CALL FOR ENTRIES: 20th Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart

The Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart (ITFS) will take place for the 20th time! ITFS is regarded as one of the biggest and most important festivals for animated film around the world. Around 80,000 viewers and approximately 2,500 accredited people attended the festival last year. This year they are open for Machinima Movies as well!!
Places are in the category Cartoons for Teens (Competition for short films, series, animes, machinimas and cut scenes from computer games). This category focuses on youths aged between 12 and 18 and shows the best animated series, animes and cut scenes from computer games.
Competitions is still open for submission until January 15, 2013 (EXTENDED DEADLINE!)
ITFS-Submissions

2012 Machinima Expo

The 2012 Machinima Expo will take place this weekend
November 16.-18. online and in Second Life.
Detailed Program Schedule and List of Screeners
at the Machinima Expo Website

Second Life Festival site:
Midnight Manhattan Reverie in Second Life 

Machinima Expo livestream: The Machinima Expo

Machinima Expo open for submission

Machimima Expo 2011 is now accepting film submissions. Submission period runs from July 1st to Sept 30th. Machinima films of all kinds and any length are eligible. The only restriction is that you can’t have already submitted the film to the Expo previously.

2011 Machinima Expo Submission Requirements
2011 MachinExpo Film Submission Form

Machinima Expo will take place the weekend of November 19th & 20th (Saturday & Sunday) 2011 on the internet and in the virtual world of Second Life.

MachinUWA III: Journeys (3rd UWA Machinima Challenge - 2011)

The 3rd Machinima Challenge put forth by the University of Western Australia (UWA) has just been announced.
The theme is simply 'Journeys'. What the journey is, will be left to the Machinimatographer. A journey through Second Life. A journey of self discovery. A journey within. A journey from SL too RL, or vice-versa. A journey through space, through time, a journey of hope, a journey of despair. Your own journey, or a journey by someone else seen through your eyes... or... through Second Life in 80 Days, whatever you can imagine.

More informations on their Blog:
MachinimUWA III: Journeys - It Begins!!

DEADLINE: Submissions are open between NOW (Feb 2011) till 1st May 2011

Chromatose Anymation Festival

The Chromatose Anymation Festival will take place in St. John's, Newfoundland from April 30 to May 2, 2010. This festival celebrates the work of independent artists pioneering new approaches to animation. The term "anymation" was coined by Croatian animation artist Tom Jantol (see Tom Jantol's Anymation Manifesto)
The festival organized by the Black Bag Media Collective will be a fusion of new animation, performance art and live music events. They are still accepting submissions and are looking for handmade, DIY, cross platform and/or experimental machinima and animation from independent artists.
To propose a screening of your work send a link to your animation in an email to theblackbags@yahoo.ca with the heading CHROMATOSE ANYMATION FESTIVAL.
Deadline to send animations is April 15, 2010.

Moby Music Video Contest

Moby is having a competition where mobygratis users can win $5,000 to make a video for his new song 'wait for me'. Looks like an interesting challenge and opportunity for machinima moviemakers.
Bryn Oh has already submitted his SecondLife machinima:
MOBY - WAIT FOR ME by Bryn Oh

KEY DATES

• Open for entries: Feb 22
• Entries close: Apr 5
• 6 Finalists announced: Apr 12
• Winner announced: Apr 19

PRIZES

• Serviced worldwide as the Wait For Me music video
• US$5,000 cash for winner
• US$1,000 each for the 2 best finalists

details are at: http://genero.tv/moby/


Official Music Video:
Wait For Me by Jessica Dimmock

Festival News

Bitfilm Festival announced the winners and the ranking for the Machinima Award. My entry "Liberty City" ended up on 10, just behind Overman's "Blast Supper" and "Intervention".
By checking out the Bitfilm channel on YouTube a bit closer I recognized that actually "Liberty City" ended up to be the "most viewed non-WoW machinima".

Machinima Expo released their
List of Films Screening at the Machinima Expo.
This is not the final list. They will add more films during the next weeks. None of my submissions showed up so far, but the list contains many known and even some exciting fresh new movies.

Atopic Festival that will take place at the Cité des Sciences in Paris, between October the 27th of October, and November the 4th has finally selected my first film "Desassossego" to be shown in the “Narrative” screening. "Liberty City" was preselected, but was not selected in fine by the commitee. Sisch is in there with "Saving Grace" and with "Kate Lee's The Afflicted" at the 1st Cinemanila Machinima Film.

Cinemanila Machinima Film Festival the 1st Machinima festival in the Philippines has just opened public voting. You can watch and vote for the entries at the festival website.
Vote for your favourite machinima now. I'm quite happy my abstract film "9" made it into the 'short film' section and "the Graveyard" is selected for the 'music video' section.
I couldn't submit "Liberty City" for this festival but agreed they could show it at some festival events. I got some very very nice feedback from them already:
"And now, for some good news! :) We've been introducing machinima to local campuses this week and we've been presenting Liberty City as a machinima that local machinimators can aspire to create. And everytime when your film ends, we can hear some students clapping (you know that kind of clapping when you see something amazing for the first time and you're just awed by it, you just have to clap? Yep, that kind :D )"
That's why I love to make movies.

"Liberty City" will be screend at ARSGAMES at MADRID (Spain)from 19th to 22th november 2009 at La Casa Encendida Art Center

Animatu Festival, the 2009 edition will occur on October, 14-18, at Pax Julia - Municipal Theatre, in Beja, Portugal. The winners will be announced during the final award ceremony on Saturday.

TMUundergound community announed the winners for their First Annual Ollies Awards

Contests: Machinima Expo and FOX-Aniboom

Great to see we'll have a Machinima Expo filmfest again this year. And it will take place in the virtual world of Second Life. I look forward to this great event. It's again a chance to meet some of the best machinima filmmakers around the world. The festival is now accepting submissions until Sept 30th.
Now only one question comes to my mind: Where is my movie to submit? Right now no project is finished for submission. Hope this tight deadline will get me focused to finish a movie again that is worth putting into this contest. Not an easy task, right now, I'm exploring 3D machinima and getting a stereoscopic machinima finished for that contest is out of reach I guess.

Another contest that is open right now for submission is:
The FOX-Aniboom Holiday Animation Challenge.
It's not machinima only, but it's a great chance to compete with and challenge other animators and of course get your movie viewed my a different audience.
Good luck with your submissions.

Liberty City at the Bitfilm Festival

From Bitfilm:
"congratulations! Your film Liberty City has been nominated for a Bitfilm Award in the category MACHINIMA!"

I'm happy 'Liberty City' made it into Bitfilm this year. I've not seen a list of all the nominated films so far, but some of the other great films in the Machinima category I know of so far which got nominated this year are:

'Intervention' and 'Blast Supper' by Phil Rice
'The Terrible Old Man' by BiggsTrek

and some more:

'Clockwork' by IceAxe
'Shelf Life' by pixel eyes production

Bitfilm festival deadline tomorrow (1st July)

Bitfilm festival deadline is tomorrow (1stJuly). Right now I'm still struggling to get my movie 'Liberty City' uploaded. Hope they get the upload page fixed until tomorrow.

Their MACHINIMA category is open for films of all genres which are shot live inside a computer game. There is no limit in length or size. They accept free artistic works as well as music videos or commercials. They only accept submissions which are uploaded as video files. All submitted videos will also appear in their YouTube channel.
The Internet community will decide on the Bitfilm Awards by a public voting process from August 20 to September 24, 2009. The winner film will receive a prize money of 2000 Euros.

Sims 3 Machinima

Finally Sims3 is released here in Germany as well. I don't know yet if I'll buy the game and use it for an own movie project. Neverthless I found some interesting stuff on the net on Sims3 machinima I wanna share.

Sims3 Review on Gametrailers.com

3 Sims Machinima filmakers on the Sims 3:
Spotlight on The Sims 3 Player: Decorgal
Spotlight on The Sims 3 Player: Baconandeggzie
Spotlight on The Sims 3 Player: TheSidDog

With Sims3 they released an online 3 movie mashup tool where you can edit and share your movies. It's very simple to use allows editing you own clips or preproduces clips from, add transitions, music and title pages and some effects. Unfortunalely you cannot upload any own music, voice-over to be included in your movie. Nearly 5000 movies have been released so far.

Sims 3 Movie Mashup Guide / Tutorial
Sims3 Movie Site

There is as well a Sims3 movie channel on YouTube. Right now they have started THE SIMS 3 "LIVE THE DREAM" CONTEST. Deadline is June 22, 2009

Sims3 Movie Channel on YouTube

On her blog, Sims2 filmmaker Decorgal has some in debth informations on how to use the camera tool in Sims3 (and why she does not have Sims 3 yet)