Make Love, Not Warcraft
Machinima.com: Frank Agnone, J.J. Franzen, and Eric Stough talk about integrating World of Warcraft machinima into South Park. "The biggest problem that we found was that Trey wanted to have exact lipsynch and a great deal more expressiveness and acting out of the characters then was really possible using in-game emotes. So, the episode was tabled with the idea that we'd probably have to develop everything ourselves in order to get the level of detail and expressiveness that Trey required.
After that, we started the actual design process were Trey decided what each of our character's in-game characters would look like. Once we had that all figured out, Blizzard sent us Maya files matching those designs exactly, as well as set up accounts for us that had those same characters set up and equipped to match. So, we basically ended up with in-game and Maya versions of the exact same characters which allowed us to cut back and forth between in game footage, and footage we animated and rendered ourselves.
We decided early on to treat the in-game capture sessions as regular film shoots. Our "set" ended up being the lobby of the studio we produce South Park in. We rented 12 PCs, set up a bunch of folding tables, and were basically good to go. I decided that it would be best to capture on a Mac, since we would be able to capture directly to a quicktime file, which would make getting the captured footage onto the editing system a lot quicker. So, I hauled my shiny new MacPro out into the lobby and spent the next two weeks in a much bigger, if less private, new office. We had 5 "shoot" days, the first on the 20th of Sept. which lasted about 3-5 hours. The next was on the 26th of Sept. which also lasted about 4-5 hours., and then we shot almost every other day up to the last few days of production Monday and Tuesday were full days, with the last day going from 10am Tuesday morning to around 3am Wednesday morning the 3rd of Oct,, the day the episode aired. We have been producing our episodes in this fashion for years, routinely finishing within 12 hours of the episode going on the air. One of the neat things about the process was since we were capturing on a Mac with SnapzPro, we were able to output a quicktime file that then could immediately be imported into our AVIDs for editing. So, Trey would shoot for an hour or so, and then cut what he just shot right into the show to see how it was working. If he liked it, we moved on, if he didn't we re-shot. It was all very dynamic and fast paced... Shooting the in-game scenes seemed like a natural extension to our normal process as it allowed for the same rapid iteration and experimentation that have become integral to the South Park way.
The tough part was trying to get the in game characters to "act". They are limited and stiff. For example, it was hard to get them to stop on their mark. Trey said it was a lot like working with the puppets on Team America. He swore he would never do that again...and once again, but this time he was working with computer puppets. He still says it's better than working with actors." It's old story, but it relates to what I'm trying to achieve with my digital short.
After that, we started the actual design process were Trey decided what each of our character's in-game characters would look like. Once we had that all figured out, Blizzard sent us Maya files matching those designs exactly, as well as set up accounts for us that had those same characters set up and equipped to match. So, we basically ended up with in-game and Maya versions of the exact same characters which allowed us to cut back and forth between in game footage, and footage we animated and rendered ourselves.
We decided early on to treat the in-game capture sessions as regular film shoots. Our "set" ended up being the lobby of the studio we produce South Park in. We rented 12 PCs, set up a bunch of folding tables, and were basically good to go. I decided that it would be best to capture on a Mac, since we would be able to capture directly to a quicktime file, which would make getting the captured footage onto the editing system a lot quicker. So, I hauled my shiny new MacPro out into the lobby and spent the next two weeks in a much bigger, if less private, new office. We had 5 "shoot" days, the first on the 20th of Sept. which lasted about 3-5 hours. The next was on the 26th of Sept. which also lasted about 4-5 hours., and then we shot almost every other day up to the last few days of production Monday and Tuesday were full days, with the last day going from 10am Tuesday morning to around 3am Wednesday morning the 3rd of Oct,, the day the episode aired. We have been producing our episodes in this fashion for years, routinely finishing within 12 hours of the episode going on the air. One of the neat things about the process was since we were capturing on a Mac with SnapzPro, we were able to output a quicktime file that then could immediately be imported into our AVIDs for editing. So, Trey would shoot for an hour or so, and then cut what he just shot right into the show to see how it was working. If he liked it, we moved on, if he didn't we re-shot. It was all very dynamic and fast paced... Shooting the in-game scenes seemed like a natural extension to our normal process as it allowed for the same rapid iteration and experimentation that have become integral to the South Park way.
The tough part was trying to get the in game characters to "act". They are limited and stiff. For example, it was hard to get them to stop on their mark. Trey said it was a lot like working with the puppets on Team America. He swore he would never do that again...and once again, but this time he was working with computer puppets. He still says it's better than working with actors." It's old story, but it relates to what I'm trying to achieve with my digital short.
posted by Calvin C. CHOI at
3:46 AM
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