A Side Project

Things are going a bit slower than we had planned for our Superhero series, so I'm working on a side project. It's mostly on my own, but I've also got some help from family.

It is based on the idea that the chase scene in the first Transformers movie was way too short, and will involve the following characters (plus a few more):






I'm not really going for the same thing as all the stop motion animation Transformers fanvids on youtube. I may use some stop motion, but I'm mostly going to treat the toys as miniatures. I'll probably even chroma key in my kids, just for the fun of it.

I Am Testosterone Man!

This is a concept from way back in the day. It wasn't even mine, originally. We had to do a short film in our youth group, and this is what we came up with. I don't have the film (I don't think it exists at all anymore, actually), but anyone who saw it will attest that it was freakin' hilarious. I ended up playing the main character, and from that point on, I have been Testosterone Man. I had this drawn up by a comic artist I met in the Philippines, and it looks a whole lot better than the white long johns and pink cape that we started with.

So, I believe this is where we'll be going with our "How To Be A Superhero" shorts.

I'm gonna make a total and complete fool of myself, and then I'm gonna put it on youtube. This is gonna be awesome!

Our Goals

I thought now would be a good time to outline the goals of our little organization. Our long term goal is in Interactive Storytelling. If you're not familiar with that concept, it's what the Choose Your Own Adventure books were, except that we plan to do it with video. We've considered both animation and live action, so we'll see where that goes.

The thing is that interactive stories require considerably more work than regular fiction. A one hour story that has only four decisions from the audience would require over seven hours of footage (that's some math that I definitely need to look at more closely - there has to be a formula for that). I would consider us amateur filmmakers at best, so we have some progress to make before we start in on the really difficult stuff. That's why we're currently working on silly little short films like "How To Be a Superhero" - It's all for practice.

And for fun. Fun is good. :-)

Starting on Our First Project

We've started our first project - "How To Be A Superhero - Chapter 1: Discovering Your Superpower." Yes, I said Chapter 1. This will be the first in a 5 part series of very unrealistic, just-for-laughs videos. I will play the guy that gets pulled off the street and paid $20 to be a test subject. Daylan will play the guy running the tests (Oh, of course, they're very scientific... Yeah, right!). And Andrew will be the one running the show. We should start filming the first week of May, and have it done by the end of the month.

Oh, and I honestly don't think that I'll look like that in the video, but the picture was classic HeroMachine fun.

The Membership is Growing

On Saturday I met with Andrew and Daylan. They were both in that initial film that we did, and were hard working, talented guys. I'm glad to have them on board. They may even make a few posts here. Andrew's specialty is fight choreography, as well as writing. Daylan is an awesome designer and 3d modeler, and is pretty good at programming as well. And they both share my passion for making games and movies. As far as I know, Andrew doesn't have his own site, but Daylan's is at eegamedesign.com.

Oh, and for your viewing enjoyment, here is that film I keep talking about.

Illusionext is Officially Up And Running

A little over a year ago, I headed up a little film we called Eilert The Dragon Slayer. While we had made a few short films before, this time we were attempting something that had never been done at the Murray ITT before - a ten minute short film. We were told that anytime another group had attempted to make a film longer than two minutes, they had failed. Ours was ten minutes. Well, we made it. It's far from perfect, but it was done.

We called ourselves Illusionext. We've hardly seen each other since then, so we haven't used the name since. But today I'm changing that. Today Illusionext is back.