Jonathon Coulton Inspired Machinima

Gamers are celebrating Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive” being released as a free download for Rock Band. Most of us were introduced to this quirky composer when after Valve’s Orange Box was released, or more accurately, after beating the Portal game. Since then “Still Alive” has become the theme song for the slightly mad, love sick AI, GLaDOS as part of the end credits for Portal.

For those of you unfamiliar with machinima it’s the use of CGI, often from game engines, to create machine cinema. Many machinimators combine video games and music that allow them to express their love of both forms of media by creating music videos. I’ve been a fan of machinima since I was first introduced to it. I’ve even endured those primitive examples from the old MTV Video Mods show. However there are many better examples of this creative media such as the popular Rooster Teeth series Red vs. Blue based on the Halo series.

Machinima.com has been around since 2000 and hosts many great videos as well as tips on how to produce machinima yourself. However since “Still Alive” just came out, I thought I’d concentrate on Jonathan Coulton’s songs and some of the machinima based off of them like this gem.

As a composer and self professed “fully independent musician with the heart of a geek,” Jonathan Coulton writes songs that are perfect for use in game based music videos. Coulton may have quit his day job writing software to pursue his love of music, but video games and science continue to be his digital muse. As the Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science Magazine, Coulton produced the Thing a Week, for which he recorded a new song every week and released it for free as a podcast for an entire year. He has a few songs out that are his unique interpretations of popular hits, but most are his own work featuring settings and situations that any geek can relate to. One of his fans’ favorite songs that has been used for machinima is “Code Monkey.”

Not only is Coulton’s music made to order for machinima, but he actually allows and encourages people to use his work in their projects. He releases his work under the Creative Commons. With a CC license that allows for file sharing and copying, as well as non-commercial derivative works.

Here’s where a guy with a creative vision and a great set of software tools comes in. A gamer known as Spiff is a huge fan of Coulton, and has made it his mission to create machinima for a number of his favorite bard’s songs using World of Warcraft. Two of my favorites are “Re: Your Brains” and “Creepy Doll”. I always did think gnomes were a bit disturbing.

Spiff’s creations are available on YouTube and Google Video as well as on his Spiffworld website. Not only does he share all of his work, he also hosts a blog and a tutorial on different methods of producing machinima. Just a bit of a warning, some of Coulton’s NSFW songs translate into NSFW videos featuring some of the original WOW animations.

In the next few articles on machinima, I’ll be spotlighting a wider variety of videos. I’ll also talk more about the software used to create these pieces as well as problems with copyright on both music and video game IPs.

via Jonathan Coulton ; Spiffworld ; Machinima.com ; Machinima - Wikipedia