If something is organic, but it comes in a plastic package doesn't that defeat the purpose?

Well i felt pretty good about my presentation. It generated alot of interesting discussion about my topic that I want to bring into my essay. The most important part that I took from it is what Dr. Mactavish said about people who want to take machinima in a more serious direction take the play aspect out of it more than the people who produce it for the sake of machinima itself. Essentially, I don't think that machinima for itself will ever be huge. I think its kind of trendy and will probably fizzle out once more sophisticated technology comes along. However, I feel that it will continue to play a role in story boarding because it really does simplify the process and make things cheaper.

I still stick with my thesis that machinima blurs the distinction between work and play. If playing a game is playing... playing a game for work is still playing it just means you have a killer awsome job.

Alright it's time to start the machinima journey.

Machinima is a way of independent film making.
Its where you make a movie by using a game engine. And game engines are so awsome now I think its a killer awsome idea.
Now depending on the sophistication of the engine the movie may not be the most believeable work but for an equiptment free approach to film its pretty good.

Here's my favourite so far. Its so funny and the graphics are awsome too.
Red vs. Blue

I think that the focus of my essay or presentation will be that machinima offers people with out the money to produce expensive films a venue for sophisticated creative expression minus the cost but not minus the awsomeness

I'll be back with more next week.

I have been collecting sites that showcase excellent examples of web design. Sometimes I need some inspiration and these sites really help...
This one shows off what can be done with CSS:
Beautiful CSS Based Web Designs in 2006

This one breaks down designs by style or colour:
Web Designs From Scratch

I also subscribe to an online magazine about Flash stuff...Unfortunately some of the resources cost money but there is alot of great free stuff too:
Flzone

This is just really cool:
Comcastic

Of the hypertexts we have viewed in class...
It seems to me like they are all experimental, artistic and scholarly but outdated.
Although last week I talked about My Body making me uncomfortable (and it still does), it is artistic in a very intelligent way. The words seem to flow together, which juxtaposes the broken up nature of the hypertext.
Anyways...
This week I was determined to find some interesting examples of hypertext that are a little more recent.
I stumbled upon hypercomics, which are web comics set up in hypertext form. They are killer awsome. I love this one...

Merlism: The Book of Merl
It is interesting because it uses images as the hypertext links to explore the wacky 'religious doctrine' of Merlism (a made up religion that is actually more of a theological criticism).

Another cool but more linear one is The Jerk
(well it can be done in a linear way or not, so that makes it pretty cool)

I like it because it can be linear or not and once again it uses images. which I am beginning to think helps the reader move through the hypertext and keep him or her interested.

I also found this article about Hypercomics.com:
HyperComics attempts to capture magic of comic books online, and fails by Josh Lowensohn
He talks about hypercomics made on hypercomics.com with Comic Book Creator.

Lockergnome, author of Hypercomics.com: Online Social Network For Artists, Comic Book And Story Creators, Fans commends the site for being a free way to social network through an interesting medium. He believes the site is great for putting comics in the hands of web users where Lowensohn criticizes the site in this area. He belives that the software is not geared for the 'wanna-be' comic artists on hypercomics.com and recommends Comic Vine instead. Comic vine allows the user to make wiki like entries about comics and share their own web comics with others.
Depite the quality of sites that allow people to create hypercomics, I think it is great that hypertext is being taken into the hands of interested web comic artists (perhaps even without recognizing it).