Machinomics

[Optimum Actor]

Does anyone else here make Machinomics? This is like Machinima but instead of creating a video you make a webcomic. Most of disciplines in Machinomics seem to be the same as in Machinima, only you do a photo shoot rather than a video shoot, and post-production tends to be with Gimp/Photoshop rather than a video editor.

This avatar is part of athe Seconds webcomic crew that makes the webcomic of the same name using mostly Second Life. I'd be interested in hearing about other's experiences in making comics using Second Life.

[Madelaine McMasters]

The forum Queen (Princess?) of Machinomics would be Janelle Darkstone. She hasn't had an outburst lately, but here's the result of her last one...

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion/One-Night-At-The-Bar/m-p/1906583#M3362

[Janelle Darkstone]

"Outburst?"

 

How strangely fitting.

[Optimum Actor]

Very good. Oh, I forgot to mention Jenny Everywhere's Infinite: Quark Time which looks very much made in Second Life (or alternative grid). The character Jenny Everywhere makes some appearances in Seconds as well, but then she's a open-source character and appears in a lot of other comics as well (though not neccesarily machinomics).

 

[Janelle Darkstone]

I think the hardest part of it all is SL itself.  Having to manage prims when you have a studio, adding props, finding props, making do with what you have although it falls far short of the image you had in mind when you started.  Add to that random lag, random disconnects of other peoples' avatars, random crashes of your own that do nothing but mess up a good work groove.

In a perfect world we'd have huge, grandiose, lifelike sets with thousands of little details added.  We'd have a huge crowd of nicely dressed, skinned and haired character avatars, all wonderfully unique and quirky and ready to go.  We'd have a selection of props at our fingertips and always the perfect lighting.

We'd have more expressive faces and hands.  Especially hands.

Stories are easy.  Jokes are easy.  Pushing, hacking and making workarounds in SL aren't quite as simple.

[Optimum Actor]

So very true. I've learned most of that in the last four years I've been making "Return to Secoind Life". Along the way I came to realise that many of these problems match those in TV and film productions. Sourcing locations, sets, props, costumes and organising shoots and people, while managing a budget is what Producers, Directors and others all do on those for real world productions, and we do as well in Second Life.

I've also come realise that making either also involves lots of "modding" as well as building - buying cheap stuff for modification as props, and then re-using them in ways not expected by the seller! For example, I bought a set of pipes for a set I was building which also hade a couple mesh "rivets", and these did double duty as flashing lights on a helipad. Also, there's a difference between most builds and sets. A regular build in Second Life might be static and more or less permanent, but a built set exists only for one or more scenes - so it needs to be stored and rebuilt for later use. I've sorted tout that issue recently by using Builder's Buddy to store scenes - it's free, open-source and works.  A boon for continuity in my stories.

Machinomics may have one advantage over Machinima - you can do it with less people. Because it's static shots rather a video shoot you can take your time setting things up. Actors can be posed for an exact scene, and if you're doing it by yourself you can can actually do it it with a camera lock and one avatar (though that's an awful lot of mucking about).

 

[Janelle Darkstone]

On props; when doing this one, I quickly browsed MP for a cookie prop and the only free one available was that one, no modify and huge.  Naturally I couldn't resize them down to half size for the characters' scale so I used those huge cookies and went with it.  Knowing what I know now, though, I'd just find some on Google images and drop them in later.

On sets and studios; once I got down to using a permanent set with off-camera props rezzed and ready to slide in as needed and a HUD that memorized and recalled cam locations, all I had to do was rez the AnyPose pads, bring in additional characters, flatten the cam a bit (usually ctrl+0 three times for a good cartoony look) and go nuts.  Pose, shoot, pose, shoot, usually done very quickly.  Knocking out a finished strip in 2-4 hours was very doable and fun.

I'm a devout believer in greenscreening too.