Animating models in 3D Software

One of my goals for the Max Payne movie was to show some sets of new animations for WoW Models. I didn't want to be constrained by the original Blizz animations from the Modelviewer, I wanted to create new fresh looking animations for this movie. This is also some kind of experimental phase for VoC II, cause one of the great battles in this movie could be probably complete edited in a 3D animation software. This would open numerous new opportunities for e.g. camera angles and open a path to a new machinima experience.

So for the first time I started to play around with exporting and importing m2 files (the filetype Blizz uses for their models). At the moment I found no way to export the bones of the models (and of course the animations) too. So I had to play around with bones and things like this for myself. It took a couple of hours to understand the techniques but at least I found a smooth way to implement the bones and make first own animations.

Here you can see some of the results.

Max jumps sidewards with a gun ready to shoot held in front of his body:

Cleaner gets hit by the bullets in his left shoulder and turns around backwards.

Max Payne goes World of Warcraft

Take a look at the prologue on www.warcraftmovies.com

Max Payne and World of Warcraft? What the hell?

Yes.
A few month ago I had the idea to make a short storyline machinima of my most favorite computer games, Max Payne and World of Warcraft. I always loved the dark film noir atmosphere of Max Payne and as an author who has experience in making WoW machinima the idea of mergin MP and WoW grew up in my head.
So the issue was how to convert Max Payne into World of Warcraft?
The answere was simple: Take the great story and voice acting of MP and fill it with pictures from World of Warcraft.
The second descision was if I should take MP 1 or MP2 as basic plot for the movie.
The answere was simple too: I personally prefer MP 2.

I started working on the machinima.

After finishing the first 10 minutes some friends of mine who never played MP didn't
really get in the story cause the didn't know the plotline/background of MP Part 1.
I needed a solution for this problem.

And what can I expect from the "prologue"?

Well according to the fact mentioned above I decided to make a short prologue to the movie.
This prologue should lead the audience who's not familiar with Max Payne into the storyline.
When I started the project I didn't really want to make a trailer or teaser trailer, but 
the idea of making a prologue lead me to the idea of combining the prologue with a trailer.

So what you see here is the result.
Another goal of this short machinima, of course, is to tease the audience about the final movie. 

It is not essential to watch the prologue before watching the whole movie, which will be
released this winter, but it helps to get into the story, particularly if you were not
familiar with to MP story.

Anynone who knew the story of MP will expect nothing new. I decided to stay close to the original plotline and spend more of my barely available time on the pictures and special effects.
For the first time I played around with 3D animation software and was really statisfied with the results.

I hope you enjoy this short introduction to my upcoming movie.

One important notice: This movie stands in no relationship to the upcoming motion picture of Max Payne in October 2008. 
The storylne is completly different from the motion picture. This is only a fan made project.

Regards,

Varath
Blackhand Pictures Machinima 

Some promotion for our raid group

A couple of days ago on a boring weekend evening (my son was already in bed) I thougth about doing some promotion for our raid group on the EU Server "Der Rat von Dalaran".

Ok let's go. Within a night I cut a few scene's I shot during the raids with some landscape footage from Azeroth and Northrend.

I selected some good music from my archive and called Hethu, a friend who did already some great voice acting on Veil of Corruption.

Within one day he recorded the VA and the movie was finished.

You can take a look at warcraftmovies.com / The black pact - Raidpromo

The voice acting is in German language but I've added English subtitles.

Have fun with watching.

We need a blog...

Yes well.

It is time for a blog on "Blackhand Pictures Machinima". So here it is.

A short introduction about who we are and what we do.

We are a small group of machinima fans from Germany. We all play or played World of Warcraft and about one and a half year ago we were impressed by the upcoming talents on the WoW machinima scene. We decided to start machinimating for ourselfs. 

The first projects were small machinimas like PvP-movies or promotion movies for our raid.

In 2006 we wanted to do something bigger and more impressive than small videos. We decided to write a plot for full length storyline machinima. Veil of Corruption was born and in June 

2008 we published the movie. 

You can download or stream Veil of Corruption Chapter 1 here.

Right now we are working on the sequel to Veil of Corruption which was planned as a trilogy with a related storyline.

The team:

Several people are members of the BHP-team:

Varath: leader and video editing

Alloron: storyline and screenplay

Mahamari/Ludvera: assistance, storyline and voice acting

Khirutika: voice acting

Tehsaron: voice acting

Ineluki: voice acting

Blackeurope: storyline and World of Warcraft lore