telling across the interactive and film industries” and of himself, he says, “I want to be the next Walt Disney, only a little more wicked.”

It’s just so gutsy, ballsy and well…I’d say a realistic goal with such a creative mind as his. I like to think of him as one of the best storytellers in game art, so I think he’s well on his way to achieving this status. I’m a big fan, although, I actually haven’t played Bad Day LA yet. Like, Alice – I didn’t think it was quality McGee stuff – but it seems it might just be. OooOOoo – looking forward to having my account filled up again after a really expensive Christmas!