Shawn Thorsson makes costumes for his friends Shawn Thorsson, self-professed busiest man alive,
uses a laptop, a printer, a carving machine, and a mad scientist's lab of home-made tools to make costumes based on
Star Wars,
Halo, LEGO, and other appropriately nerdy, sci-fi related media artifacts. He shares them with his friends, and they have the
best Halloween ever!
posted by willhopkins
on Jul 6, 2011 -
28 comments
Warp Prism is a slickly-designed website that makes it easier for you to watch '
eSports'. With streams for all the popular spectator games, including
Major League Gaming (broadcasting live from Columbus today), it makes it easy to switch between streams, and even includes picture-in-picture and embedded chat support.
posted by empath
on Jun 4, 2011 -
15 comments
"
Welcome to the Zion Archive. You have selected Historical File #12-1: The Second Renaissance."
So begins the short film of the same name by Mahiro Maeda
[Flash: 1 2 - QuickTime: 1 2] -- a devastating yet beautiful work of animation.
Originally produced to explain the backstory behind the
Matrix trilogy, Maeda's project ended up telling a story far darker and more affecting than any blockbuster.
Using a blend of
faux documentary footage and
visual metaphor, his serene Instructor relates in biblical tones the saga of Man and Machine, how age-old cruelty and hatred birthed a horrifying, apocalyptic struggle that consumed the world.
Packed with striking imagery and
historical allusions galore, this dark allegory easily transcends the films it was made for.
But while "The Second Renaissance" is arguably the best work to come from the
Matrix franchise, it's hardly alone -- it's just one of the projects made for
The Animatrix, a collection of
nine superb anime films in a
wide variety of styles designed to explore the universe and broaden its scope beyond the usual sci-fi action of the movies.
Click inside for a guide to these films with links to where they can be watched online, along with a look at
The Matrix Comics, a free series of comics, art, and short fiction created for the same purpose by
some of the best talent in the business.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Feb 14, 2011 -
54 comments
Contrary to a lot of idle criticism, Bungie's
Halo series of video games has
a surprisingly rich backstory -- a universe complex enough to support
seven bestselling novels,
a wiki with over 7,000 articles, and
one of the most successful ARGs in history (including
a full-fledged radio drama). The series has also turned out sweeping audiovisual work, from the games'
cinematic cutscenes and
epic music (lots of free previews) to
top-shelf anime and the Hollywood-quality short films --
ODST,
Believe,
Deliver Hope,
Landfall -- that were made to promote the games (the latter of which, produced by Neil Blomkamp,
inspired District 9). And that's apart from all the material produced by Bungie's dedicated fan base:
genuinely hilarious machinima from
Red vs. Blue,
professional-level graphic novels (table of contents at the top),
gorgeous artwork,
hours of recorded dialogue,
complete transcripts of
hidden apocrypha, and more
factual analysis,
story speculation, and
casual discussion than you can shake an energy sword at. But most of these pale in comparison to the latest and greatest exercise in Halo beanplating: the
Svmma Canonica, a 40-page, 17,000-word formal treatise on the nature of canon in the world that Bungie built, and how it will fare once Bungie moves on and the franchise is managed by 343 Industries. Discussion
over at Bungie's official site, or at decade-old fan forum
Halo.Bungie.Org.
posted by Rhaomi
on Jan 31, 2011 -
71 comments
Halo Zero. The Fall of Reach, old-school style. Some plucky French coders have borrowed a page from
Codename: Gordon, the side-scrolling
homage to Half-Life. As a result, Master Chief and his cohorts are now fighting the Covenant in 16-bit, 2D graphics. PC download only - though Mac owners at least have
Boot Camp to avoid waiting for an OS X port.
via Aeropause
posted by Smart Dalek
on Jul 7, 2006 -
9 comments
Yes, that Lincoln Center. So we've
briefly noted the clever hack by way of which game engines, in this case,
Halo's, can be used to make movies. The best-known of these is the bleakly humorous
Red vs. Blue - which, if it isn't exactly this generation's "M*A*S*H" or "Catch-22," rather manages to capture something of the futility of postmodern warfare. Still: is this an opus you'd have pegged to premiere at New York City's vaunted
high-culture mecca?
posted by adamgreenfield
on Dec 19, 2003 -
12 comments
Halo is probably the most well known and successful of games for the Xbox, but less well known are the
scores of Halo movies that take advantage of its excellent graphics and physics engines. From the classic
Warthog Jump to the cover of
Asshole and the
Red vs Blue series, the movies are sometimes breaktaking and almost always hilarious. Videogame geeks with a sense of humour? Say it ain't so!
posted by adrianhon
on May 1, 2003 -
10 comments
Ah,
skydiving. The air around a dropzone, especially a big one like
SkyDive Chicago, is pretty rarefied: a newcomer to the sport like myself is entirely lacking in cool, even if normal people think having made even one solo jump is pretty impressive. I'm certainly nowhere near the cool-level of the
Golden Knights, the Army's team of crack parachutists. Speaking of them and SDC, they were of course there when this year's
national championships were held in August. I especially liked the video of them showcasing their excellent
HALO technique.
posted by kavasa
on Sep 23, 2002 -
20 comments
NYT is realizing that computer games can be relevent, and not just a silly fad that only kids and the uneducated can enjoy. In this review (albeit
very belated), Thursday's 'Circuits' section reviews both
Operation Flashpoint, the widely acclaimed, disturbingly realistic combat simulation, and Halo, the shooter du jour on the XBox.
posted by GriffX
on Mar 22, 2002 -
9 comments
