Posts with tag CodeMonkey

I'm hijacking Moviewatch today, so that I can spotlight one of my all time favorite machinimas: Codemonkey. Jonathon Coulton's song, the fact that he released it under the Creative Commons license and Spiffworld's movie-making skills combine to make this a fun video to watch.

Sure, Codemonkey is 3 years old or so, but it's fun to look back on the good stuff, right? And it's nice looking at a Booty Bay without all those wannabe pirates picking on the guards.

If you were to take over Moviewatch to play your favorite machinima, what would you choose?

A little while ago, we asked what a good PvP video looked like, and so it's only natural that we should ask, as Relmstein did recently, what makes a good machinima? Yes, PvP vids are technically machinima, but in this case, I'd say we're talking about videos that tell a story that doesn't necessarily center around PvP-- stuff like Illegal Danish, Time Gnomes, and even music videos like Big Blue Dress (which is also a PvP video) and Code Monkey.

Relmstein tries to make a spectrum between professional production and a strong script, but I'm not sure those are on opposite ends-- it's definitely possible to have both. I'd say a good, strong script is important for sure no matter how your movie looks. Humor tends to be popular, but I think that's only because non-humor stuff tends to be overly dramatic RP stuff so far-- it's hard to convey real emotion, as my friend recently said when I showed her the Code Monkey video, with characters who don't change facial expressions.

And maybe this is just me, but I kind of have a pet peeve with some machinima-- I really tend to dislike overuse of the Model Viewer to create improbable situations. It has it's place, I think-- Hardware Store is a great video that uses the Model Viewer almost exclusively for all sorts of fun. But I am more impressed by the folks who are able to shoot great stuff inside the actual game engine rather than flooding the screen with their own creations, effects, and graphics. Yeah, it takes skill to come up with all your own stuff, but if I'm watching a WoW video, I'd rather it was made with WoW, not five or six other programs just using the WoW models.

But maybe that's just my own personal opinion. What do you think makes a great machinima video?

In this edition of Moviewatch, we're treated to another Spiffworld/Jonathan Coulton video. This actually originally had its World Premiere at Blizzcon 2007, but according to Spiffworld, "Everybody was going nuts for Code Monkey." While I love Code Monkey, I have to admit, the dark humor involved in this one made me giggle far more. At least, when compared to the "aww" that Code Monkey got out of me, anyway.

Previously on Moviewatch...