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.

Pixel Eyes Productions are the creators of the well known Shelf Life machinima, using the Source engine. Recently, they’ve gone through some of the same issues we had in terms of trying to monetize their (hour intensive) hobby, and came up with similar results. We just assumed not talk about the problems we had, but it seems they have done so. This includes their issues with trying to become YouTube sponsors, where they were denied, just like us, since they don’t own the rights to the Source machinima they produced. Naturally, Valve owns those.

More interestingly than the YouTube dilemma, though, was that they (like us) pursued the securing of these rights from Valve, via a commercial machinima license of some kind. And, they have posted the official response. Which, just as we insisted all those many months ago, was simply that Valve is not interested in machinima.

If you don’t feel like clicking on the link, here’s the short of Valve’s response.

We are not interested in licensing our technology or IP for machinima. This includes providing copyright approvals.

I have to say, I really feel for Pixel Eyes, having been in their shoes just last year. If you are a young filmmaker trying to use Valve’s excellent Source tools, they have essentially shut the door with statements just like that. While I don’t blame Valve for trying to protect their property in the slightest, it certainly is a shame to see them take such a hard line stance when it comes to something their community produces so readily and in many cases excellently.

To me, it’s stances like these that will keep machinima in kind of a stale flux for many years to come. What you are starting to see is that the more talented individuals get snatched out of making machinima and onto other things, because machinima runs into more dead ends than it does opportunities. While it’s a nice low-budget way to practice something you love doing, making money off of it is often times the exception and not the rule. And this extends beyond machinima even, to any kind of derivative content.

My advice for any hobbyists out there that like to dabble in machinima or other forms of derivative content (fan fiction, stories based on popular games or movies, comic strips that do the same, etc) is that if you want to do this stuff for a living, don’t spend all your time on something you don’t own. By all means, practice your craft with machinima and use it to gain a fanbase, but let that be only a supplement to a project that you own completely, and let that be where you sink most of your time into.

Trust me, in the long run, it’ll be worth it. You don’t want to spend years of your life working on something only to be told that it doesn’t really belong to you in the end. Sure, you gained lots of experience and you had fun doing what you loved, but if you can do all that and then use it to pay the bills, it’s a double bonus. And believe me, if you’re good, somebody somewhere will want to pay for what it is that you’re kicking ass on.

So go out there and make it happen.

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.

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:

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.

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!

I know that some of you long timers have seen some of our setup pictures before, but I thought it would be cool to talk about again. For those of you that don’t know, TLW isn’t made inside of a studio, but rather, in my spare bedroom, with a total of 6-7 computers, depending on what’s working at the time. That’s machinima for you.

Ideally, we’d show this in the making of video we’ve been wanting to do, but that’s been put on hold indefinitely while we try to finish this darn show. Anywho, there’s a general overview, with pictures, after the jump.

Four of the computers you see there are “actor” computers. They control the characters that make up each scene. The other two computers are the “camera” and “capture” computers. The camera computer is the player camera that captures the footage. You might also notice the piles of scripts everywhere. One of those is for Episode 13.

We almost never use spectator cam for the show, in case you were wondering. Rather, we use the following source commands: sv_cheats 1, cl_drawhud 0, and cl_drawviewmodel 0 to remove the HUD and the weapon model (we film through sniper rifles for adjusted fov values).

Anywho, you can see the camera computer above. It’s connected to the capture computer, which is Daniel’s Mac that has been essentially confiscated by Smooth Few Films. The camera computer runs out via DVI to component cables over to the AJA Kona card, so that we can capture in 720p. See all the crazy cables above, as well as the back of the capture card.

The “sound booth” we use is actually just a closet. Notice the ghetto tape holding the mic stand up, as its puny snake neck buckles under the weight of the mic and the popper stopper. Totally not glamorous in the slightest.

So there you have it. Hopefully that doesn’t let the air out of your tires any. This show is mega ghetto. And we are ghetto fabulous.

Anywho, we’ve got a new TLW based short coming out this weekend, and Episode 6 will be dropping sometime next week. Get excited. There are a lot of fun elements in every aspect of production for the next two episodes, ranging from sound design to color correcting and Hammer work. I’m just pumped about how the end products are going to turn out.

There’s a chance many of you have already seen Cortez’s cameo in Source Wars, made by Xanatos and crew, but if you haven’t, you should give it a watch. Xanatos did this with our permission, and he’s a bud of ours, so I was happy to lend my voice. It’s pretty goofy, but definitely good for some laughs.

In this edition, The Leet World characters run down their favorite things about the holidays. I think it’s a mighty good time. I hope you guys enjoy it, and remember, it’s a part of One Shared Vision, the machinima movement to promote Child’s Play. I’d definitely encourage you guys to look into Child’s Play, as it’s a rockin’ charity for gamers.

Speaking of video games, I hope you guys got a bunch of them for Christmas. I got Chrono Trigger DS, myself.

By the way, if you’re looking for some good entertainment at 7pm Eastern on Tuesday, December 30th, then check out Halo Community Live. It’s a live broadcast of several machinimas from the Halo community including TheDuoGroup, Halo 3 Mythbusters, and more. Unfortunately, we couldn’t participate because of late notice, but I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

Anywho, our new video is after the jump!

Enjoy!

A couple of machinima videos for you to watch. First, there’s Clear Skies, a production by Ian Chisolm which uses the Source engine and EVE Online. Lots of good stuff there. Very impressive Hammer/GMod work.

Secondly, a few weeks ago I posted about OneSharedVision, a machinima community effort to promote the charity Child’s Play. Anywho, Dave Tyner made this week’s video and it kind of rules. Unreal squaring off against Halo, “You Got Served” style. A tad bit of language, so be warned.

Our video for this will appear next week. If you hadn’t guessed, it’s the Christmas Special.