World of Warcraft Machinima Update

Within the last two weeks I have modified my project drastically. I have decided that this machinima will be in the form of a talk show. My World of Warcraft character will be the one under the spotlight.

My idea is this:

Character name: Galashton
Profession: Online Character

Setting: A talk show stage setting, chairs, people watching etc.

Idea: My character will be animated to speak into a microphone onstage and respond to people's questions about his time as he was taken into "custody" in the virtual world when the Chinese gold farmers hacked my WOW account.

That will be the main focus of this talk, but he will also answer any other questions asked of him.

Focus: To create some kind of feeling and human expression within a digital binary character.

Problems: What I really would like to do is have the actual audience be able to pick up a microphone in the California Building and ask my character questions and he responds from the screen. I believe this is doable but will take some more live performance methods from me. I am still discovering and researching how I could make this possible. This would be my most favored approach, as it lets the audience interact with the setting more.

Other thoughts: If my idea above cannot be executed then I would like to use real people in my video, as my character will be the only digital person in the video, but will be on a talk show being asked by the audience and the host questions about his life in World of Warcraft. This is a little bit more doable as I don't have to figure out how to make my character respond to unexpected questions in a reasonable amount of time to make it look authentic.

Right now I have found some amazing third party tools that are helping me with learning about how to extract my character out of WOW as a wire frame and apply skins to the wire frame. Below is an application I was able to download, its a third party tool called WOW Model Viewer where you can specifically work directly with characters and animate, cloth, customize, and even change backgrounds with this tool. Below is the process I used to take my actual character out of WOW and dress him in appropriate clothes.

Playing around with this application has really opened my eyes to how I can totally customize my character outside of the game yet with video editing I can green screen him right back into the game environment and make him do things he couldn't normally do just playing in the game.
I also found what is called Wow Map Viewer. It is another third party tool that allows me access to all of the 3D rendered areas in the WOW world. I have totally customize these areas with fog, water, tabards, weaponry racks, etc. Below are a few screen shots of this program. Currently I am researching an area in wow that could potentially play a role as the stage for a talk show.

My other idea was to have my character actually in the real world, his background is that of the real world and he is the only digital thing in it. See below for some pictures of this.

Animated Stills

Here are a few videoes I recorded using Fraps.
Fraps will be used to capture green screen footage of my character and then I will use Adobe Premiere Pro to do the final editing of sound and video layers.
These videos just show me messing around with the new software and trying to get a feel with what it is capable of doing.

World of Warcraft Performance Art ideas and subjects of interest

Upon my research of performance art I came across many machinima and anime films that I feel are very similar to how I envision using the virtual world inside World of Warcraft to create my very own performance piece or documentary about my feelings and thoughts in regards to spending a portion of my life inside a virtual world.

I have thought a lot about the focus of my project and have decided that it will not focus on World of Warcraft, or it's lore, or history. Instead, World of Warcraft is my digital medium that I have spent enough time inside of, met enough people, and know the mechanics of the virtual world in the sense that I feel comfortable in being able to express myself through such a digital world. It will be my medium, my virtual world, like some use Second Life, Eve, Rift, or other online virtual games to explore, to focus in on and really dissect and display my relationship with a virtual world and how these relationships are often hidden behind the bedroom door or looked upon as maybe a waste of time, or unproductive. Instead I want to reflect myself through my virtual character whom I have spent countless hours and years building up and participating in many online events with.

To really narrow my ideas down in a nutshell I will be doing a performance piece, this piece does not necessarily have to have me physically present. This piece will have to do with my relationship with my online virtual playground, and in this piece my character will be a reflection of my thoughts and feelings. We will be questioning each other, and philosophizing about deep feelings in regards to a game like World of Warcraft, why do I play? When do I play? Why do I feel more safe in a digital world? Is it possible for an economy and a community to survive in a digital world easier than in a real world? All the while my character will be reflecting his feelings and thoughts about the physical world.

Instead of just focusing on me wanting to be in the virtual world only, my virtual character is going to try and convince me to let him join the real world, because he doesn't want to be in the virtual world anymore, unlike myself, the machinima will end with my character emerging as a real person and I as a virtual person.

Below are some machinima videos that I watched from various websites that are on the same kind of lines as I want my machinima to be. Below is a rather dark machinima about a frenchman's take on the "other side" of virtual worlds and the extension of our consciousness in our avatars. The video has to do with sex, money, and power but that is all still very real in a virtual world.






Another interesting story, which is an Anime series I have watched, focuses in on some of the questions I want to address about my relationship with a virtual world. The series is called Serial Experiment Lain.

This anime focuses on identity, reality, and communication. It's about a girl who eventually becomes so deeply involved in the virtual world she cannot differentiate reality from a virtual world anymore.

So I have decided to use my character that I have played now for 3 years. This character (below) has been through a lot, last year my account was hacked and he was used to gold farm by the Chinese for 3 months, I got him back and had some interesting things sitting in my account that the thieves left behind. I am going to incorporate what I believe to be his view on another player using him to farm gold, although I don't know exactly what happened because I wasn't there it would be nice to recreate it in the eyes of my virtual character (A reason he wants to leave the virtual world so badly, because of identity theft, but wait he doesn't realize that is in the real world too...)

I've always been into pondering and questioning the dark side of the world, as I have always been a huge fan of Silent Hill too. These kinds of games that I played as a kid really make me think about the human psyche and how so many games and virtual worlds are deep reflections of things going on under the surface of society.
One of my favorite quotes from Silent Hill Origins:


"Silent Hill Origins is an exploration of the darkness behind our everyday society."


In creating a machinima about swapping roles with a virtual character is my idea of actually being able to express my feelings about the kinds of movies, comic books, video games and MMORGPS that make me question society's need to escape reality. This is my chance to create my own interpretation on how I feel about virtual worlds and what my character should expect when he becomes part of the physical world, plus I have never edited and created my very own machinima all by myself and I really would like to try. So I am accomplishing two things with one assignment.

I will be posting more references and pieces from other artists I find have an influential impact on the direction I have chosen to take my machinima. I have more to post, stay tuned.

My artwork

Here are some samples of artwork I have done for the Nevada Sagebrush. I worked for them for about 3 years, if you want to check out more you can see my full archive at www.nevadasagebrush.com. Just search Jett Chapman in the search box. Below are a few samples of cartoons as well as some of my more serious work. I am also very good with Photoshop and photo editing.

Suzanne Joelson Artist Lecture

Suzanne Joelson's art is definitely not digital but her methods and patterns were quite interesting to me. I thought a lot of her work could be digitally printed on tiles or wallpaper. She has that very pattern like style to her work.
Joelson talked a lot about working with different mediums like wood, tile, and ceramics. Now that I saw that lecture it makes me want to tell her about Pepakura because she could come up with some awesome designs in the 3D world using the Pepakura application.
I also felt like some of her work could have been done digitally but would lose that raw original feel that shows her brush strokes and her overlapping of paint daubs and colors. Her work is definitely very bizarre and can be read in a lot of different ways.

Some of my questions for her would be:
1. Would you ever shift towards a more digital approach? Maybe try your hand at a wacom tablet using photoshop and see what kind of inspiration or feeling you get from doing your artwork a different way?
2. Does your use of repetition give your work a more straight forward message or do you think it adds to the element of surprise?
3. How would you feel about using a 3D modeling application to print out paper objects and then use your designs on them?

Small Talk Big Ideas Artists Lecture

I found Joe Delappes artist lecture regarding activism in the virtual world quite fascinating. The art pieces that especially sparked my curiosity were his series of computer mouse traveling mapped out on ink. Joe's work allowed me to look at things in a different perspective, such as the intricacy of how a mouse moves and the kind of design and pattern that builds up as a person moves it from day to day.
One of Joe's biggest conversations was in regards to a lot of war related activism which I found interesting as he implemented this into the gaming and digital world. I remember watching a movie as well where soldiers were required to let missiles off and kill people yet they never got anywhere near these people. They did all of the action from a push of the button behind safe closed doors thousands of mile away and Joe's lecture brought that back to mind especially his piece regarding playing a soldier in an MMO war game. I was amazed to discover that because Joe refused to fight and every time he dropped his gun and stood there to make a point, even though this is all digital and not real it still really creates a deep and meaningful impact. I was amazed at the players that actually got angry with him, not even realizing the meaning of taking something as serious as war to a digital level made of binary.
This lecture made me realize that people often times let the obscurity of the internet or games hide them from having to face the truth about some things, and when someone comes in and makes a active statement in a digital war game just because it's digital and people are not really dying, the fact is that it is very real in the long run and people find fun in killing and shooting in war games is something they don't think serious about often times. Joe's lecture gives a glimpse of digital worlds turned upside down are just as nonfictional in some sense as real territories, the same things happen but maybe people don't really die. To fuse these two worlds together and make a statement by marching a polygon made 3D Gandhi across a digital world, or refusing to fight in a war game is making digital worlds all the more real, it is making them come alive.

Pepakura Mini Golf Hole turned Into Mini Whimsical World

As I began to work on my Hashima Island Pepakura Golf hole I started to notice it was looking kind of drab with the grey and black spray painted buildings and blocks I was using. As I went along various obstacles and ideas came to mind and I added a lot to this golf hole. I made it more of a strange kind of other worldly mini course where the individual would have to walk through various structures and bridges and areas of colorful space like platforms to put the ball to it's destination. I had a lot of fun with this. I like the oddity of my original idea with a spin on it. It is also nice to add more of a creative spin on this as I know when researching mini golf holes many of them are quite amazing. I was actually very inspired by something locally held here in Reno called mini Pirate Glow Golf, where it is a mini golf course completely set up with black lights and you play only in the dark and let the glowing obstacles guide your way. Very cool idea and definitely inspired me when creating this mini hole with the kinds of colors I used and the fact that this very golf hole could potentially be a black lit golf hole if I used the right paint. Here are the pictures below:

Hashima Island Mini Golf Course Hole Update

So I have decided to shift my idea of a war memorial mini golf course hole to a miniature replica of Hashima Island, better known as Battleship Island off the coast of Japan. Hashima Island is a coal mining facility that was abandoned in the 1960's. It is off limits and highly fascinating due to the way that the structures are being broken down by sea water and decay. I started with the base to look like a battleship:

This will be my base that will house the buildings I will be putting on and around the mini golf course hole.


Here are a few more pictures of my Pepakura cut outs for some of the buildings as well as my original idea for the golf course hole. I decided to go with something more simple and use rectangles instead to build a golf course. So I went from this:

To this basic shape which I will be duplicating and using to put together the course in a simpler way:

Pepakura was making it very difficult to cut out the entire mini course so I had to break it down into simpler shapes to make it more time manageable.


Here are a few screen shots of my buildings that I will be using.

So basically it will be a Battleship base, with a few old looking buildings, and a course in the midst of the buildings. My idea behind this rose yet again from my fascination with abandoned cities and institutions around the world. I love the idea of bringing life back into something that has been long forgotten. Such as a mini golf course hole with green astro turf in the middle of a long lost city, or how nature reclaims these forgotten places and in time they become more fascinating in my opinion than they do when they are completely run by human beings.


Leaving off here are a couple more things I will be focusing on this weekend:
1. Spray painting my pieces.
2. Painting details.
3. Cutting out holes for the golf course.
4. Finding some astro turf floor mat.

And to leave off here are a couple of real photos of Hashima Island.