Spriggs: a Halo 3 Machinima

All right, we’re slowly hacking through everything to complete this episode.

Part of the reason for the delay, and partly why we had originally labeled these two weeks as a ‘break’ period, is because basically everybody in the Spriggs crew is either moving, buying a house, or looking for a new apartment.  (I actually had our apartment sold out from under us, so that includes me.)

The reason I bring this up is that means today is moving day for Alex, and that it’s time to set up his new home.  Which also is going to be our studio.  :D  I can’t tell you how happy I am about that.

That means unfortunately today we won’t be able to work on the episode.  Our current status is:
Need to put what we have through after effects to match effects.
Need to re-record a handful of angles.
Need to review and add ‘extra’ voices.
Finalizing sound effects.

Sunday or Monday therefore is looking like the release date, depending on tomorrow and how today goes.

Well, it’s mostly good news here today as we wrap up for the night. Aside from some screeching that might be mistaken for music courtesy of rock band, and an hour spending trying to solve a problem that fixed it self, we’ve been working non-stop on the animation.

And since you’ve all been good boys and girls, I figured a teaser might be appropriate. Although please note, we are not done yet, so this is an beta shot.

Nothing that should be too suprising: Currently the Wednesday target date is out of reach. We’re tweaking some custom 3d for the episode, and it’ll take a little while to ‘get it right’ and make it work. That’s the big issue. The rest is mostly various people getting back into the groove after dealing with things like moving and house hunting and other more personal issues.

I’m going to say Episode 11 will be out in the next couple days, with a ‘Willy’s Interlude’ bit for tomorrow. We’ve got another traditional short, but it REALLY has to come after Episode 11. Otherwise, it just won’t make sense. Sorry folks.

However, not to be accused of being lazy, we’re hard at work on episode 12 while we wait on the rendering, with plans to just enter a sort of continual shooting for the next three weeks to finish up things.

In other news, the studio is finally nearing completion as well. More details and pictures to go up on Sunday, after we help Alex move into his house on Saturday.

-Michael Reed,

Director, Spriggs

Voice of Triple M

I’m pleased to unveil the brand new, proper Spriggs website. It’s been quite a few… nay, too many months in the making. I’ve thrown out quite a few designs and have generally taken my sweet time building the site to conform to my neurotic and often stringent design philosophy. Some of you may know that I work for a web firm in Baltimore, so as a “professional” web designer, I really felt the need to shine. So on one hand, I’m very proud of what I produced, but on the other, it took too damn long. The site still needs some more work done on it. The episodes section needs to be filled out, the character bios need some editing, and there’s still a few pages of content that need to be added or refined. But largely, the site is finished. I’m particularly happy with the crew section, and I hope you enjoy the opportunity to get to know us a little better. You’ll likely see the site grow and change over the next few months as I begin a second phase of development. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them to us.

Now on to what you all really care about, the status of episode 11. First I will say that Jordon is doing well. He joined us for production last night, and the word on the street is that he’s working on a few new pieces of music for the series, and if we’re lucky, one of those might make it into episode 11. Mike’s prospective release date is Wednesday the 25th. We’ll see how well that estimate pans out in time.