For those who have been wondering about the hiatus here at the New Music Resource, wonder no more! The past six months I have been working on a sci-fi machinima musical Libertaria: The Virtual Opera . Created almost entirely in the machinima software platform Moviestorm and scored with a catchy combo of electronic music, film scores, and dramatic vocals, Libertaria has been an incredible collaborative project. Moviestorm has been an excellent and inexpensive way to create an entire epic sci-fi tale for a minimal amount of resources. Almost three years ago I started using Moviestorm for a variety of video projects, and then decided to make an entire feature length musical using only machinima. The project proved challenging, involved a couple of dozen singers, animators, and other artistic professionals volunteering their talent and resources to create an incredible feature. W atch a the lo-res version of  the song Pilar of the Underground from Libertaria: The Virtual Opera : ...

Independent filmmakers, visual artists, and composers are starting to use machinima more and more in serious artistic pursuits. Machinima, animation using video game engines, has matured considerably in the last few years to something for Fanboys of Quake and World of Warcraft to a viable way of making an affordable feature length animated film.There are several machinima software options available to the aspiring machinima filmmaker. As a musician that wanted to make an opera using machinima, I found that Moviestorm, a UK-based machinima platform, was easy to use and affordable. Below you can see a rough cut of Baby Machine from Libertaria: The Virtual Opera .   As you can see from the clip, I was able to create a quick sci-fi machinima scene without too much of a learning curve. Some Moviestorm animators have made great headway in making incredible original mods and new animations for the characters. One of the drawbacks of Moviestorm is that initially you are limited by th...

Let's say you want to begin dabbling in computer animation, but do not have the dough to dish out for classes or programs like Maya, there are countless options available for little or no cash. Warning, though, computer animation is a vicious beast requiring some patience and a lot of taming. Even easier programs can lead to hours of frustration because of buggy-ness or computer error. You can check out a variety of free software options at About.com HERE.  posted by animator Adrien-Luc Sanders . The image above, part of World Order #5 , a piece for percussion ensemble, video, and tape to scheduled for performance November 5th at KSU, was made in Bryce . Bryce is inexpensive and is excellent for creating landscapes and simplified objects. One of the benefits of Bryce is its compatibility with the DAZ Studio software. DAZ is free to download. It is a basic animation program with some control over your characters' movement, facial expressions, etc. You can opt to purchase object...

For my current video piece, I am using Adobe Imageready to edit each frame individually. The original material consists of video and animated imgery in Bryce (pretty user-friendly 3D animation software). Using the ACTION palette in Adobe Imageready, I can create effects used in Photoshop, but not common in video editing software such as Final Cut Pro. Here is a clip, slightly morphed: I used a combination of the Watercolor effect, the Plastic Wrap effect, and some changes in color and contrast to change something like this: To something like this: One frame at a time. The ACTIONS palette allows you to set up your effects and assign them to a single key, like F7. Then it is a matter of selecting each frame and clicking F7. I wish there was a way to apply these effects to the entire layer palette, but it seems to work only with styles (like shadows, embossing, etc.). I am composing the tracks using live recording, my Malletkat, Garageband, Finale, and Apple's built-in voices. Should...