5 Years of ABP: 2008
I had always been interested in the crime/gangster genre, but in the summer of 2007 I fully immersed myself in it. I watched classic noir like Double Indemnity and modern gangster classics like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. It was after watching Goodfellas that I was inspired to write the script for Clockwork and after almost a year of on-and-off work the film was finally completed in April 2008. It was the most intense filming experience we had ever gone through, but it paid off in the end.
5 Years of ABP: 2007
2007 was a very momentous year for ABP. We won our first major award (Best Student Machinima at Machinima Europe for Machinima! With Officer Dan) and completed our last Jedi Academy film, The Parable of Foot-in-Mouth, which was our first collaboration with Ricky Grove, who narrated the film. From then on, we produced films entirely within the Source engine.
We also entered two Machinima.com trailer competitions–the Bourne Ultimatum Trailer Contest and The Invasion Trailer Contest. These films were our first Half Life 2 Garry’s Mod machinima. Our entry for The Invasion made it into the top ten, but ultimately did not win. However, we were luckier with our Bourne trailer which won first place and our first cash prize which was split among the team.
Later that year we returned to Officer Dan and completed the third film in the series, Machinima! With Officer Dan: Machinima vs. Frag. Tommy Kraft wrote the score, which was essentially a new version of the Mac vs. PC theme.
5 Years of ABP: 2006
In 2006 we submitted Star Wars Gangsta Rap: JKA Edition to Machinimasia, the first machinima festival in Asia. Our machinima won 1st Runner Up Best Student Film, losing first place to Ross Scott’s Civil Protection. Although it was a second place win, it was ABP’s first machinima award and we were immensely excited. The win motivated us to continue to improve our work.
We then became a subdivision of Hyperdrive, a popular two-man Jedi Academy machinima group known for its high production values. Under the Hyperdrive name, ABP produced The Anger of the Guns, a WWII music video filmed online in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Meanwhile, one of the Hyperdrive members created ABP’s current animated intro logo. However, the guy in charge of Hyperdrive didn’t like our film and was upset that we were not making Star Wars films, so he rudely kicked us out of the company without warning. ABP was independent once more.
5 Years of ABP: 2005
We’re entering our fifth year here at Amorphous Blob Productions and so we thought it might be fun to look all the way back to the beginning and do a retrospective on how far we’ve come. We’re going to be covering one year of ABP history every few days.
Pre-2005: Before Amorphous Blob
Before 2005, I ran a clan called {SITH} in the PC game Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy . The clan had a machinima production division called {SITH} Guild Productions which was originally geared at creating clan promos. Over time, as we became more interested in telling stories than promoting the clan, we began to make narrative films. It was around this time, during the making of a film called The Legend of Solaris, that drivel became my main conspirator and second hand man. He served as the main ingame actor and the principle creative advisor on the project. Soon, drivel’s brother, Pickle, joined the team as well.
Continue Reading »
ABP Update 01-20-2010
I just got back from beautiful, sunny Costa Rica and thought I’d update everyone about what’s happening at ABP.
We are well into post-production on our sci-fi/crime project. Talented Moviestorm machinimator and voice actor Jorge Campos has joined the voice cast along with professional actor Joe Thomas. Tommy Kraft is also working on some visual effects for the film. Very soon we will be moving into the last stages of post-production which includes music scoring, sound design, and some tweaking of the visuals.
Here is another teaser image from the film. The man in the chair is the main character, Howard Grant:
