Second lives, dingy flats and the little baby Jesus

Just before Xmas, I made a nativity film for Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham. I've been making little Xmas projects for them for a few years now, it's like a self imposed commissioning project, and sometimes I fear that I'll turn into some kind of weird Xmas guy who celebrates Xmas every day for no reward apart from some kind of 'and finally' segment on the local news.

I really wanted to make a straightforward nativity, like an infant school one, but with cute Playmobil style characters. I really wanted to make it as un-dark as possible - I think it's easy to get on the case of Xmas, and be cynical about how it's all just commercial, and start going on about how we all forget the true meaning of Xmas (I'm not even sure there is a true meaning), but I do feel it's a magical time, regardless of whether I celebrate it in a secular way or not. I think the nativity and the Christian message is just a part of it. While I was making it, I got in contact with Gaia and Luna, two kids from Italy who make music with their dad. We'd used a track of theirs for our student showreel at work, and I wanted to put it on the net, so I wrote to them to ask if we could, and having watched the showreel, they asked if we'd be interested in working on something for their upcoming Xmas single. I suggesed the nativity and sent them some screenshots, and they agreed, which was brilliant, as it gave me something to cut to, and the film a life beyond the single venue it was made for. I think it also helped me to fix the tone of the film, in that it was a hope filled child's pop song which perfectly suited the feel of the film. You can have a look if you like;



A few years ago I got a Playmobil nativity set, and used it in a stop motion workshop at Uni, and since then, the idea of creating the piece has picked away at the back of my mind. I've also been learning Maya, and thought this film would be a good way to try to bring some of those things together. The title 'Vertep' is a Russian/Ukranian word which means a puppet theatre which depicts the nativity.

At the time, I had started making another film with Andy at work, but had to shelve it while I made this one. We've started again on it, and I'm kind of glad it got put back because I learned a hell of a lot on the Vertep project, and I think this new film will be all the better for it. We've spent a lot of time discussing the look of the sets and interiors in the film, and becoming fixated on nasty bus-stops, mini busses and the hallways of dingy multi-occupancy flats, bringing back grim memories of student flats and the piss-stinking bus shelters and soul sucking urban design of 80s/90's Coventry and Preston. Happy days!

Here's some pics of work in progress;







Last term, I taught on a Virtual Performance module with MA English and Drama, and as well as focussing on softwares like Maya, Motion Capture and Motion Builder, I spent quite a lot of time with them in Second Life. I hadn't been into SL for some time, but was keen to work with them in there, as I think it speaks inherently to performance in terms of liveness and presence, and I was keen to look at ideas around actors/performers as avatar, the first/third person performer, and to play around with the idea of site specific online performance, and the idea (to mis-quote Sue Thomas) that 'fiction is rendered impotent in a space which is essentially made up anyway'. It was a successful term I think, leading to a potential new collaboration between School of Art and Design, English and Drama and Engineering which will enable us to buy an island and develop longer projects in there.

In looking around, I've been excited to see the growth in education-based projects in-world, and I'm excited by the increasing links between SL and Web 2.0 technologies. I'm keen that once we buy the island, the students who use the space will document their adventures in world, and perhaps begin to develop new creative projects which link together the web, Second Life and 'real life'...

Back to the drawing board...

Christ, that was a bad pun, sorry about that.

Well. It's over. We had the opening of the MA exposition last night, which seemed to go well, then our group went and got nicely drunk! It was really nice to see everyone, especially as it doesn't happen that often, and nice to see everyone relaxed and having a laugh...

So now, it's on to new things... I'm hoping to carry Digital Me on, and write some more articles and do more interviews. It's really made me enthusiastic about the web again, and about understanding how it works, not technically, but as a network and all the things that might include...

Anyway, the next thing is a new comic! I haven't made a comic in years, not since 1994 when I made Eek! Comic, spending my dole money on photocopying and graphics pens. The idea for a new comic started when i did some illustrations for Plug Magazine, and they spoke about giving me a page a month to develop a strip. I spoke about it with Steve and Chris, and asked them if they wanted to do some writing, so we're meeting next week to start to put some ideas down. I really like the idea of using the tracing drawings I made from Second Life, so I'm going to use Second Life as a photographers studio, and set up shots in there. Good ol' Second Life!

I'm really glad to be getting back to comics, I love 'em! Every time I move house, I rediscover my collection of favourite comics and they always get a re-read. Recently, I re-read three books from Love and Rockets, Jaime stories mainly, set in a fictional hispanic area of LA. They are amazing, and the drawing is so beautiful. Jaime's characters are so beautifully realised, but so comic-y and graphic at the same time. When I first read them, they were a real relief from the emerging 'serious' comics scene. At the time, Superheroes were getting the - ooh, but aren't they a bit dark treatment, which has become the standard for nearly all comic characters since. That's not to say that stuff like Watchmen and Dark Knight aren't brilliant, it's just that they provided a template for a lot of much worse comics to follow! Love and Rockets though, had an amazing mix of comedy, wrestling, old-style superheroes, punk rockers all brilliantly realised in a believable if occasionally surreal world. They were also comics with really strong female characters, something all but non-existent in the other comics I was reading, especially Gilbert's Love and Rockets strips, which are beautiful. Of course I know that that's a huge generalisation, there have always been strong female characters in comics, but I suspect not so many you wished were your mates. They had a massive influence on me when I was younger, and having re-read them, I realise they still have an intense power. I can just look at the pages for hours. This one pic doesn't begin to do it justice, but you can see how great the drawing is;

I can't wait to get started on this new comic, I think I'm going to head home and get doodling right now!

Digital Me!

For the final part of my MA, I'm making a project called Digital Me. I'm going to be interviewing people in Second Life, so I thought I'd need a suitable avatar. Following in the footsteps of Jeremy Paxman, who presented newsnight from Second Life a while ago, I created this little feller!

Yeh, ok, it's a little less bashed about than real life me, but I don't care, that's what avatars are for!

Plug Magazine

A Good Day!

Just made these for Plug Magazine Student Special...

Plus, I got my new job today at Loughborough University!

Plus... Machinima Island Trailer is nominated for Best Visual Design at the Machinima Film Festival!

Plus, Angels is going to be screened at the Avalon Film Festival in Second Life! I'm going to make a new avatar like Spook, one of the character in the film!

If only Karen MacDonald was back in Corro, it would be a perfect day!

Bullet Train

I've decided to escape to the North for a few days to get the bones of my web-essay written.

I've had a load of responses from people to get involved, and I'm going to do one of the interviews in Second Life and video it!

Ricard made a trailer for Machinima-Island the other day, and it'll be available to view just as soon as the guy who's making his site publishes it - watch out for the new link down the side next week!

I nipped into Second Life today, to see if Cory Edo (who I'll be interviewing) was about. She wasn't, so I decided to take a trip on the mini bullet train in Nakama, a Japanese themed sim.

Also, we (me n Ricard) discovered a slow motion animation setting in Second Life the other day, which give more frames per movement, so you get better walk-cycles etc., which will be great for the tracing project!

Do Avatars dream of Crocheted Sheep?

I just made this image for the MA booklet. I've decided that instead of a paper dissertation, I'm going to make a website about the internet and creative process and practice on the web. It seems to make more sense to use the web to write about the web.

I'm going to include skype chats, podcasts and second life in world meetings with other web users, to find out how the web has developed and perhaps changed the way they approach their work and even the work they make. - It will be at www.digital-me.co.uk, which I'm about to register today, and I'll post the link down the side when it's available to view (or try this one).

If you're interested in being interviewed, or contributing comments to the new site, let me know, and I'll set you an account up.

The other elements of the MA are a study of my shop, and animation processes using Second Life as a live space. Yesterday, me and Andy captured some Second Life footage of my latest avatar (above) moving around, which I'm going to trace over like I have been doing with these pics.

More tracing paper pictures, played with a bit in Flash;

Tracing Paper

Hmmmm... I'm glad now that I didn't go for that September deadline for Pictoplasma - Mainly because I stumbled on this!

It hit me yesterday, while we were playing on MAYA toon settings (a set of lines and fills that give a cell-rendered effect in 3-d modelling), that what I actually wanted was a scruffy pen line, so that the characters look like doodles.

The idea is to capture footage from Second Life, then redraw over the frames on animation paper and scan them back in. It sounds long winded, but I really like the drawn look - I like it when pens don't always give an even flow of ink, so you end up with scratchy lines, then sudden bursts of ink.

So, last night, I printed out a few of the Machinima images I've posted previously, and traced over them. I really like the effect. In a nostalgia note -when I was little, my mum used to dry out the bits of greaseproof paper you get between frozen slices of meat, and give them to me and my brother to use as tracing paper. "I'm not saying we were poor" (Les Dawson voice goes here). It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

Then again, I am a vegetarian now, so maybe it was!

Next week, I'll post a short animated sequence to test it out. Let me know what you think!

Spooky Second Life Ghost Picture

More messing about with image editing from second life screen grabs...

Ok, I realise it's all just lame filter nonsense, but it's quite nice all the same I reckon, and done in a rush.

Second Life on Channel 4

A couple of weeks ago, Channel 4 showed a series on short films about Second Life and the people who live there(?). Check them out here... If you haven't been into Second Life before, it's quite a good introduction to the whole thing - with links to good places to visit. If you join Second Life, let me know, and I'll give you a tour of the set of Ricard's film.

I've read a lot of articles about Second Life lately, and I'm still unsure as to how good it is. Actually, it obviously is good, maybe I've just got a problem with the amount of time people seem to spend in there, aimlessly swapping dance animations and virtual hair. I know that's not representative of the whole space or community, but there is a load of that. It's summer - get out and play! (Yikes, I have finally become my parents)

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/S/second_lives

Today in Second Life...

Hooray! We are finally working with the characters to create Episode 1! Ricard has bought Comic Life, which adds speech bubbles to video and images.

I'm not sure how it'll work, as I think comic art is a personal thing - ie, You can tell an artist or writer by the style of the bubbles, lettering etc., it's as much a part of the creation and aesthetic as everything else.

So to have clip-art style bubbles and lettering seems to de-personalise it. But maybe not, we're playing with it now and we'll see how it goes.

We've achieved really nice capture from second life, which produced a really strong image with good colours - we hoped for High-definition capture originally, but couldn't get it, but I think it'll be ok as DV.












I took these screen grabs today, trying to look at how we might grade the final footage - i think the sepia with a bit of blur might work - makes it look less like a computer game, and more like something Smallfilms might have made with some ping-pong balls and a bit of felt!

Oops

Hi. Sorry for not posting for a while - It's been a really busy time. I've decided not to aim to complete 'The Trouble with Flying' before September 1st, as I don't think it's anywhere near formed enough. I'm a bit embarrassed that I said that's what I'd do, as time was clearly against me, and what with holidays, wedding season and the Eye Candy event, it just proved impossible - the major factor is that the computer I have in the shop (the one I'm writing on) is rubbish, and the thought of trying to run Second Life (let alone edit) on it is enough to make it weep.

Anyhow, my holiday in Abersoch was great - I've been going there since I was a kid, and I still love it as a grown-up. One day I'd love to go and live there, but since it's turned into holiday homeland for the Cheshire set, I'd need at least a quarter of a million pounds just to get a bedsit over the corner shop! Not a joke, I'm sad to say. We have a caravan which has been on the same site for nearly 40 years now, and that's about as close as I can get. Matt gave me his old mobile the other week which has a camera with a panorama feature on it, and I took loads of pics, which I'll post soon. I went there with Alan (my friend from since I was about 16), and his wife Emma - they're about to have a baby. Alan was excited about showing me a scan of the baby. Normally, at this point, you have to grit your teeth and feign interest as they show you a smudge which you can't make sense of, but this scan was spectacular - it was like a baby made in MAYA, really detailed and everything. One day, you will be able to design your child in MAYA and get it printed out in Rapid Prototyping. Mine would look like Pocoyo. Probably.

Anyway, back to cartoons. Ricard is back from his trip, and we are about to make episode 1 of the story - to be honest, I've been waiting ages to get onto it, but Ricard has been really busy - the plan is to get it into the Machinima Film Festival in New York in November. Of course, I expect Ricard to be furnishing me with a first class ticket to attend.

Back soon with a proper post, including Love and Rockets, Peanuts, and Why I'm sorely tempted to go and work with Monkeys - in the meantime, why not read this

More snow!

Here's some video capture from Second Life showing the snow and the head design for the main character. (You'll need Flash 8 to view it)

Snow!

I found this great snow in Second Life for the opening of the The Trouble with Flying!

The Trouble with Flying

I went home from the shop last night excited by the prospect of this quick Machinima project (see previous post). I've decided to call it 'The Trouble with Flying' - I think that's a nice title, and similar in tone to 'The Truth about Cats and Dogs' and 'Because of Winn Dixie' - both of which I haven't seen but I think the titles are sweet.

Nothing is formed yet, but here's a list of ideas that popped into my head, some of which will naturally be dumped as time goes by. These are in random order, just as thought about and jotted down.

• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster.
• Is it too much like Ricard's project?
• Picaresque - I love that word! It should be episodic - the episodes ultimately more important than the framing story.
• How do I make snow in Second Life?
• How much to put in trailer? - Needs to tell a story in itself.
• Some ideas; Girl meets Oracle at bus stop - is given power to fly - Monster is called Pinky, and tells the girl the future, between munching on buildings - Maybe Spook from Angels is in it, as a ghost.
• Maybe at the end of the trailer, it flicks to game controls on the screen (life meter etc.), like you've just watched the opening video on a computer game. Maybe that is just wrong.

I'm also excited (I never thought I'd say this) by an essay I am writing about the web and its effect on practice and process - it's for my MA. Initially it was basically an overview of tools and how to use them, but after talking to Frank (my MA tutor, not the scary rabbit from Donnie Darko or the drugs advisory service), I think there's a bigger essay in there. Why do these things always have to happen when all I want to do is go paddling and eat choc-ice?

By the way, me and Nicola are organising this; Come along if you can! (You may recognise the character from earlier posts!

Lovely Day Out!

Don't put your avatar on the stage, Mrs. Worthington

I was in Second Life yesterday, tidying up the final bits on the avatars so Ricard can start filming, and started thinking about the whole game/animation/art/performance sphere that I've touched on briefly before.

Ok, so what's happening in second life is this - I've created costumes that the avatars (actors) wear. Then the puppeteers (players) control the actors who play the characters. That's quite a few layers - like playing a superhero; Christopher Reeve plays Kal El plays Clark Kent plays Superman.

It feels like a stage/game space. I am in a game, building objects. - However, I'm not building objects like i would in, say, Maya - I'm standing there (- or at least my avatar is) physically building objects, and adding textures and moving them around. Once I've made these objects, they exist and mimic the real world, but they are toys - props. That is, if I build a car in Second Life, it is only pretend - I don't need the car to get around, I can fly and teleport, so it's just a nice made up thing.

When I was at 'May You Live in Interesting Times' in Cardiff last October, the group I was with were talking about the difference between gaming/performance and art. Blast Theory were at the festival presenting Can You See Me Now, a performance game that exists both in the real world and virtually. It's a kind of 'tig' game, with players on the streets and online occupying the city and a 3-d representation of the city respectively. If you compare it to, for example, a Zelda game, there is a subtle difference. In Can You See Me Now, you play as yourself, and your tactical and even moral choices within the game are yours. If you play Zelda, you are a player 'playing' Link, in Link's world, with Link's concerns and character traits.

Second Life strikes a strange space in-between. In the world, I can have a Virtual Cardiff if I want, and an almost completely open ended experience. I can't however play as myself. That is, I can't go in as Gareth Howell, there are a set of predefined names I must use. To my constant regret and embarrasment, I am now Gareth Shatner in Second Life. Then there is the generic avatar, which looks nothing like me, which is probably a good thing! - And if I change my hair, jacket, bum and belly size or whatever in SL, it's unlikely I'm going to choose my standard issue George @ ASDA jeans, so I become a character. Like if I'm in a game. Or a play.

So then, if I'm in the game, as a character, then make that character dress up and act as another character, we're back to the Superman analogy. In Machinima, we're making characters who serve a narrative, and have motivations, gestures and 'voice' which are not me (as the player).
However, I guess Gareth Shatner is me. Or is he? I'd never dream of saying 'LOL' to anyone, or breakdancing at a meeting, and try as I might, I can't fly. Gareth Shatner can. And he can build things, and he can lose 10lbs just by dragging a slider. And he's an actor. In Machinima films. I hate him!

So where do I sit in this? I'm not the director, 'cos I can only control Shatner, not the rest of the cast. I've decided that in Second Life, I'm like Jiminy Crickett, or the Numskulls. And the monitor in my office is actually inside Shatner's head, just behind the eyes. That makes me feel good, because I was getting all confused!

Remember the Golem I was on about? Here's the doodle of him and the magician that sprang my insomnia last week.

Here's him a bit nicer...












And here's him cynically reworked to cash in on another card frenzy invented by Clinton's.













The other night when I was walking home (and not even drunk!), I found myself trying to walk like him, practising for the day I don the ultra-lycra Motion Capture suit. I really do wish I could lose 10lbs by dragging a slider!

Getting to know you...

Sometimes, it's a bit difficult to talk about the work I'm making, cos I don't want to spill every bean, sometimes I'm sworn to secrecy, and sometimes I don't know how to fully articulate where I'm going or how I'm arriving at the results I'm arriving at.

However, I'm currently working on some new characters for a range of projects, and have been thinking about that quite a lot.

I read an interview with Jon Burgerman the other week (who did a great talk at our latest 'Loving your Work' event at Eye Candy), and he talked about how a doodle can sometimes take a long time just to get right. It's easy to think that a doodle is a doodle, and the time it takes to come out of the pen is the entire time of the process attached to it. But in a way, it's like casting/acting and wardrobe all at the same time - it takes a while to find the character you want. It's a bit like that thing where hammy old actors talk about how they 'always start with the shoes, darling' - I kind of always start with the heads. I guess it's then that you can see the person you are trying to bring to life. My heads are always really simple - kind of playmobil style spheres in a way with contour lines on them. I like the simplicity of it, and the kind of deadpan expression. - It's oddly naturalistic, in that animation characters are so often exaggerated to express a stereotype, but these simple heads are more like real life because most people spend most of their time with their faces fairly straight. The deadpan face somehow allows you to look deeper to understand the character.

I read so many animation and cartooning books that say things like - a posh lady walks like this, a fat man is this kind of character etc., and it drives me mad. Animation so rarely gets beyond first impressions. - So, if you strip the face of all the cliches, potentially you can give more depth. I hope so!

For the Second Life project, I was working to a brief, and had to 'characterise' to personality types. It was a fight to get across the need not to give the whole character away from first impressions, but Ricard had seen the characters from 'Angels', so we were able to reach a point where the characters were enough 'mine' and enough 'his' to work well.

I'm currently working with another film-maker, Mark Devenport, to develop a new cartoon, set in a primary school, a kind of Peanuts meets Bash Street Kids, by way of Last of the Summer Wine, and last night I started some character design for a new short called 'In Spite of all the Damage I've Done', which is a really simple story, a kind of sequel (I think) to Angels, based around a Be Good Tanyas track.

The most exciting new project though, may be a new fictional blog I'm working on. I was trying to find a way to loosen up the whole animation process, which is in a way linked to my thoughts about live art and spontaneous animation. The idea is to be able to develop characters and stories 'live', through creating a blog by a fictional character, who just happens to be a cartoon.

The blog allows for slower development of character, from 'Hi, Welcome to my Blog' to 'Yesterday, my heart got broke', and allows me to sneak in narrative ideas that can be developed, or abandoned as I work out what works. I don't know what the blog will lead to, whether I'll pull strands out to turn into scripts, or whether I'll just let it go where it wants to go for it's own sake. The idea is to give me a space to work through animation and illustration ideas, and post them within a context. -I've written a few pieces to start the story, and I'll post the URL when it's set up.

Oh, yes - last night I accidentally came up with a new idea for a short, I can't tell you much about it for now, but it involves a Golem. - I was doodling and one of my standard monster characters came out (I generally ignore the standard monster character, it's like my phone doodle), but this time I thought it looked really nice, especially when I drew a Victorian magician next to it, which looked a bit like the Pringles man. From then, it was a simple case of a bit of common insomnia, and the seed of a new film was sown.

In real life...
I moved house last week; cheated by watching sneak preview Lost while babysitting (therefore destroying tonight's TV); and as you know, went to see Douglas Coupland, which was good, but ruined by a rubbish interviewer, who didn't even touch on the big themes of Coup Land. Oh, and Be Good Tanyas announced their new album! - It's been a long wait, nearly as long as the wait for the Breeders 3rd album.

Picture Day!

I've got quite a few new pics to show of Second Life avatars. All the characters are nearly finished and ready to go.

Sara and Makiao have been scripting a system which allows our machinima 'actors' to change expressions instantly. I supplied them with a range of faces - simple expression things, which are mapped onto an invisible obje ct which sits over the centre of the face - here's the pics, with notes...

This first one is us meeting in world to look at the face mapping system. Sara is dressed in her punker/skater-girl outfit, I am dressed in my usually big-girls blouse dolly attire - I really need to get something more macho, I'm beginning to feel like a virtual Grayson Perry - and Ricard is, for some reason, dressed as a large coke with bendy straw.

More pics...




















Meet the family...



Here's the characters, all ready for their face mapping. This image doesn't really do them justice, cos it's from a fairly rubbish computer, so Nana's glasses for example render as hexagons instead of circles. But still you can see how it's progresses - It's a pity the Sabina character is hidden behind nana and grandad, next time I'll make individual portraits. What's really made my day with this project is how easily my 2-d character designs became 3-d - the translation is great, which i didn't think it would be. It's actually made my drawing better too, because working on building objects from really simple shapes makes you revisit drawing 101 about structure and proportion.

And in Real Life News....
In my profile bit right at the beginning, I mentioned I shared a shop with a friend. It's called Eye Candy and it sells all sorts of sweet arty stuff. We launched an online shop at the start of May, which coincided with SideShow, a kind of fringey add on to the British Art Show. Active Ingredient, the company I used to work with (one day, when drunk, I will type in a long post about what exactly I mean by 'used to work with'...-that's not a promise, more a fear...), set up an online streaming project called MAKE TV. Me and Nicola (who I share the shop with) decided to do a weekly QVC-style shopping channel, desperately selling our wares. Last night was the final one, and we decided to stage a row on air. There'd been an article in the Guardian on Saturday about TV channels that no-one watches, so we wanted to spoof that... I'm archiving the webcasts at the moment, and will link to them soon. It was a really good laugh, and we hopefully got more people watching than the folks in the paper. On Saturday, I went over to Steven and Jeanie's to play banjo and watch TV, and we watched some of the worst telly on earth. - You become hypnotised by the desperation of some poor media graduate sat for four hours trying to get drunks to ring in to answer some riddle so cryptic, I'm sure Dan Brown is penning some shit best-seller about it now, or at least getting his wife to. It's like working in a call centre, except no-one's calling in. I worked in a call centre, which is another long post to come, and it was desperate - trying to sell bad software to people who either had better stuff, or didn't want it/know what it was, or own a computer...

Anyway, I'll post a link to the archives soon, in the meantime, here's Jeanie and Steve's daughter Betsy watching us online...

Messing with my Head

Here's those pictures I promised of me and Sara and Makiao working in Second Life... We're trying to work out how to apply seperate textures for different parts of the face. I've made vector file images of all the faces in 6 different expressions and we'll use a script to call the correct one when we need to. Even in Second Life, I feel like a bit of a goon dressed in my big dolly outfit while the others flounce about in their cool club gear!





In the bottom picture, you can see a purple disc - this is a posing stand, so you can build directly onto your avatar. It makes life a lot easier. If you don't use it, your character reacts to mouse moves as if it would in game, so dressing it is a bit like trying to put socks on a dog!

Machinimation

Had another meeting in Second Life with Sara/Cory the other day and a guy called Makiao (his second life name), who is a wiz with all the scripting and more advanced stuff. I've got some great pictures which I'll post soon - they're on another computer.

As I said in a previous post, I'm thinking of doing some machinima of my own once Ricard's project is finished - I can't wait to be able to tell you more about it, but it's all under wraps currently until it's launched. We had a discussion the other day about second life/machinima as a film set, and it's quite interesting from an animation point of view. Because it's real time, you are able to shoot/reshoot/set up/try different things on stage. - With animation, you painstakingly work out exactly each shot and make it just like that, there's really not much room for the happy accident. I realise I'm generalising here, but I'm thinking of my own experiences as an animator.

I've been thinking a lot about how to use actors in animation, to pull out the nuances of how an actor not only speaks, but moves and emotes - I'd like to look at devising with actors to make cartoons. I find scriptwriting quite difficult in isolation - well, not difficult as such, but it's not so lively. In live action, there is a long tradition of improvisation being used to block scenes and pull out new ideas - Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke recently spent two weeks workshopping with actors to tighten up a script for Chris' road movie. As well as getting some top celeb gossip (I'm not sure if I can write about it - I'll ask Chris how much trouble it will cause!), they got some good stuff.

When I was at University, doing lots of live art/performance work, I found devising with a group to be a really good way of building a project, and exciting because it doesn't always work, and requires really hard thinking and listening/responding. In thinking about ways to devise for animation, the live art approach started to reappear - I think because Live Art and animation share some common points - and some extremely differing ones -

Why Cartoons and Live Art are similar:
Character/Performer as Statement.
Play with narrative/timeline.
Play with continuity.
Non-naturalistic staging.

Why they're not:
Anything can happen in either. - Except in animation, you've already thought of that ages ago.

I really like the idea of the spontaneous gesture in animation, or something that gets to the honesty of the actor/character - possibly subconciously, most likely accidentally.

I realise that's a really short and probably not informative description of the idea, but I'm writing about it for my MA and will post a full version soon.

Anyway, maybe machinima is a way to do it - It's live, it's got real time cameras, shots can be set up again and again, and I get to say 'Can we try that again, this time with feeling' - I'm going to build an avatar that looks like one of those old style movie directors with plus 4's, a beret and a monocle! i've got a few ideas for films floating around at the moment, and after i've finished ricard's film, i think i'm gonna have a go. I've built a whole wardrobe of nice outfits, and hopefully with some linden scripting skills i'll be able to make some good stuff. i can see that although second life is fairly limited at the moment, as in we are still a long way off from pixar or peter jackson style cgi, it will only get better - and films will get much more sophisticated. How long till we see the first game engine made cinema release or telly programme? - I'm sure it won't be too long, or even with us already, and I've just not seen it.

Some trivia: currently listening to Old Crow Medicine Show, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, and Be Good Tanyas (always listening to the Be Good Tanyas)

Settling in to second life

Hi - Not much time to write, but here's a couple of sketches from the character developments for Ricard's Machinima project.

Have been thinkng myself about making some Machinima experiments using my characters.

I've been thinking about using it as a way to make mock-ups for more traditionally animated films, a quick and dirty way to block moves and shots.

I realise that's not a purist attitude to machinima, but I'm not sure how an audience would engage with a longer, more heavily narrative piece than most of the things I've seen from Machinima.

Ricard's project will be a good testing ground. - The website for it will be up soon and you will be able to see the work online.