Hello friends, dudes and trolls. I thought I would give an update about the status of Season 2 of Web Zeroes. Last we spoke, I said we didn’t have an official release date nailed down yet, but we finally locked it up. The Season 2 premiere is going to release on Wednesday, March 24th. We’re pretty excited about this, and we hope you guys are, too.

There will be a brief hiatus on production as we go out of town this weekend to hang out in Austin for South By Southwest. We’ll be attending the live DiggNation filming on Saturday night at Stubb’s, so if any of you guys live in Austin, are of age and want to drop by, please do.

In other news, I saw this pretty slick Modern Warfare 2 machinima, created by YouTube user Michael Barnes. He’s done some Call of Duty 4 stuff as well as GTA 4 stuff, so I’d definitely recommend checking out the rest of his work as well. Anywho, give it a watch.

I know I said I’d update more, but my life is a bit of a mess right now, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. Between work, writing for Web Zeroes, writing for GamerSushi, a powerful need to play Mass effect 2, doing some more personal writing, and my obsession with Lost’s final season, I’ve been a tad MIA lately.

However, the good news is that we started filming Season 2 of Web Zeroes last weekend, and so far, so good. I even brought some screenshots to prove it. I’m loving the look of the new footage we’ve shot on Daniel’s sexy new Canon 7D. It’s a great camera. Take a look and see for yourself.

We’re going to start on Episode 2 this weekend, and will keep hitting the grind until sometime during the Summer. The show starts in March, so it’s not too much longer before you guys will get to see what we’re working on.

In the meantime, who’s played Mass Effect 2? I kind of love it.

Sorry we haven’t been updating much. Quite frankly, there’s not much to say. We’re on a much needed break right now and we’ve sworn off everything but fun things until Season 2 of Web Zeroes starts back up. Which is next week. Craziness, really.

In the meantime, I’ve been anticipating Mass Effect 2 something fierce while enjoying Borderlands, Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2. Seriously, Mass Effect 2 might derail Web Zeroes in at least some small way, seeing as how all of us are completely obsessed with it. If we end up delaying the show, you can blame Bioware.

Speaking of Bioware, I saw this hilarious Dragon Age DLC machinima video that highlights some things people have done in the mod community. Looking forward to more of what people do with that game. Who knows, maybe I’ll try my own hand at the toolset.

I’d also like to thank you guys for all of your votes for the Streamys. It really means a lot to us. Hopefully we can get our silly show nominated for something. Next week we plan to start posting some photos from what’s going on with Season 2 of Web Zeroes, and hopefully some other content. If nothing else, expect some cool changes and more regular posts to start very soon.

EDIT: It seems that Game Informer is reporting that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 won’t be out in 2010. Ouch.

The deadline for the Streamy Award nominations is rapidly approaching. Faster than the hair grows on Nick’s face, even. Terrifying, right? Well don’t let the fear paralyze you, stand up and vote for Web Zeroes. The deadline is this Friday, January 15th, and you can vote every single day until then. Every vote counts, and we seriously appreciate the support. If you’ve forgotten, I put up a voting guide for Web Zeroes so you guys can help us out.

Writing has officially begun on Web Zeroes, Season 2. We had an awesome planning session recently and I must say, this season gets meta as all hell. I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully you guys are, too.

In other news, we are considering picking up the podcast-ing again. You guys should submit some topics you’d like to hear us discuss or things you’re curious about in our world of content creation. Maybe we’ll talk about them. Or not. Either way, let us know!

Also, I’m not sure how many of you have seen the Source filmmaker tests that have been leaked from the TF2 beta. From what I hear, it could really change the way Source machinima is done. It eliminates the need for actors and renders some pretty cool effects in real-time. That sure would have been helpful a few years ago, Valve, but maybe it’ll see the light of day at some point. I doubt it, but folks can dream, can’t they? Anyway, here’s a cool Team Fortress 2 test I saw the other day:

Figured I should take a few moments and wish all you dudes around the world a happy new year. It’s more than a tad strange to be in 2010. This is the decade when we need to start seeing real live robots, flying cars and video phones I’m thinking. Either that or Half-Life 2 Episode 3. Just saying.

In the Smooth Few Films neck-of-the-woods, things have been awesome. We’re taking a few weeks off of production since we’ve been working like crazy people since early 2009. So far, it’s been cool to see the great reviews pouring in from the finale. We were more than a little excited to reveal that Rooster Teeth played a guest part in the final episode of Season 1 of Web Zeroes, so I hope you all enjoyed that present as much as we enjoyed providing it.

We’ve already had a planning meeting for Season 2, and I honestly can’t wait to start writing it. We’ll be filming towards the end of January and will start building a foundation of lulz upon which the new season will stand.

In other news, one of my favorite machinima teams, TheDuoGroup, released a pretty cool Assassin’s Creed original animation that they created called Initiation. I highly recommend watching it if you’re finding yourselves parched for cool video game content since the end of The Leet World.

More content coming soon. Some of it Leet World related, some of it Web Zeroes related. Also, stay tuned for some posts that will be going up over the next few weeks informing you how you can help us out. You guys are awesome fans and we know you jump at the chance to support us. That being said, we want to go grassroots style on the promotion for Season 2 of Web Zeroes. We’ll let you know more when we know more.

I know I haven’t been leaving too many updates lately. My time has been devoured by production and a dangerous horror known as Modern Warfare 2. On the production side, things have been rather nuts for us here at Smooth Few Films, but there’s not really a whole lot to talk about, which is kind of weird. We’re currently filming Episode 10 of Web Zeroes while getting ready for the release of Episode 7 tomorrow.

Speaking of Episode 7, we think it’s easily our best yet, and kicks things up a notch. You see, we filmed 6 episodes in just 4-5 weeks before the show even debuted and we saw any kind of feedback. We listened to lots of people, learned some things, and then started working on the back half of the season. I think the results will speak for themselves. We’re pretty excited to start releasing it. So excited, in fact, that we’re holding a screening of the episode later tonight (Tuesday, November 17) at the Pearl Bar here in Houston. If you’re in the area, swing by, say hi and have a drink. Or nine.

In other news, I’m going to be working on some TLW outtakes for Season 2, as well as a post that details the similarities of Leet World and some other popular media, including Dragonball Z and Star Wars. Yes, really. Not on purpose, mind you, that’s just the way these things go down sometimes. I’m not particularly proud of it.

And besides playing Dragon Age: Origins and Modern Warfare 2, that’s what my nerdy life consists of at the moment. If you want, you can check out my MW2 review over at GamerSushi. Still not decided on Left 4 Dead 2 yet, though I think I’ll pass. I believe I’ve had my fill of zombie hunting in real life. It’s my day job, you know.

Also, if you don’t follow us on Twitter, you might have missed this picture I posted the other day of us on set of Ep 10 of Web Zeroes. We were doing a video conference between LA and Houston with Jace, who snapped a picture at a rather inopportune time for me. At least it might give some of you lulz.

Even though we’re not making so much machinima anymore here at Smooth Few Films, it doesn’t deter my interest in it. I still like to scour and search for what’s new out there in the wide world of video game movie-making, just to see what other people are doing and what games they’re using.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem that any game has made as big of a splash for the machinima community as Halo 3 did back in 2007. It’s crazy to me that it’s just over 2 years later, and we’re still waiting on the next engine to come and revitalize amateur filmmakers to try out some of their own stuff. Uncharted 2 just dropped for the PS3, and it has some machinima tools hidden within its depths, if only you can make it past the incredible single player campaign (and trust me, it is quite incredible). I also hear that Dragon Age: Origins coming out next month will make use of some rather robust tools.

In terms of some of the new things I’m seeing out there that hold promise, a couple of things come to mind. Red Vs Blue Recreation once again sets the standard for awesomeness. SgtPadrino has some remarkable Call of Duty videos that he’s been scripting together, and they’re impressive as anything I’ve seen in recent months. Likewise, Mystfit continues to work away on some custom TF2 animations. Can’t wait to see what the results of those experiments are. Running Gun (creators of Spriggs) are steadily releasing a fully scripted Fallout 3 machinima called JudgeMental. And then there’s good old Darkspire Films, who just released the Candy Coated Wonder Road, a Halo 3 children’s show.

So what do you guys think the state of machinima is? What are some of your favorite machinimas out there right now?

Also, Web Zeroes Episode 3 hits tomorrow, and some new TLW outtakes should be up later this week- hope to see you back for both of those!

It really is nice to have the Web Zeroes announcement out in the open. We’ve been working our butts off on the rebooted version of the series for a couple of months now to make the Fall release date.

The support coming in from you guys and from other places has been really awesome for us, especially after giving our all to get that TLW Finale up. Thanks for that. We even got some nice props from Burnie Burns, of a little outfit known as Rooster Teeth.

In recent days, JJ has updated the trusty SFF FAQ page. We’re still taking some questions, so send them in. A few of you have been asking some questions about the new show. So I thought I’d answer those and a few more below the jump:
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I think E3 week is probably one of the coolest times of the year. It’s like Christmas, but for nerds. If you’re unaware or have been living under Nick’s beard, E3 is a massive video game expo that happens around June. There’s nothing like hearing all the gaming news and announcements such as Left 4 Dead 2, Halo: Reach and then some. If you aren’t aware of what you missed today, you should definitely go catch up.

In other news, the next post on this fair site will be the long-awaited Episode 10 of Season 2. The Leet World’s got a few watershed episodes, and I believe this to be one of them. I can’t wait for you guys to see it. Don’t punch yourself waiting for it, though.

Daniel’s out of town for the next few weeks or so, but Nick has been busy editing while I move forward on Episode 11 assets. In the meantime, here are some last-minute screenshots of Episode 10 to hold you over until the big release.

You have been teased.

Making a series like TLW takes a crap-ton of time. So whenever we get a reprieve from the insanity of this absurd Counter-Strike: Source machinima, we tend to live it up. I’ve been playing a stupid amount of video games, particularly Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, and some Killzone 2 for good measure. We even started up a game of D&D with some friends, which I’ve never done before. Nick is a Dwarven Paladin named John Smotetrain, Daniel is an Avenger named Cortez Cardinal, and I’m a Wizard named Tom Shanks. We are questers of the most badass sort.

However, all that free time is gone as of this coming weekend, as we kick up production on Episode 8. We’ll hopefully have a camera there filming the process as we move through some of the episode, and hope to release our “making of” video at some point in the next month or so.

Speaking of, do you guys have any particular piece of the TLW production process that you’re most interested in hearing about? Besides whether or not Nick’s Beard (it must be capitalized out of honor) hinders our ability to puppeteer. Let us know!