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Portal is free until May 24th.
In celebration of Steam including Mac support (and to promote Portal 2), Valve has made Portal freely available until May 24th. Get it while you can. http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/
Simply click the big, red “Get Portal Now” button, or head to the store page for your free copy of Portal. http://store.steampowered.com/app/400
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Call for Entries: IFF Machinima Competition 2010
I am one of the two programming directors for this year’s Ivy Film Festival, a student run student film festival (now in its 9th year) held on the campus of Brown University every April. This year marks the 3rd annual Ivy Film Festival Student Machinima Competition @ Machinima.com, one of the few machinima competitions that caters exclusively to students. The site has recently gone live and is open for submissions. Machinima.com is offering two fantastic prizes—$250 Audience Choice Award and $500 Jury Prize. The submission deadline is March 21st so submit your work ASAP!
The competition is accepting machinima from any year, as long as it was made while the machinimator was a high school, college, or graduate student. Audience voting will whittle down the entries into a top ten. A second round of voting will determine the winner of the Audience Choice Award and a jury of machinima and media specialists will decide the winner of the Jury Prize. Both winners will be screened at the Ivy Film Festival in April.
This is a very exciting opportunity for student machinimators and I’m looking forward to seeing the submissions!
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ABP’s First Film of the Year: Stop, Rewind
ABP is proud to present our latest machinima, Stop, Rewind. This sci-fi crime film stars Moviestorm machinimator Jorge Campos and professional actor Joe Thomas and features an incredible original score from our own Tommy Kraft. The story follows Howard Grant, a convicted murderer who’s given a second chance when he’s recruited as a test subject for an experimental machine.
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Amorphous Blob v2.1
After the blog was launched I immediately began working on the next iteration of Amorphous Blob’s design. I applied my newfound knowledge (and WordPress v2.9′s new features) in the creation of the current theme. Here’s a quick rundown of the improvements:
New Header
The new header image promotes our upcoming movie Stop, Rewind. It has much softer colors to prevent distracting users from the content.
Increased Readability
The new layout is loosely based on the 960 grid system, resulting in a much larger content space and an increase in readability. The overall design is also much more visually appealing and consistent.
Cleaner Code
With the experience I gained with the first theme and a clearer idea of the desired features, I was able to keep the code much shorter and cleaner overall.
The site will continue to evolve as time goes on. I hope you all enjoy the new theme and have a happy Valentine’s Day.
Update: I fixed a bug that prevented IE from displaying the page.
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5 Years of ABP: 2010
We have a big year planned for ABP!
In January, drivel launched the redesigned ABP website. It is the third website drivel has created for Amorphous Blob.
We also dug up an old script I had written for a 5-minute sci-fi/crime machinima called Stop, Rewind. I discussed the script with drivel and Tommy Kraft, and after debating over several different ending possibilities, we finally settled on an idea that everyone liked. We immediately began an intense production schedule with long hours of shooting and completed production a few weeks later. All of the voice acting is done and the film is edit locked. I’ve also added a ton of tinting effects and visual tweaks. In addition, Tommy has recently finished up a fantastic original score. Tommy will soon begin work on the sound design, which is the last step in the process. If all goes well, we’re hoping to release the film before the end of February.
