[showoff] [machinima] [contest] War Stories!

[Pinkhair]

In a frenzied 48 hours, I made War Stories and submitted it to the Blizzcon contest. In those two days I spent way too much time on custom models and model editing while I was hunting for voice actors and stuff.

You can watch the full movie(and vote!) at Blizzard Entertainment: 20th Anniversary: Memories of Blizzard Video Contest and my entry is James "Pinkhair" Lawless.

Any help on the voting front would be really appreciated- as you can see, the other videos were all kinda lazy, just people talking at a camera. Nothing wrong with that, but I put a ton more work into mine and I think it shows. Watch those videos and see for yourself.

Aaron Putich didn't even make an entry, he just reposted(against the rules) a video from February that already had 75k views.


Anyway, this is not the usual model editing stuff for here, but Xel was interested in seeing more about the behind the scenes with all this, so here's some stuff^_^

Here you can see a better view of what I did with the zeppelin- I think I actually put way too much effort into it, since the explosion special effects kinda hid the breaking up pieces. I also animated the balloon tearing, but that you don't really see at all. Ah well.

Cutting the Zeppelin up was the real annoying part. I got a bit sloppy with the UV maps, but since I was using the uncut version up unti lthe explosion started it didn't really matter. Especially with the smoke and fire covering everything.

And here you can see how the catapult was rigged. I couldn't believe there was no working catapult in the game other than the forsaken one! So I had to start from scratch with pieces from the unanimated ones.



The computer model. I started out with the basic mesh that I had made for the movie Brain Chili, but completely redid the monitor, desk, etc. and all the textures.


Here you can see that I faked the reflections in his eyes, since they wouldn't have looked 'right' with normal wow eyes.

[EveronMightbane]

This is amazing.. You did an amazing job!

[Xel]

As I already said, you got my vote Pinkhair :>

[00MasterBlaster00]

I loved the video when I saw this, but now I love it 10x more just seeing all the effort put into it! Great job. The fact that Aaron has more likes than you and put zero effort into his video and its simply recycled makes me pretty mad, and Blizz should be notified.

[Pinkhair]

Blizz has been notified by email, and is looking into it. Aaron hid his original video off of youtube, which makes proving it significantly harder, though the google cache, etc, still show thumbnails.

Here's the background I made; not a full panorama, but the full size image was 3k x 2.2k pixels soI didn't want to make it any bigger than needed. for the shots.


Thanks to those who voted- I am still behind Chris Modica, who is the real problem; he's been spamming reddit and who knows what else and has managed to get ahead of me. He's claiming that his video is the ticket to a job at Blizzard, which is at best a... misrepresentation of the facts, and encouraging people to vote without watching the competition.

I think if everyone voting watched all the videos, they'd see who put the most into this contest.

[Bjarke]

Voted for you.
Good job incorporating self made models into your machinema, i enjoyed it.

[Pinkhair]

Voted for you.
Good job incorporating self made models into your machinema, i enjoyed it.

Thanks! Every, EVERY vote counts. I'm behind Modica by only 10 votes...^_^

[supora]

I voted for you. Amazing machinema.

[BanzBoyz77]

You do have to admit, that boss kill by the leading video is pretty epic considering he got blasted 10000 feet in the air. I don't think blizzard is looking for the person that puts the most effort into their video, but a good memory. You video I forgot half of it already, that other video I will never forget... Not ridiculing you but just giving my stand point for what I think blizzard is looking for and why the other video is leading.

[Pinkhair]

You do have to admit, that boss kill by the leading video is pretty epic considering he got blasted 10000 feet in the air. I don't think blizzard is looking for the person that puts the most effort into their video, but a good memory. You video I forgot half of it already, that other video I will never forget... Not ridiculing you but just giving my stand point for what I think blizzard is looking for and why the other video is leading.

Well, first of all a memory of atramedes is like a memory of what I had for breakfast this morning...

Second of all, that guy cheated, as I said. He just reposted a video that already had 75,000 views on youtube, same editing and everything. So no matter how many votes he gets he will probably be disqualified- I know he's been reported.

And besides, blizz's input stopped at selecting finalists- this is MMowned, and effort and quality matter here even if they don't to most wow players.
Right?