October Update

Custom Content, unfortunate decisions, positive progress with ARENA post-production and upcoming projects. Time for an update. First things first. Pixelated Soundwaves released last week. I really enjoyed making the album and composing all of the songs. The first reactions on the album so far are highly positive, especially within the Habbo community or with people who used to play the game. You can check out my YouTube channel if you want to give the songs a listen.

Now, before I move on to ARENA, I have finished recording the second installment of APPOVTALK, which focuses on the creative process behind Pixelated Soundwaves by exploring a couple of Ableton live projects, a bit of a backstory on Habbo Hotel and also a demonstration of how Trax used to work back in 2007 inside of an externally operated classic Habbo retro server that emulates version 31 of the hotel (which released somewhere in late 2008/early 2009). Expect the format of APPOVTALK to be a lot less formal from this episode on. I want to bring APPOVTALK back to its essence, which is me talking about A Pixelated Point of View, projects, brainwaves and so forth in a highly informal way; more like a one-on-one talk in which I ramble about Machinima, videogames, technology and art. The second installment of APPOVTALK will still release this year on the blog and on YouTube. I will share another dedicated post about APPOVTALK #2 when it releases, so stay tuned.

Let's move on to ARENA. The color grading process is now around 60% done. It has taken a tremendous amount of time ever since I started in September. Luckily I am becoming more consistent in the amount of work that I'm able to shift each day, so that is a huge plus for the postproduction process as a whole. I hope to finish grading around the end of October and/or the beginning of November so that I am able to move on to the soundtrack, visual effects, title design and finishing touches. A December release is still perfectly feasible. 

Unfortunately the custom map that I had planned for the film had to be cancelled since I couldn't get hold of a decent computer that I can use for Quake II mapping. Funds are also too tight to get some decent hardware of any kind. Let's keep it at that. On the bright side, the time I would otherwise spend on mapping can now be used on the online post-production for ARENA. It was a unfortunate decision I had to make because a couple of months ago I decided to focus more on custom-built assets in my work (custom maps, custom objects etc in order to lessen my dependance on copyrighted game assets and to be able to enjoy more creative, artistic and commercial freedom with my work since all of my work can only be released under Creative Commons copyright laws) and I wanted ARENA to be the first film to feature custom made content made by myself of some kind to introduce this idea. I found the thought of having my map featured in my own film alongside those of countless other mappers extremely interesting and inspiring. Anyway, with or without custom map featured in the film, the final result will be awesome. It's really starting to look like a feature film now and I feel a lot of excitement every time I work on the project. I'll share another screenshot of a graded shot featured in ARENA down below.

Moving on to custom content, I have planned out a couple of projects already that utilize the idea of custom content and that remove my dependency on copyrighted game content. Now, I am unable to use this idea in every single game I work with, but I will try it to implement it as much as I can to break free of the copyright limitation. I strongly believe that not only it will benefit my creative and artistic freedom but also the film in general. It is also something that I want to do further research on for the practice of distortion framework and in connection with exceeding the expectations of viewers (does the use of custom content exceed expectations of viewers who are and aren't familiar with the game?). The manuscript about the practice of distortion is coming eventually (within now and a couple of years), by the way. I'm still in the ever lasting process of obtaining and reading literature, which is never done basically.

At this moment, I have a total of two projects that utilize the custom content idea which are in the early concepting phase. More info will follow next year. For 2022, two more releases are planned: the second installment of APPOVTALK and Arena, which is where I put all of my focus on right now.

Was this blogpost all over the place? I don't know. I just feel like I jump from subject to subject. Sorry about that. See you in the next one!