Kangaroos!

I'll be in Australia for four weeks, yay :) I'm planning to take some video footage there too, and some pictures ofc, but machinima has to wait a while :) Hopefully I'll come home with lots of new ideas tho. There really should be kangaroos in WoW, don't you think?

Merry Christmas to you!

I wish you a magical, wonderful, extraordinary Christmas with lots of good stuff under your tree - shiny new pc parts, addictive games, unhealthy food wrapped in gold paper, awesome toys with lots of buttons or whatever else your creative mind might be wishing for :)

The Story

A wonderful song, an amazing voice and some visuals to go with it.
Cranius performs the song "The Story", originally by Brandi Carlile.

Enjoy :)



And here you can download the song: http://www.cranius.com/audio/thestory.mp3

Guess what

Aion was just a bit too tempting to stay away (wOOt I haz WINGS!!!)

There goes my plan to be productive...

Remember Big Blue Dress?

Cranius finally published the song on his new album, together with "Darrowshire", "Don't Make Me Get My Main" and other WoW related songs. Check it out :)

Big Blue Dress on Amazon

Big Blue Dress on iTunes

Don't Make Me Get My Main

I must admit, somewhere between the awesome costume contest and the catching striptease dance contest at Blizzcon I fell asleep in my chair. I couldn't believe it when I suddenly heard that well known song by Cranius filling the huge hall, together with the laughter and screaming of the people surrounding me. We won first prize and the audience went crazy watching our video.

I haven't been able to see and hear the reaction of an audience that big upon one of my videos until then, and it was an amazing experience. Neither Cranius nor I could get rid of that big grin in our faces for quite some time. So, to everyone who was there: Thank you! You really made my day :)

Here's the movie featuring Cranius' song "Don't Make Me Get My Main":



Also a big GZ to X-cross who won the grand prize with his hilarious movie about the fate of a cute "Don't take candle" family. I laughed so hard! But see for yourself:

Blizzcon and stuff

Some days ago Cranius and I finished the video for the machinima contest at Blizzcon. It features a new and very cool song created by Cranius.

Two very nice and patient players helped us with some acting, Cranius directed the scenes and I filmed the whole thing. As always we had a lot of fun creating the scenes and putting them together to the hilarious music video that came out.

No spoilers about the content here. The only thing I can tell is that this video will show an original World of Warcraft experience made by every player who ever decided to play on a PvP server ;)

I passed on using any Wowmodelviewer tricks, background changes in Photoshop or other fancy stuff, which was quite a challenge. It's all about showing a typical aspect of the real game in a hopfully very entertaining, authentic and original way.

We will release the movie after Blizzcon, i.e. end of August.

Until then I'm gonna enjoy the summer. Imagine me sitting under a tree, listening to some music, reading a book or writing a story, far away from any screen and "Unknown error". That's the plan.

Btw... I'm gonna be at Blizzcon :)

Last Man Standing - PvP video by Cranius

He rules!

Wrought

I’ve been working on a music/story-line movie with Cranius for a few months now and finally it’s done.

The song, "Wrought", is by Cranius' friends, an awesome Rock Band called Peratus. Go listen to more of their music if you like Wrought! You can find them here: www.myspace.com/peratus1.

Our interpretation of their song is a tragedy which unfolds as you see flashbacks from the perspective of an undead warrior who recalls how he fell in love with a beautiful blood elf before his undead existence, a forbidden love which was unacceptable to her people.

Back in january Cranius first showed me the song and we decided to machinimate it together. I loved it from the start and was quite happy about the challenge. And a challenge it was indeed. The story grew while we were filming scenes in World of Warcraft or discussing the different aspects of the movie over months. However we didn't know how it would end until a few days ago.

I hope you enjoy the result of this collaboration :)

FAQ

I tried to answer every question asked in mails so far but got to the point where it's just too time consuming, and I thought this FAQ might help.


What programs do you use?

I use Fraps (to capture), Wowmodelviewer and World of Warcraft (that's where I film in) and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere (to edit). Sony Vegas appears to be just as good as Premiere btw. Some other programs I used once or twice are Wowmapviewer, Particle Illusion and CrazyTalk.


How did you attach the wings to the bloodelves?

I didn’t really attach them to the chars but filmed the wings separately in the modelviewer and made them move with the chars by hand.


Where did you find the band in Wowmodelviewer?

All the band models can be found in the folder named “band” under “creatures”.


What’s the name of the song in the video XY?

All the songs used in my videos are listed in the credits. An exception is the song in the end credits of Route 440, it’s called "Crush" by Paul Van Dyk. I forgot to mention that one in the video, my bad.


Can you make a movie to my rap song?

Nope sorry. I work on other projects at the moment and rap isn’t really my prefered choice of music (with very few exceptions).


On what World of Warcraft server are you playing?

I played on Terrordar EU. I stopped playing when my main char hit level 80 though. I have some other chars on different servers, but for filming only.


What’s your char’s name?

On Terrordar I have 4 chars:

Wildmoon, female bloodelf warlock, lvl 80
Legs, female troll shaman, lvl 72
Lísa, female undead mage, lvl 71
Atalanta, female orc hunter, lvl 70

Wildmoon appears in every movie I made (not always as warlock tho), Legs in a few.


Why did you choose such a weird artist name?

Temporary mental disorder. It is the name of my very first WoW char and when I started to make videos (only for my guild at first and not exactly machinima) I just stuck with that.

In For A Penny – Part 2 (by Selserene)

My dear friend and collegue Selserene has finally finished In For A Penny – Part 2 "The Thorne of Rose Street". Previous movies of the IFAP series are:
In For A Penny – Prologue
In For A Penny – Part 1 "On All Eight"

Selserene is one of the top machinima creators to be found on the net. Her movies are special, incredibly stylish and with so much love for details, that you can watch them countless times still finding new stunning things you weren’t aware of before.

The IFAP series are chapters of a thrilling story of love, lies and intrigue. Thayle, a charismatic (and definitely straight) male bloodelf, who is being hunted by the law for the murder of the Chief of police, tries to find a way to clear his name. The singer Leda, his secret lover and only witness of his innocence, has her own ways to deal with things, and not even Thayle himself is able to see what is going on behind those beautiful eyes of his girl. Leda is by far not the only mysterious person in this film noir, and as the story proceeds more and more hints are to be discovered by the viewer.

The voice acting for Leda (Selserene) and Thayle (Cranius) is outstanding and the music choice as well as the sound design fits very well.

I was stunned when I got to watch part two and am excited to see how the story will develop further.

See for yourself:

Watch more videos of WoW

Ulduar

My first blog post on my first blog… yay!

So, I’m a Swiss machinima director, mostly making music videos using World of Warcraft.

That said... Cranius asked me ten days ago if I was willing to help him with filming a music video for the song “Ulduar”. He sang this parody of Timbaland’s “The Way I Are” together with Summergale, who also wrote the hilarious lyrics.

The first time I heard that song I was just... hm... let’s say stunned. Although that doesn’t quite express how I felt. Anyway, I knew I just heard some pure awesomeness, with very professional voices and sound design, that would be a huge hit.

It goes without saying that I accepted this challenge.

It was an insane week of filming with Cranius at night and editing the scenes at daytime; sleep had to wait because we wanted to have it done before the actual Ulduar patch was here.

We filmed on several servers, including the PTR for Ulduar scenes, transfered and leveled chars and Summergale recruited guildmembers to help. Although it was hellishly stressful, I had a great time making that video.