If you've been wondering what I'm doing.....

It's been a while since I updated this blog! One of the many reasons is that life got very hectic around christmas and New Year, with a lot of rl work which sapped my strength considerably.

Then I've been thinking a lot recently, and though I've got a script lying here, ready to film (and I still think it's a very good script), I'm not ready to make the movie, and have no idea when I will be, or if I I'll ever be. It's a long, complicated to film story, it would need loads of mods; and I would have to make a lot of compromises to make it happen at all.

I'm just not up to it.

So what do I do when I'm fed up and undecided about something? I learn something new - and that's creating fashion for Second Life!
Currently I'm happily grappling with Photoshop; brushes, pen tool, layers; making textures... it's great fun, and I've opened a little shop where I sell my creations:
Koo-Koo.

I've also blogging about my shop here! 

I have to admit I've grown very fond of the look of SL - in my opinion, it is very, very beautiful! And maybe (just maybe) I'll one day start filming here - something small, and uncomplicated..... but not now.

 

So, I'm taking a "sabbatical" from machinima!

For those of you who would like to offer me roles in their movies - though I'm not around much on any of the forums at the moment, you can still reach me via e-mail; and I will take on roles - just, I will be picky about what I do. But don't hesitate to ask!

Until then! :)

Pigeon: Impossible

Just saw this today and loved every minute of it!
It took 5 years to make it - read all about it on the website!

Enjoy the film and watch it on Youtube HD - it's sooo worth it! :)

Atopic, Machinima Expo, graphic cards and smoke-signs...

It has been a bit quiet here for some time now... but that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot happening!

The Atopic festival is in full swing - I'm so proud that my film Saving Grace is being shown there, and I wish I would be able to attend - but alas, I have to work... :(
I'm looking forward to IceAxe's adventures in Paris though, I'm sure he will have a lot to tell! And hopefully we'll get to see some pictures, too! :)

I'm also looking very much forward to Machinima Expo - so many wonderful films have been chosen for the consideration of the jury - quite a few of my personal all-time favourites! and I'm very happy, and again proud, that two of my films are among those - both Saving Grace and :transient:, the latter being one of my not so widely known movies of which I personally always have been very fond of. :)
I will also be on the panel of 'Women in Machinima' this year - looking very much forward to get to talk to the machinimatoresses (what a word... lol).

My own movie making is on full hold at the moment - my graphic cards have been causing more and more troubles in the last few month; an update of the drivers made Moviestorm nearly unworkable for me, though it helped with some of the other problems... and iClone is playing sluggishly, too. I know which new graphic card and system I want, but at the moment, all the components I'd like to have are sold out in germany.... so it's more waiting. Which isn't that bad - I'm doing more singing and voice overs in the meantime... :)

I am also waiting for iClone 4 to appear in the german version - which will hopefully be at the end of november. I have high hopes for the facial animation features and the motion-pathing - I never made a secret of it that I'm slightly disappointed in the facial /motion capabilities of iClone 3, and I hope version 4 will make a big difference.

In other news, I've quit smoking - wednesday, 21st october. It's going surprisingly well so far - I'm only slightly more agressive than usual, haven't gained weight yet (and doing my best so that it stays that way), plus I already can feel that my voice is better.... so, singing will get better. Which is the reward for having to give up my one and only vice!
Gah, I'm so boring now........... :D

Online Voting for the Cinemanila Machinima Festival has started!

The excitement doesn't stop - so shortly after the First Ollies Award Show, which left me overwhelmed and very happy about the support the TMU community has shown me - I'd like to say 'Thank you!' once again! :) - the online voting on the First Cinemanila Machinima Film Festival has started!

I am very proud that Kate Lee's "The Afflicted" has been chosen to be voted on! If you'd like to vote for me (or any of the other wonderful movies in their selection), please visit their website:

Cinemanila Machinima

You will have to register to be able to vote!

There are two categories: Short Film and Music Video.

Among the selections for Short Film are also IceAxe's 'Clockwork', Lainy Voom's 'The Stolen Child', Russel Boyd's/Pooky Amsterdam's 'Shrink Wrapped'... (just to name a few!) loads of great films to vote upon!

Voting will be possible until October, 16th!

Good News!

I'm happy to announce that two of my films have been selected for film festivals -

"Saving Grace" will be shown at the Atopic Machinima Film Festival in France (a big thankyou to Phil Rice!), and "Kate Lee's The Afflicted" at the 1st Cinemanila Machinima Film Festival in the Philippines!

I'm very happy and excited about this, as you can imagine! :)

And of course I'm also looking very much forward to TMUnderground's First Annual OLLIES Award show, which will take place on the Ken & Roger show this coming sunday, october 11th!

Don't forget to tune into the show and join the merry crowd in the chatroom!

The first time singing live on stage!

As those of you who regularly talk to and meet me in several forums already know, september 18th was a very special day for me - the first time I sang on a small stage live for an audience!

The group of ladies I do acting classes with - we perform a play once a year, directed by our acting teacher David - was asked if we would like to take part in a small festival here in Bonn, which is called "Lesereise" - it could be roughly translated as "Reading journey". The special thing about it is, the readings are performed in shops all over the city of Bonn. In our case, the hairdresser of one of our group members asked us if we would like to perform in her beauty salon.


We did a short, funny play, read some excerpts of books - all centered around women, beauty and beauty craze, and solidarity between women - we chose texts by Vicky Baum and Dorothy Parker - we sang a song together (I got to be sort of a choir leader, too!) and I sang 4 songs.
The "Sleeping Beauties" were born, and we practised roughly 4 month for the event. The program we put together was about an hour long.


Of course, I just had to catch a cold on the monday before the performance - stayed in bed until friday, and up until friday morning I wasn't even sure if I would be able to sing - you don't even want to imagine how I felt, let alone here the rants .... :p

Anyway, despite my stuffed nose, I was able to sing - and for just one slip of the lyrics (I've never in my life had such a feeling of an "empty" head before, and would prefer to never feel that way again!!!), everything went just fine. I managed to find the words again after just one missed sentence, and though I was nervous as hell all through the 4 songs, I had fun, and was delighted and overwhelmed by the response I got from the audience (around 35 people), who congratulated me, praised my voice and even asked me if I would sing on family celebrations...
There's nothing like standing in the midst (literally, because the audience was all around me) of raucous applause... a very heady feeling! :)

As a group, we got asked if we would think about doing our program on stage at another festival, so it was a big success.

For me, this is a dream come true, and it gives me even more incentive to work on my skills as a singer and performer. What can be better than doing what you love and bring joy to others while doing it? (and maybe even making a small amount of money, if all goes well?) :)

I'm going to go step after step now - designing a flyer, working on a repertoire of more songs... this is so exciting, and so much fun!

Hopefully I'll have one or two vids to show off soon - the brother of my man filmed the whole event.

The second round of voting for the TMUnderground OLLIES has started!

The first round of voting for the first annual TMU OLLIES is over - the community has chosen their favourite films, musicians, actors, modders, sound designers....etc. from all the movies uploaded or embedded on the TMU movie site in the last year!

A very big thank you to both Killian and Tom Foster, who organise the OLLIES, you're doing stellar work! :)

Now it's time for round 2 - if you aren't a member of the TMU community yet, now is the time to join our forums and cast your vote!
The nominees for the 43 categories can be found here - please watch all the nominated films before making any decisions! You have until September 27 2009 to vote on the nominees.

I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me - I'm overwhelmed and very happy about all the support I'm getting! :)

Animating with iClone

Work on my first iClone short is in full swing; the title is "Let the Fun begin" and it's about.... nah, I'm not sayin' - you didn't really expect that, did you? :p I'm just extremely superstitious about talking too much about my stories before I release them - and always afraid I'd give away too much...

Currently, I'm trying to bend the iClone animations features, especially pre-formed or collected moves and fiddling with bones; to my will. That's not easy - every bone-move change you make has an influence on everthing that comes thereafter... with results which sometimes have me giggling, at other times pulling my hair in frustration... and I still haven't found out how to make a character shake his head in a simple "no" movement. Nodding is no problem, but shaking? I'd be grateful for any hint as to how accomplish that!

Another thing that I find hard to get rid of is the foot-sliding, or "moonwalking". Maybe that will be easier to get rid off once I have more experience with the program - at the moment I am able, with a lot of fiddling and trial and error, to get rid of most of it - but not all..... thank the goddess that I'm not a foot-shot fetishist.. :D (at least not for this movie!)

Despite the extra time spent on these things, work is progressing nicely. I have always been a fan of learning by doing, and it has always been easier for me to try to make scenes fit to a definite vision I have in mind, instead of just playing around for learning purposes. Besides I think the story will be fun to watch - it's back to the roots, so to speak... ;)

Below is a screenie of a scene which I think came out very well. More news soon!

Exciting times!

This month so far had a lot of exciting things happening:

The MachinExpo 2009 is accepting submissions now - don't forget to submit your movies! I'm looking very much forward to the event in Second Life in November - hopefully it will be at a time when I can attend (sometimes it sucks to be on a european timezone.. :p).

Trace Sanderson and Kate Fosk have created a fascinating new site for grown-up Machinima - visit Fallopian, were you'll find movies and directors showcased who are as far away from the general Machinima clichés - lots of guns, explosions, game-related jokes - as you can imagine... and maybe even farther! :) Thank you Trace and Kate!

There's also a new group on Vimeo - Women in Machinima - also created by Trace and Kate - every female Machinima creator is invited to add their films to it, regardless of the engine it was created with! To quote Trace: "Let's celebrate women in machinima!" And there's a lot to celebrate, I think. :)

I'm also really excited that Chat Noir - Kate Lee and Sherwin Liu - are back in the machinima making 'business' - they have gotten their teeth into Moviestorm and released a wonderful one-minute film (made for the Filminute 2009) called Darren, and are currently working on a big project - I can hardly wait to see it!
They also have a brand-new blog 'In the Mind's Eyes of the Black Cats', where, apart from posting about their filming process, interesting, mind-stimulating discussions can be joined. Love it! :)

Me, I'm enjoying my holiday - and I finally got iClone 3 Pro, which means I'm trying to learn everything I can about it. Which is quite a lot - iClone offers loads of possibilities and because of that, has quite a learning curve. For me, it isn't really intuitive, so I do a lot of reading and watching tutorials, hoping to get into it a bit before iClone 4 hits the market - the new features that are being revealed right now are what decided me to try the program again and though my progress is slow (compared to the ease with which Moviestorm came to me), I'm glad I did.
I've even begun to work on an iClone shortie - but it will take me some time to finish that yet... it still needs some more hair-pulling, set-building, learning and ranting. ;)
I'm looking forward to at some time combining iClone and Moviestorm material....

Anyway, here's the set I'm building right now...



Exciting times!

The secret project is ready for take-off!

Or should I say, ready to be read by someone who knows about modding, and I'm ready to be asked if I'm crazy... *insert nervous-smiley here*

24 pages, 21 characters, the first time I will need not one, not two, no! - a whole bunch of mods to be made especially for a project.... I'm excited and still dread the verdict of those who will (hopefully) work with me on this.

I'd like to thank both Norrie and Kate Lee, who have read, proofed, suggested, read again, suggested some more... without both of you, the script wouldn't be as it is now! Thanks for all the time you invested in this - I just hope I'll be able to bring it to the screen!

Finding the 21 actors to voice the characters seems comparatively easy in contrast to the mod work - as always, a lot of the roles are already taken by what I call my 'dream-cast' in my mind - but I will worry about that once I'm a bit more sure if the project can be realised in Moviestorm as the only engine, or if I have to consider mixing again.

Oh well.... :)

For the moment, I refuse to be disheartened, and present to you the name of the project.... keep your fingers crossed!

Wow! 'Alarm' - an animation by Mesai

Sometimes, you find real gems by accident - my friend found this video on Youtube today and sent me the link, saying that he'd be sure I would love it.

And wow, this is so good! It was made by an independent animation team from Korea (they give a link to their website, which is in korean only, but you can download the film there!)

Enjoy - I just fell in love with the details and the story immediately. :)

A Sense of Community

Over at TMUnderground, there are some discussions going on right now which make me think about that elusive thing that is a community.

As maybe most of you know, TMUnderground was started by Ken when The Movies Online crashed and didn't come back up for a month - despite Lionhead's assurances that there were no plans to discontinue the service, most of us felt the end was nigh - and ultimately, we were proven right shortly afterwards.

From the start, Ken planned TMU to be a platform for all kinds of machinima movie makers - a place for discussion, promoting your films, getting feedback, finding people to work with, sharing and learning. I was (and still am!) so excited about this!

When a lot of us started using new engines and getting involved in the respective communities, we also invited people over to TMU - to upload their films, discuss and promote their work on our forums; in short, get involved, and in the process widen all our horizons.

Since then, I have learned the hard way how difficult that seems to be.

Yes, some people followed the invitation and joined - but on the whole, they are far and few between; and what's more, there's even some discussion about 'loyalty' to the engine you use - meaning you can't feel at home in a community that uses diverse means to express it's creativity.

What a load of (excuse me) bull!
Is it true? Can there only be a true sense of community when everyone uses the same engine to make films? Can't we discuss topics that apply to machinima in general and still feel a sense of community? Are we all wearing blinders, only ever able to see what's on our plate, so to speak?

Are we watching films because of the engine they were made with, or do we watch them for the story, for the visual artistry?

Seems that a lot of people lose interest the moment the story isn't told using the engine of their choice - which personally makes me sad and angry, because it's doing the machinima/anymation genre - however you choose to call it - a disservice. I really feel we shouldn't squander our time with discussion about iClone versus Moviestorm versus The Movies versus WoW.. and is machinima made with a program purposely designed for it machinima at all' - I even feel that's the reason that machinima isn't taken seriously by a lot of people.

Do we really need to categorise everything in little compartments, is there not a chance that people can meet and talk, and get a sense of community without the limited, 'you either use the same engine I do or we won't ever see eye to eye' view? Do we fear to venture out of the places were we know the viewer knows every little quirk of the program we use? Is it really necessary to feel compelled to defend your engine of choice the whole time?

I sincerly hope not, and thankfully there are people around who do watch and comment without prejudice, but they are still too few.

Your thoughts?

/rant

What's in a Name?

Do you agonise about a movietitle as much as I do?

I prefer a title do do several things:

• it has to grab my interest - there's nothing better than a title that makes me want to watch even if I know nothing about the content yet!
• I love hidden meanings which manifest themselves only after I watched the film
• double-entendres (sp?), wordplays - get me every time!
• I like 'em either short (often prefer just one word) - or, very seldomly, ridiculously long :p

As a result, I often spend a large amount of time on agonising about a title.
'Saving Grace' for example went through several different ones - among them 'Parted', 'Disconnected' (both got scrapped immediately), 'Headway' (not good either); I looked up definitions, quotations.... until the scripting reached the stage where her husband sends his message, and the wordplay popped into my mind - bingo! From that moment on, there was never a doubt in my mind that 'Saving Grace' it would be. It ticked all my preferences - short, lots of double meaning...

For other films, titling was easy - :transient:, for example was a given from the first images that flodded my mind upon hearing the music for the film... I also like to use things like slashes or colons in my titles - don't ask me why, but they're a part of the name, not an addendum; without them, the title wouldn't have the same meaning for me (and it always makes me very unhappy when I can't add them to the upload title of the film; some sites don't allow them).

'Secret project' has finally been titled - it had a working title, of course, in fact, actually two working titles, that I didn't like. Both didn't really tickle my interest - one would have probably made people think about a TV series the film has no connection whatsoever to, the other was just - lame... short, which I usually like, but not encompassing everything I wanted it to say.

Thankfully, my friend Norrie, who always proof-reads my scripts and is the bouncing-board for my ideas (thank you so much for that! :)) came up with the perfect title (yay!) - it has the right flow, the right length, it hits home; and no, I won't write it down here - yet. ;)

So - how do you title your films, and do you think the viewer places as much importance on it as I (or maybe we, we'll see about that) do?

Lethal Entertainment

I've already planned to have a site for my films when I worked on the Creative Voice website - now it's online!

Lethal Entertainment is the home of everything 'sisch' - anymation/machinima related - as of now, it features Kate Lee's 'The Afflicted' with detailed background information, a films archive where you'll find everything you ever wanted to know about my older films, homages to voice-actors and modders.... and in the future it will have quite an extensive production diary - yeah, yeah, I'm talking 'bout that secret project again... ;)



Hope you'll enjoy visiting the site! There's also a new link added to the navigation bar of this blog!

The Afflicted is online!

Little did I know that this would be such an ordeal - Vimeo took about 15 hours to convert the movie (I uploaded yesterday) - that has never happened to me before...

The Moviestorm version is visually nice, but there's a sound-synch problem due to flash converting. Nonetheless I thank all those who already watched, and hope you'll watch it again in HD, now on Vimeo (also for download)! It's also up on TMUnderground now, and I'm happy to say that it's the featured film on the Moviestorm page!

I hope you'll enjoy the movie - I'm very glad that both Kate and Sherwin seem to like it!

It's done when it's done.....

.... and it is done!

After countless problems, The Afflicted is finally rendered now - until the last this film was very stubborn - filters didn't work, Vegas produced countless crashes even though I had pre-rendered every little scene (with a heavy heart, but my computer just isn't up to handling files of this complexity, so I have to live with the quality loss) and decided it didn't want to render in .wmv, which is normally my preferred format - so I tried loads of different things, none worked until I found this tutorial by Eugenia.

So now I have a very nice looking mp4 version of the movie - I think it looks even better than .wmv, and the file is astonishingly small - only 311 MB at high definition!

As you can imagine, I'm very, very happy. :)

Was there anything else? Mhm? Oh yeah, release date.... :D

Either coming tuesday or wednesday... so stay tuned!

Hurray!

Back in business, baby -

I've got my vo re-takes for The Afflicted, already re-shot and re-composited (is that a word? Oh bugger), and now it won't take that much longer to finish the movie!

Sound design is coming along fine, too - I've reverted to my old working style, doing it scene by scene.

So all's well in sisch-topia. :)

On another note, I just saw a film that blew me away -
Mellowhardy's Cafe Insomniac ep. 2 - just wow!
I strongly recommend you watch it, and if you haven't seen ep. 1 (shame on you!), do that first!
It's a great story, professionally filmed - the camera work is to die for, and pure inspiration to me!

Until soon!

When nothing works as you want it to

A two weeks holiday for which I had so many plans - and now I've spent most of the first week lying flat on my back and accomplishing next to nothing ... must be some cosmic thing that makes me come down with a very nasty bout of stomach-flu during my holiday!

Haven't been able to do any of the vo's I promised people, The Afflicted is lying around unfinished, haven't been able to export Saving Grace in two parts to a format that the uploader on bitfilms will accept... haven't been able to work on an idea for a music vid that struck me; or sing any of the songs I wanted to practise on.

The only good news is that the script for my not-yet-to-be-named- project is slowly growing - in fact, is nearly written in it's entirety, but a whole new bunch of questions have arisen... I'm not at all sure that I'll be capable of doing it any time soon. As of now, it has about 18 characters who just need to have distinct faces - I'm not sure I can pull that off with Moviestorm at the moment.
Just as well that I planned on a break after The Afflicted - I'll have to do some serious brain-storming, asking a lot of modders for help - but that won't help the lack of faces, especially as I will need even more different characters for mass-scenes.

Of course it could work with incorporating The Movies characters - but I really want to make this film using MS only. *sigh*
Doesn't help either that I think this is the best script I've written so far, and that my perfectionistic streak insists on not making compromises.. or if I have to, the less, the better.

Oh well.

Off to bed now again - I'm sure everything will look brighter again once I've recovered fully.

/rant

My website is online!

Finally, after leaving the domain lying around unused for over a year, I managed to put up my own website!

On Creative Voice, you'll find informations on all of the things I love doing, with pictures, voice-over demo and songs and some movies.

Hope you enjoy the visit! You'll also find a link to it on the top of this page!

A mistake I won't make again

Ever wanted to smack yourself real hard? I do right now....

The Afflicted could be nearly finished right now. But it isn't, and it's entirely my fault, for thinking too much of my ability to clean vo's and get them to sound just right.

Having made a lot of machinima films, I'm used to working with different quality vo's. Everyone has a different set-up, different quality mic, room sounds etc. etc. etc.
So from the start, I tried to learn as much about quality and sound enhancement as I could, experimenting a lot - and though it often wasn't easy, I was able to get good results.

Now this time, I overestimated myself. And the worst part is, I only realised it now -when every scene is filmed, composited, ready.... at the stage when I add the original vo's and the sounds to the finished product. It just doesn't work. I do owe an apology to Goofparade, who told me from the start he thought I should ask for retakes after listening to a sample of my cleaning efforts.
I cleaned again instead, and thought this time I got it.

Apparently not - I have to admit that I made a mistake, asked for help (thank you, Ricky, for your time and efforts!) - and now re-takes it is. Which means I'll have to re-film all the scenes for which the new takes will be made, and go back to compositing and snippets-exporting...

Thankfully, the actor in question will do the vo's again - and by no means I want to lay any blame there - this is entirely my mistake, and one I will make never again.

And of course it means you'll have to wait a little longer for the movie...