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!
ABP’s First Film of 2010: 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.
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.
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.
5 Years of ABP: 2009
2009 was the first year since the founding of ABP when we didn’t release a single machinima. This happened for several reasons. First of all, college work had severely limited the amount of time I could spend making machinima. Secondly, we were hard at work on Clockwise, the epic sequel to Clockwork. I wrote Clockwise as a 45-page script, but we planned to cut it up into five 10-minute episodes and ultimately recombine them. We filmed much of Clockwise: Part 1 during the summer of 2008, but after reading some excellent critiques from Ricky and Phil, decided to reshoot sections of the film. School got in the way and we didn’t finish production until the end of summer 2009. We released a poster and a trailer but Ricky (who was doing sound design) and Phil (who was writing the score) became swamped with work so we put the film on hold until 2010.
After the success of Clockwork, drivel thought that ABP needed a slicker, more professional look, so he began designing a new ABP website in 2009.