January/February 2023 Update (Huge!)

Time for the first update of 2023! Ever since the last update in December a lot of stuff happened. Like, all at once. Before writing this post, I had a A4 page and a half full of things I wanted to mention in this post. This is most likely the most extensive post I've shared thus far on this blog. There's a lot of cool stuff to share and a lot of things I'm currently working on behind the scenes. Let's get right into it.

Kicking off

Let's start off with some small and personal things. I'm doing great. I feel highly determined, strong. I don't know what exactly is going on, but I like this feeling. I hope it stays all year! I finally (seriously, it's way overdue. I had it on my agenda since last september already) updated all of the thumbnails so that they accurately reflect the laurel count for every film. Some backgrounds on the laurels were also updated. A lot of films were seriously lagging behind. I really like the new thumbnail for IGNIIITIION Instagib for example. Updating thumbnails is really something I love to procrastinate, so I'm quite glad I finally did this. Even my agenda got fed up with me re-planning this stuff. 

In my own time I'm still working on my post-production studio and hope to introduce computer coding to the list of services this year. I've recently finished JavaScript and React courses and I'm currently trying to establish somewhat of a portfolio on GitHub. More about that in a bit. I've also enrolled in this year's edition of CS50: an excellent course provided for free by Harvard University that introduces the basics of computer programming. I'm still up and around the second lecture so far, but this stuff is highly interesting and amazing. David Malan has such an energetic aura around him that simply makes you want to learn and everything shown in the course makes sense, at least so far since it will only get harder as languages as Python and C are introduced later on in the course. I'd love to learn the various C languages since it can help significantly with software development and my machinima work (as a lot of games engines were created with the C family of languages so it should be helpful for modding), so this course is an excellent way to get acquainted with the language.

The huge successes of AR3NA

My goodness. I already said that producing AR3NA was an awesome rollercoaster. But the past month and a half have been another rollercoaster of massive positive proportions. I've received a lot of positive feedback from the Quake community. The film was shared on IGMDB and on ESReality and has received positive comments there as well. 

Unfortunately there was a small bug in the film pointed to me by some members of the community and it was a oversight from my side. I want to elaborate a bit further on it. On the shot found on 0:32, there is this weird artifact shown on the left side of the screen. This was supposed to be a teleporter, but due to an error with the engine (most likely something missing in the map file or the engine initialized the object/fx/texture wrong), it showed this weird object (someone said it looked like a holodeck) instead. Since films cannot be replaced on YouTube, I decided to keep it as is. The reason why it slipped through is most likely because of the fact that I first captured all of the raw demo files inside of the maps (the teleporter worked at that time). Once I captured all 200+ demo's, I started to create shots. Although the shots from this particular map were made in early/mid april, I captured the demo's in february to early march at the latest. Considering there was quite some time in between between these two processes, I assumed the 'holodeck' was part of the map and didn't think anything of it and completely forgot about how the real teleporter was supposed to look like. I'd like to thank everyone for bringing it under my attention.

This is how the teleporter showed up in AR3NA

This is how it was supposed to look like

 

Besides this little oversight, AR3NA has enjoyed huge successes the past month and a half. The views were off to a slow start, but simply exploded at the beginning of January to almost 100 views every 48 hours. AR3NA is well on its way to become the best-viewed machinima film I have ever created and is reaching the 1000-view mark. As a matter of fact, the 1000-view mark was met around the end of January: a huge milestone. Not only AR3NA, other longer films such as Experience are benefiting from additional views as well. Message well received! I will do my best to implement more long form machinima in the future! Around the end of January, AR3NA's views per 48 hours are still very solid and steady. Thank you guys! I'm so curious to see how AR3NA will grow further in 2023 in terms of festivals, views and reception.

Considering AR3NA has only been released a short time ago, it is just insane to see that the film has already been featured on two festivals! 3 days after the official premiere, AR3NA was featured at Milan Machinima Festival's VRAL platform during the holiday season with a overlap into the first five days of 2023. Around the end of January, AR3NA was featured at a festival in Mumbai, India and screened for a physical audience. I'll keep you all updated throughout the year how AR3NA is progressing. More to come!

Milan Machinima Festival 2023

Last year I had the honor to be part of the 2022 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival for the second time. In tandem, AR3NA's participation on MMF's VRAL platform late last year was also the second time my work was featured on VRAL (The Regression trilogy was featured in June 2020). For this year's edition, which will take place in March of 2023,  I will also be a part of the festival, but in a different way. This year I had the honor to design the poster for the festival. Out of a couple of prototypes, the following poster was chosen:

This year's theme was 'Neither artificial nor intelligent'. The keywords given to me during the initial briefing were 'AI' and 'NPC". In tandem with this year's theme, my first thoughts were: pseudo-intelligence, digitization, dehumanization, empty shells, algorithms, compulsory movement (as in NPC speech and/or movement), the contrast between the real and the fabricated and the visualization of computer code. The work was created with the Dall-E Ai provided by OpenAi and in my eyes ideally captures this idea. White experimental, dehumanized masses looking like NPC's in truly absurd poses; just standing there, surrounded by experimental code blobs. Looking around restlessly and waiting for someone, anyone, to give a quest to; to be useful, and to have their own code finally executed. To have their own quest completed. I'd like to extend my thanks once again to the entire MMF team for this wonderful opportunity! More information here

 Buy me a Coffee page

 A Pixelated Point of View now has a Buy me a Coffee Page for donations. I will keep producing machinima no matter if donations come in or not. It is just that the proceeds of the BmaC page allow me to eventually upgrade hardware, purchase additional software/games/plugins, upgrade APPOV related things such as the upcoming website, maintain the machinima Vault fulltime or allow financial breathing space for me to work more and longer on certain projects. More information can be found on: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/appovfilm

More Exhibition news 

Even more exhibition news this early on in the new year! Dusk and Onride were featured on the Lift-Off Global Sessions, a video on demand festival based in the UK between halfway and the end of January. 

Github

I've opened up a Github account last december on which I aim to share all of my coding projects. It eventually should become a host for my coding portfolio and live environments for my (simple) games, pieces of software and algorithms. The portfolio will eventually be implemented in the A Pixelated Point of View website (once both are done that is. I will be first focusing on the coding portfolio. Once that is done, I will start coding the website for A Pixelated Point of View and overhauling my other websites). If you'd like to learn more, please visit: https://github.com/jiyorude

 At the moment I have finished a rock Paper Scissors game coded in JavaScript and I am working on an improved version of the Dominion algorithm. I am currently updating the code and building a front-end for it so that the output can be displayed. I am also looking at a way to implement a 'save as txt file' feature so that people can get a tangible copy of their results. Of course, I am still in the pre-production phase for the Machinima Vault. I am working on a coding portfolio page that initially will be hosted on GitHub and later on on the yet-to-be-built APPOV site. 

Lastly, I am working on a classic world clock in a teletext kind of style. I am not sure at how widespread the world clock feature still is with teletext providers, but at least here, it is big business. I remember there was a national outcry a couple of years ago when the public broadcasting network wanted to cancel Teletext. While many commercial networks have ceased their teletext operations, there are still thousands of people in the Netherlands who use Teletext from the Public Broadcasting Networks through a dedicated teletext app. As early as 2007, two-thirds of people who were asked if they were to miss Teletext responded with 'yes'. See here - This project is a bit of a nod towards page 777 - the world clock found on Teletext.

Screen capture of SRPS - the JavaScript Rock, Paper, Scissors game I made.

Teletext world clock on the Dutch public network. Still active for 30+ years!

Design Mock-up made in Photoshop

 Quake III collaboration

Since the beginning of January I am working on a Quake III project. It is experimental by nature, but the project is more of a 'trick jump movie' kind of caliber. I'm making the project for someone else and the film revolves around that player's gameplay demo's. A number of these are, and a few of them used to be World Record runs. Since my last Quake related film that in fact focused on skill was from 2010, I'm interested to see what the end result will be. There's no further information on release. It will be this year. I am currently capturing all of the demo's. While I do tend to step away from the notion of skill in my Quake films, I found this collaboration project interesting because I have never done a similar project like this. Mainly a curiosity towards the Quake III defrag mod and a low number of annual releases of said movies and the fact it has been 13 years since my last similar film in Quake was what directly led me to say yes as I was approached with this interesting idea. I wanted to see how my interpretation of Quake III cinema would be visualized inside a Quake Defrag movie and how the public would respond to this experimental way of doing things. It's also an interesting opportunity to give A Pixelated Point of View more public exposure as well. I probably won't do more updates on this project until it has been finished and released. Once released, I will dedicate one more post to it with additional information about the project and its creative process.

DEPTHMAP DOMINION

DEPTHMAP Dominion will be a new installment in the DEPTHMAP series. I've blogged about it a couple of times and I've created a JavaScript algorithm that will define every single asset videowise of the film. Currently I'm upgrading and adjusting the code in order for it to be completely operational for production. Once DEPTHMAP Dominion releases, I will also release a version of the algorithm with a front-end, which allows other users to generate their own results and export it as a txt file for offline use.

At the moment I am still a bit torn between existing maps and custom maps (because of hardware), but I am aiming to create custom maps for this project. DOMINION's pre-production process will start most likely somewhere during the spring. I don't have any other information in terms of releasedates yet, but my initial plan is also for a 2023 release. Perhaps there is more DEPTHMAP related news to be shared for this year for yet another DEPTHMAP installment release in 2023, but as of yet nothing is certain and I will keep my lips sealed about this until the time is right.

Regression IV

Yes, Regression IV is officially green lit and aiming for a release somewhere this year. The production planning is now being made and I am ready to start recording within now and a couple of weeks. More updates will follow throughout the course of this year! Regression lives on!

 Until the next update!