Spriggs: a Halo 3 Machinima

The fabulous panelists of the Otakon 2008 “How to Machinima” Panel

This weekend, the entire Running Gun crew descended on the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland for Otakon 2008. If you’re not familiar with it, Otakon is a huge Japanese animation held in Baltimore each year. It features anime screenings, guests, cosplay, video games, a dealers hall, music videos, and a whole host of closely (or not so closely) related interests. Mike, Donny, Jordon, and Rob helped man the Anime Depot table in the dealers room, while others (Erin, Thomas, Abbi, Liz) actually got to enjoy the convention offerings. Meanwhile, I (Aaron) slaved in the Panels department for three years running, this time as a lieutenant.

Highs and lows of the convention included (but were not limited to) Mike, Donny, Jordon, and Rob slaving under two mute dealers, Rob cutting his thumb open, a friend (Mark) dressing up as Rick Astley and Rick-Rolling cute girls outside of Panel 1, the “How to Machinima” panel, Erin being a cosplay nut (see photos), Liz dressing up as Kool-Aid Man, and of course, good food at Tír na nÓg.

In all, the convention was plenty eventful, and fun was had by all, we’ll surely be there again next year.

Someone in this photo doesn’t belong, can you guess who?

Mike wanted me to point out to all of you that we are in fact still here. No, I don’t have a tentative release date for episode 12 to give out, so don’t ask. More importantly, it’s probably worth taking the time to state for the record that we’re going to move away from having a release date in advance. The reason being is that things have changed in our production. We initially started out with the aim to release a new episode every other week. That was a realistic goal back when the episode were shorter. But as the series progressed, the episodes became longer and longer. If you do the math, you’ll find that the length of each episode is directly proportional to the time between releases. We would like to give people a good idea of when to expect the next episode, but we don’t want to disappoint anyone when we don’t get a video out when we say we do. So for the time being, we’re not going to say when an episode will be out until it’s almost finished and we know without any hesitation that it will be out when we say it will be out.

While we haven’t gotten into the grind of things on the next episode, we have been taking some time to investigate other project ideas and new technology. Our interest in machinima extends beyond Halo and Spriggs. When time comes that we have the time and resources to produce another work, we intend to be ready for it. There are quite a few ideas on the table as of now. Some with a considerable amount of promise, as well as originality.

In other news, the licensing process goes well. While obtaining a license isn’t in any way a definite at this point, we are at the point where we’re proposing the financial relationship with Microsoft, which is probably the closest we could possibly be without having a definite answer. It’s a very exciting prospect, we’re all eager to explore this machine with a much greater level of devotion and fervor.

Alex’s new home is coming along well. It may be a little while still before the basement (the studio) is ready for us to work in, but it is quite promising, and will be another interesting step in our development as we edge closer to the end of this season of Spriggs.

And finally, a bunch of us made it out to see The Dark Knight last night. Amongst the brigade was Mike, Donny, Rob, Thomas, Josh, Christina, and myself. And as Thomas commented afterwards in a quaint British accent “I do believe that was the best film ever“. I tend to agree. Make sure you catch it in theaters. It was absolutely fantastic. I think we might go see it again.

Been a while, but we aren’t dead yet.

Since it’s been a while, I felt like an update is in order.  Our current situation boils down to the following statement:  Episode 12 is proceeding nicely, but we’re not putting a date on it till we’ve got it done and are part ways through the next episode’s audio.  Because, well, we need to get a buffer so we can start producing things on time again.  That, and we’re going to need time to set up the server and our new video processing machine so that things flow smoothly.

However, there is an additional point I want to throw out there for everyone:  Part of the delay is also so that we have an opportunity to standardize these systems.  Meaning this will not only lighten the load of the single machine we’ve been using to process Spriggs, (Yeah, you heard me right, my LAPTOP has been the creation platform for Spriggs the entire time so far,) but also via division of labor, we intend to triple or quadruple our efficiency.

Anyway, for this reason, we’re going to put out road trip next Wensday, and we will resume shorts thereafter on Wensdays.  Mostly so we can post the entirety of the shorts and the various formats for episodes all at once.

Oh, and expect to see some easter eggs in the near future… You’ll know them when you see them.

Michael Reed,

Signing off.

Hey everyone, the official word is that episode 11 is COMPLETE. The total length is a whopping 17 minutes! It’s our longest episode EVAR. Currently, Jordon and Mike are going over the episode, tweaking various little bits and pieces before they output the final cut. It will be out in two parts here on YouTube, and in one part on our site.

When? SOON. Look forward to it.

–Aaron Clark–
Assistant Director & Voice of Rogir, Spriggs
Chief Creative Officer, Running Gun LLC

Part A is uploading as we speak.  All 10:30 seconds of it.  So you’ll have it soon.

Part B we want to work a little longer on, but will be out either tonight or tomorrow morning.  Cheers!

-Michael Reed,

Director of Spriggs, Voice of Triple M,

Destoryer of worlds.