Volavola Scene 61 on NPIRL and NWN, and some more about the toon effect

So far the reactions to the scene of Volavola we posted are pretty good!

Bettina Tizzy posted it on Not Possible IRL, one of my favorite blogs.
Hamlet Au posted it on New World Notes, elaborating a little on how we distinguish between what happens in Second Life, and what happens in Real Life, as all the footage was shot in Second Life.
Our solution, to apply a toon effect on the second Second Life footage seems to be received well by the Second Life community.
I agree with Gwyneth Llewelyn, who said "..it doesn't look like SL, but just as an incredibly detailed cartoon! If this catches on, the Japanese studios that spew out a cartoon per week for their so many huge series will start doing it all inside SL... :)".
Rendering this effect is far from RealTime though (about 3 seconds per frame), so maybe not so appropriate for that weekly tv show.

I'm also experimenting with this kind of effect for Woody, to emphasize the "comic" style of Ookoi.
It also has the advantage of not really needing all that detailed shapes and textures in Second Life during shooting.
I guess a "pure machinimatographer" would want to stay away from too much post processing work, but in my opinion it's best to just use the tools appropriate for the result you want to achieve.

Finishing Volavola !

Almost done postprocessing Volavola!

Here is a preview.



In this scene Sofia (puppeteered by Honey Fairweather, voice by Sofia Vigliar) and Matteo (puppeteered by Blued Food, voice by Flavio Aquilone) meet eachother in Second Life and visit the virtual gallery of Gazira Babeli.

The music is original for the movie and done by Andrea Gabriele. It's an adaption of a folk song from Abruzzo called Vola Vola.

Because this machinima version of VolaVola is entirely filmed in Second Life we needed to make clear what happens in Second Life and what happens in Real Life. For this pupose we applied a toon effect on the Second Life scenes.
In the Real Life version of the movie the original footage will be used.

Storyboarding HoT

From HoT

I'm currently working on the storyboard of another video I'm doing with Avatar Orchestra Metaverse. The composition is by Pauline Oliveros and called Heart of Tones.
It will be a music video of around 20 minutes, and I'm very excited about it :-)

Shooting Woody

From ookoi

Last thursday we've been filming for "Woody", a videoclip for the next hit by the sound duo Ookoi. The setting for the clip is the beautiful atmospheric virtual version of the dutch island Ameland in Second Life, hosted by Archipel MediaLab.

4Jetpacks4 at NPIRL

Alpha Auer wrote a very good article about 4Jetpacks4 and the importance of storytelling to 'get immersed' or 'attain presence'.

Attaining presence: 4Jetpacks4 and Bryn Oh

Machinima Vérité

Wagner James Au aka Hamlet Au interviewed me about the making of the 4Jetpacks4 video and posted it on New World Notes.
Since he was on the original tour, and starring in the video, I'm very happy he likes the result! "As an involuntary actor in the machinima, I'm slightly biased, but I think her final product is spectacular and unique, BioShock meets Fritz Lang." he says.. wow!!!
(For the record, I usually don't sneak up on people, and was actually asked to film)

4Jetpacks4

Just finished the video documentation of 4Jetpacks4, an interactive story telling performance lead by Bryn Oh.

In this performance a group of avatars was brought on a tour of a research facility. An unfortunate event results in the arrival of a tornado. The group must flee back to retrieve a jetpack in order to escape.

The video shows beautiful art by Bryn Oh, Glyph Graves and Nonnatus Korhonen, who also play the scientists. It also features a most amazing tornado by Tryptofaa Sands. The visitors are SLebrities Alpha Auer, Bettina Tizzy, Chimera Cosmos, Hamlet Au, Larry Pixel, Max Newbold and Tayzia Abattoir.

The piece was performed at the Caerleon Sim in Second Life, and curated by Georg Janick, for the Virtual Art Initiative, and the video will be exhibited in the will in the Harbor Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in April 2010.

More info at the Creative Machinery website.