The Matchstick Women

'The Matchstick Women' was created using the Moviestorm platform and gives voice to teenagers in inner city Salford. This candid documentary was created in participation with Salford Foundation and Eyecatcher Productions during a summer school for local children. It uses machinima to tell real stories of life in the Charlestown and Lower Kersal area of Salford, Greater Manchester. These stories relate to the audience what life is like growing up in an inner city area in relation to street gangs, knife crime, under-age drinking, teenage pregnancy and future prospects. You can see images from the film below:-

Fallopian Magazine - Machinima in Education

The latest edition of Fallopian has just been released. This machinima publication promotes experimental, innovation and emotive machinima art. Published by Kate Fosk and Trace Sanderson this months subject is Machinima in Education. I have two articles in this issue; 'Machinima 101 - How to Introduce Machinima into the Classroom', and 'Digital Matchstick Men - The Salford Foundation Machinima Project'. You can read the publication by following this link.

Controlling the expressions of virtual characters

In this video Torben Sko demonstrates how to control the facial expressions of a virtual character using a webcam. This demo uses a piece of software called FaceAPI (created by Seeing Machines) that can tracks facial features and uses the data to drive the expression of a virtual character. This work was recently exhibited at the Australian National Portrait Gallery as part of the Youth Self Portrait prize. You can read about Torben's PhD and his other project on his website.

Ephemeral Media Conference - Machinima

I noticed this video over on the Pineapple Chunks machinima blog. It's a very interesting presentation from machinima expert Hugh Hancock. This was shot during the Ephemeral Media Conference at the University of Nottingham on the 23-24th June 2009. You can read about the event on Susi O'Neill's blog here or have at look at the conference website here.

Augmenting Google Earth with Video

Using motion capture data with CCTV cameras students at 'Georgia Institute of Technology' have succeeded in mapping and animating the real time movements of cars, people and clouds to Google Earth. Although this is not machinima I can see this technology being adapted to virtual film production.