The trailer was cut by Daniel Sheehan, who we’ve linked to before for another sweet trailer he made during Season 2. Apparently, he used four clips from every. single. episode. Pretty impressive. Give the dude some love.

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.

In terms of Web Zeroes, we are currently working on episodes 3 and 4 of the second season, doing our best to keep a steady pace without murdering ourselves. The show should debut in the next few weeks, though we haven’t quite nailed a date down with Revision3 just yet. This is part of the reason I’ve waited to update, simply because there wasn’t much news to give you guys. Also, it’s hard to show too many screenshots without spoiling some of the developments that we left hanging at the end of Season 1, so that makes it a tad difficult, too.

During my free time, I’ve found myself starting a fantasy novel of sorts. I’m not exactly sure why I’m sharing that, really, but it’s certainly interesting to me even if it’s not interesting to anyone else. One of the things the guys and I have talked about recently is that while we don’t miss the workload and the tedium that came from working on a machinima production like The Leet World, we do actually miss the ability to tell a ridiculous tale that really had no rules. While Web Zeroes is ultimately more rewarding to make, we wish that we had the budget to make a live action epic on par with the zaniness seen by our small corner of the Web. I suppose writing my own fantasy stories lets me get that out of my system. Who knows, maybe some day you can buy one. Or not.

Lately, I’ve been completely consumed by the final season of Lost on ABC. It really is a fantastic and wild show, and the engrossing mystery has had me enthralled for some time. In the final season, I’m finding myself both overjoyed and enraged by the way the questions refuse to be answered, yet trying to not worry and just appreciate the ride while it lasts. Honestly, I can’t imagine seeing anything else quite like this on TV ever again. However, it got me wondering about the mystery we wove on our own goofy Counter-Strike: Source show. Did you guys ever find yourselves frustrated by the way it unraveled?

More news on Web Zeroes coming very soon. In addition, some more “lost” info of Leet World will be revealed, as well as some old school outtakes. Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for being great fans.

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.

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.

In this episode, the guys attempt to stop Ray from going to his job interview in Austin. There’s some RPG talk, a repeat appearance from a hobo, and a special cameo from the good dudes over at RoosterTeeth. Special thanks to them for taking the time to appear in our silly Web show.

Big props to Jace for this week’s music. I love the RPG feel of a lot of it. There are places that even remind me of Final Fantasy 7, which is not a bad thing in the slightest. Also, a huge thanks to all of our friends who helped us out over the season, and for Alex and Chuck, our sound and camera dudes who gave up their weekends for nothing in return.

Remember to vote for us for the Streamys if you haven’t done so yet. And to watch the episode, just hit the jump.

Visit Revision3 if you want the downloadable versions of this episode, and stick around for Season 2, because it’s going to rule.

Thanks for watching and enjoy, dudes.

I meant to have these things up on Christmas morning, but I got a bit distracted by how awesome my weekend was. For real. We’ve finished filming Web Zeroes (the season finale is out on Wednesday) so Daniel, Nick and I are getting to experience the now-awkward warmth of actual friendship for the first time in a long time. You know, playing Dungeons and Dragons, hanging out, Rock Band, etc. It’s the opposite of how our time is spent when we make this stuff, which usually involves family curses, tiger uppercuts and CQC.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these outtakes. They hail from Season 2 of TLW, Episodes 9 and 10. As such, there are no Leeroy lines as he was out adventuring in the Matrix Mordor. There are also plenty of things from Ty doing his Asher and Mendoza voices and even some beatboxing at one point, as well as lots of Daniel having fun with Adam Sizzler. Because honestly, who wouldn’t have fun with that guy?

Sizzlin’ indeed. Right click and “save as” to download this stalwart mp3 to your general desktop region.

  (Direct Link)

Enjoy!