Darth Angelus' Meditation Chamber

Yesterday I posted the teaser for A Galaxy in Darkness, the final part of story I started developing way back in 2000.

Yes, that's right, eight years ago. It was originally just going to be fan fiction (I wrote some of it, which I still have) but I really felt that it should be a film of some kind. Except that I was 16 at the time, the only camera I had was a webcam (which I did make a video with later on), I didn't know enough people that would be willing to take part, at least not locally. And then there's all the different locations, planets with different environments, starships etc. It was way more than just a lightsaber duel in a forest that many fanfilms tend to be.

Anyway, in 2002, after seeing Attack of the Clones, I really wanted to tell my story, so I started looking at alternatives to live action. With some work and a few changes, it became a trilogy and with all the characters and events figured out. A little different from the fan fiction I had originally written but I was much happier with it. The result was a 2d animated film (Falling into Darkness) which I put online later that year. It was really awful (and probably the only video I have yet to put on YouTube) but it was a start and I was so pleased with it.

I still had two more to do but over the next few years I got distracted by other projects and college work.

Then towards the end of 2004 I started making machinima. Consanguinity (a Buffy/Angel inspired series for those who don't know it) came first and while I considered making another season of that, the hype for Revenge of the Sith was beginning. Maybe it was time to make the second part?

I looked at the story and realised that the second episode was actually too long, I had to split it in two, which was fine, it would come over much better that way. Jedi Academy seemed like the best choice, it was highly modable so I could have the characters as they looked originally and with all the maps available I could have all the locations I wanted.

By this point I had realised just how awful that first film was, so rather than subject people to it, I thought I'd create a catchup video, retelling the important events from before but using Jedi Academy and it would serve as a test to see if it was actually possible. That video kept growing, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes. By the time I got to 10, I figured I might as well just retell the whole thing.

So that's what I did, with some reworking of the story to strip away the unimportant parts and expanding upon areas that needed it. It was released in 2005, a few weeks before Revenge of the Sith.

A few months later, I started on the sequel. I had to recast the role of Verrier but I feel lucky to have reacquainted myself with an old friend, who it turns out is a very talented voice actress (just wait until you hear her in the final episode!). She was kind enough to record all the dialogue for Falling into Darkness as well, so in 2006 I rereleased that followed by The Darkness Consumes a week later.

Towards the end of the year, my computer died. Annoying at the time but it turned out to be a great benefit, since the replacement system could run Jedi Academy at a much higher resolution.

In 2007, inspired by the success of The Death of Jar Jar (and it being one of the finalists in the official fan film awards that year), I worked on the third episode, Darkness Unleashed which was released in November with a premiere at Festival Arcadia in Montreal.

And so now I am working on the final episode which I'm aiming to release this November, again in Montreal as part of a Machinima workshop, wehere I'll be teaching people how to make their own. It's weird, something that's been part of my life for so long is about to end. I'm going to miss it in a way but it's great to have almost completed something I began all those years ago.

So yesterday I got to meet Amber Benson for the fourth time and bought the DVD of her film, Lovers, Liars and Lunatics.

You know what was really great? I approached the table, before uttering a single word she asked "So how's the film making going?" and then went on to talk about the Consanguinity DVD I gave her over TWO years ago.

Photo

Plus more photos of Cardiff and the outside of the Doctor Who exhibition.

Well, since I needed to create a trailer for Consanguinity in order to submit it to the festival, I thought I'd share it here.

Consanguinity Trailer

With the upcoming Machinima Festival Europe 07, I thought I'd send in just about every piece of Machinima that I've worked on, so I've gone back to the beginning and restored the Consanguinity project files in order to produce the highest possible quality edition.

For those who don't know, Consanguinity is a series of short episodes inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel that I worked on way back in 2004 and it's also the first Machinima that I created.

So here it is for anyone that's interested, all 10 episodes of Consanguinity. For best results, download the file and you get a nice DVD menu interface. I'll also be releasing them in Quicktime format later.

Freedom!

Until the 8th.


So now I decided to stalk myself and see what I could find:

College Prospectus my name is mentioned on page 5 ;)

Consanguinity at Answers.com
Consanguinity at Opentopia
Consanguinity gets a brief mention
A mostly positive review of Consanguinity
Consanguinity at Slayerverse
Consanguinity again

Star Wars: Falling into Darkness on the humlab blog

It's been awhile since I updated.

The 2006 Machinima Festival was brilliant. It was good to see Ingrid, Ricky and Jacen again (I met them earlier in the year in Los Angeles). It was good to meet up with other people in the Machinima community, including Hugh Hancock who wrote an excellent article about my first Machinima production, Consanguinity and Paul Marino.

I also met and stayed with sanfam and was introduced to his friend aurora_nine who I've been getting on very well with ;)

Also at the festival they had an exhibit of video games, including the first Star Wars Arcade game (which I had to try, I've played it before but never in the actual arcade machine).

Photos

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The website for my new series, The Chronicles of Humanity is finally online.

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I have reactivated my Eve Online account. The corporation I was part of apparently fell apart after I stopped playing and I was left as CEO, giving me access to all the money, ships and resources that weren't taken. Basically I became at least 10 times richer than I was before :)

My ship: The Grudge, it's a Vengeance Assault Frigate that I've had for ages, yes I'm quite fond of her. Apparently, The Grudge is so good that I can destroy enemy ships without even firing, they just explode.

Possible explaination from doomihlvaria: "Maybe what happened was your corporation disbanded because they all resorted to the most terrible torture that they all became twisted reaver-like barbarians, unable to remain organized. And seeing your ship under that old banner made your enemies self-destruct rather than face such horrible suffering.

More Eve screenshots, most of them are old.

This weekend, I went to Collectormania 10 in Milton Keynes. I got to meet Alice Krige (The Borg Queen in Star Trek), Juliet Landau (Drusilla from Buffy) and Amber Benson (Tara, also in Buffy). I also wanted to meet Dave Prowse, I've met him before on my 13th birthday, so it would have been good to do the same again for my 23rd) but sadly I ran out of time.

Pictures!

I don't like what my hair did.

Also, see my cousin in the stormtrooper picture :)

I didn't get a picture with Amber Benson, the girl sitting next to her was being...difficult...but I found one from last year. Also last year I gave her a copy of Consanguinity on DVD, which she remembered and talked about with me today, she actually watched and liked it! :D

I also saw Julie Caitlin Brown again, she was managing and not appearing as a guest. Still, I got to say hello and she told me to stop growing up so fast :)

I had a good time, but now I should finish reading for college tomorrow. I really hope I don't have to take the big stack of books with me.

This time, Consanguinity has been added to the article explaining what fanfilms are.

Link

I was checking to see where my site has been getting hits from lately and I noticed...

Consanguinity has been listed on Wikipedia!

I have no idea who did it but I'm not going to complain.

A few weeks ago, I posted about giving a copy of Consanguinity to Anthony Head (Giles in Buffy).

Earlier, my mum saw him at the post office, he went over to her and said how much he had enjoyed it but his only complaint was the watcher didn't look like him.


I really should get around to writing about my trip to America...

I was looking at videos on Youtube while I'm waiting for some of my own to upload. While I was there, I found a video that shows off plenty of scenes that were the original inspiration for Consanguinity. So I thought I should post a link here, for those who are curious.

The Fang Four