Yeah, it’s been busy lately for me.   I’m nearing completion of my Bachelor degree in Entertainment Business, getting ready to move out, doing freelance web design/graphic design to help pay the bills, etc.

But I’ve got a list of everything going on still and I’m working to make sure I get most of the items done:

• Zombie Survival map, which is nearly done
• GLaDOS video (yeah, that one I tried finishing before the Ivy Film Festival deadline)
• Nsync - Pop (Laugh all you want, but Mystfit and I are EXTREMELY excited about doing a music video for it)
• Plumb - Damaged (I’m really trying to push realistic lip synching with this one)

Solace of course is always in the works, and it’s been a slow but steady climb.  I already have my next big movie planned right after I release this one.

I apologize if it seems like it’s been dead around here, because it really has.  I’ve been busy trying to wrap up school and a lot of others are enjoying their summer breaks.  But for those still going with machinima, we always have our handy Source Machinima Database if you ever get stuck or need a cool new idea.

Melodyne is a pain to get working with Windows.

I’m remixing The Leet World’s theme for the competition; should be fun.

Just finished a super  cheesy airport song for Matt’s spaceport whatever map haha.

http://www.hailaeros.com/miscfiles/cheese.mp3

Finally there is a central resource for Source machinima.

http://www.sourcefilms.org

This site is a combined collaborative effort to bring together the current knowledge of everything Source machinima related and organize it into a clean and easy to grasp layout for those both just getting started and veterans of their craft. This project provides you with a wiki full of machinima related information, as well as tutorials and helpful advice on getting started and improving your work. You may also contribute by adding articles for subjects that you are well-versed in and by revising existing pages. We made this site with the ambitious and creative machinima film maker in mind, who wants to gain more technical knowledge in the field of movie-making as a whole process as well as the smaller more specific ones.

As you will notice, this is a Wiki website, and anyone who registers has the ability to add articles and information, as well as update current existing ones. We want the machinima community to grow so badly, especially the Source community, since there are just so many possibilities for movies. We believe that machinima is a viable entertainment outlet and also an outlet of art and emotion, and we want every curious film-maker to be empowered with the knowledge that’s shared on this site, from person to person.

Contributors include:
Members from Atomic Spark Films (Chris, Ross)
Blood Love
DinCahill
Hat
Jon93
Katana
Lord Ned
Mystfit
Pwnocchio
Saxywolf
SystematikGS
Wade Mealing
Xanatos

Without you guys, this project would be nothing. We hope that more people sign up and contribute as much as they can to a growing need for knowledge and understanding.

And of course, we cannot thank the community enough, for having such a drive for creativity and curiosity.

Whoops we missed. Pulled it too close, and failed. We know the motto, “if at first you don’t suceed, you fail.”

We’ll have it out in the next week our two, with custom soundtrack included. Sorry guys.

Not that anyone is out there…

I’ve announced that me and Matt are entering into the Ivy Film Festival Machinima contest, finally releasing a true movie for the first time.  It’s about a probe that makes his way through an unknown planet’s cave tunnels and discovers something amazing.

A son comes home to his family…to an unexpected shock.
Drama ensues…
then complete confusion.

Solace set design begins today!

Best of luck and wishes to you all for 2008! It’s going to be an exciting year, lots and lots of things to get accomplished.

Matt and I are looking into pricing options for render farms, specifically for After Effects. He also has found a way to utilize render farms for compiling maps in Hammer, and you can add worker nodes over the Internet too. Sweeeeet.

A new version of Intel’s Yorkfield quad-core processors are coming out in January: 1/3rd the price of the current models, which go for about $1,000 on Newegg.com right now, and 45nm technology so they cool easier. I’m excited

I’m going to start on a Demo Smoother video tutorial for those of you still wanting to learn the awesome art of camera smoothing in Source. It’s an amazing tool that should be used far more often. Matt’s getting deeper and deeper into character rigging and modeling, which is good because right now that isn’t my area of expertise and it’s baffling me beyond all reason. Oh well.  In the next few months I’m going to focus on bringing together the machinima community and changing this site into a database for Source-based machinima resources.  It’d be kind of like machinima.com, but more educational and further directed towards the Source community.

Best of luck to us all for this new year, I’m so excited!

Hat was cool enough to set us up a group on Steam, so join up! We can set up chat-rooms, play games together, etc.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/solace

Been working around, going around in circles on Render Farms and VMPI (Render farm for hammer more or less), had a nice breakthrough with character rigging, so that will save me a ton of time. Not much new on the machinima circle as far as valve’s concerned. No update on any of the Machinima tools, or particle editor that valve promised us.

Eh, see you guys around, and hope you got what you wanted for x-mas.