I’ve been frustrated with not being able to get a project together to direct this year, and have a couple unproduced short scripts sitting around that I kind of like.
I’m considering getting into machinima to animate my films, using software like Moviestorm or iClone. Have you ever considered using machinima as a method of telling stories? I wonder what would happen if an awesome writer got involved in a burgeoning storytelling medium like machinima.
— John
San Diego
Machinima — using videogame engines to create animation — sits smack in the middle of a very geeky Venn diagram. It’s easy to do, but tricky to do well. It’s extremely limited and wildly liberating. And it hasn’t broken out of its niche yet.
So do it. Full speed ahead. But don’t do it because it’s simple. Do it because you want to make something cool.
In considering which projects to do, I’d urge you to think along two axes:
Suitability for machinima. On one extreme, you have Red vs. Blue, which uses Halo to make a comedy about characters in Halo. On the other extreme, projects that seem particularly ill-suited for machinima — say, Hamlet — might be especially awesome simply for their outside-the-boxness.
Production values. Do you want it to look amazing, rivaling something Pixar could make? Or should it be endearingly crappy? Consider a machinima version of Clerks. Just as that movie wouldn’t have worked if it were shot in IMAX, your little project might benefit from some rough pixels.
Readers, feel free to link your favorite machinima examples.