This and that and stuff and things

I’ve decided to put my Sci-fi/Thriller “One Giant Leap” on hold. Not sure how long for, several reasons; Chapters 2-6 are more or less written and ready to make, but I’ve lost the enthusiasm I once had for this mini-series. The story is pretty basic, no ground-breaking moments, but when I think about making it…its like….bleh….maybe tomorrow.

I make machinima for the fun of creating stuff, it doesn’t have to be a comedy, had lots of fun making chapter 1 especially working with talented voice actors (act3scene24, goofParade, Norrie Sinclair and Azure)…but towards the end, rendering it out of Moviestorm, had a very shit time. Had to load one scene in at a time, save, exit, reload and render for EVERY scene. Tried 2 scenes and it either crashed to desktop or Blue-screen-of-death. Even then had to re-render a couple scenes where the lip-sync just plain stopped working, or a character’s head would flail around like that scene in poltergeist. Shame I wasn’t doing a horror flick. :-)

So my enthusiasm for using Moviestorm as dwindled too while making it. During this time, I also re-discovered iClone 4. I had played with the demo of iClone 2 a while back and found it very hard to use. iClone 4 is harder to use than Moviestorm at first, but once you get used to it, the process is very similar, and the render quality, shadows, animation and overall experience is just mind-blowing.

I would still highly recommend Moviestorm to beginners, but iClone sits neatly between high-end rendering packages like 3DS-Max and easy machinima tools like Moviestorm, which is what appeals to me hugely.

Moviestorm is better than iClone for some things. in “The Duleks Episode 1” (made using iClone) I used Moviestorm to make a TV commercial to display on the Dulek’s TV screen. I did attempt it in iClone, but I’ve just not got the animation skills to pull it off right now, so jumped on Moviestorm and made it in 20 minutes. easy!

So, they both have pros and cons, maybe that will change in 2010 and one will become the clear leader in machinima creation, until then I will use both.

As you’ve probably seen, I’ve currently made two episodes of “The Duleks” using iClone and I have a whole season planned for the rest of 2010, so that should keep me busy. If my enthusiasm for “One giant leap” returns…do I make it in MS or iClone?