Status report

Hey everybody, nothing new to release yet, but here's the lowdown on what's been happening:

TUTORIAL GUIDE:
A big reason there haven’t been any Civil Protection releases lately is because I’ve been contracted by Noesis Interactive to make a supplemental machinima video for a tutorial they’re making. It’s a short comedy that will be released as a promotion when the guide is closer to done. The guide itself will be on using the Source engine to create machinima the way I do. As it turns out, I’ll be creating most of the tutorial as well. It will be a video tutorial with me writing and narrating it. It’s my hope that when the guide is done, anyone interested in creating their own machinima will be able to with it. I’ll make an update here when it’s done.

MINI-EPISODE:
I was contacted recently by Machinima.com to make a short video for them that will be part of a collaboration video they're making. It won't be very long, but it will have Mike and Dave and it should be pretty enjoyable.

BIG EPISODE:
Work is still in progress on what will be the longest CP episode so far. Unfortunately progress is slow due to all the other stuff I'm dealing with, but I haven't given up on it.

POSITION OPENINGS:
1. I'm still in dire need of someone (or two) who is proficient at the program "Face Poser" for the Source SDK. Your main purpose would be animating Mike and Dave within the game. You don't have to be an expert, but you do have to be patient and reliable. Some knowledge of Hammer is also a plus.

2. Alternately, I need someone (or two) to work on the head-bobbing animations you see when Mike and Dave talk. Honestly, this is a pain to do and very repetitive. You need a lot of patience in order to do this, if you have obsessive-compulsive disorder you might be perfect. You do NOT need to already know how to use Face Poser for this position; I have made a tutorial that teaches how to do this. You probably will have to redo some of your work at first, but it is not difficult to learn.

As always, this is volunteer work. If you're interested in helping out, please email me at rscott31@radford.edu.

April Fool Fallout

Wow, judging by yesterday's comments this was a winner for April Fool's. I tried to make something strange enough that people would realize it was a joke, but I think some people regard me as insane anyway, so who knows what I'm thinking. Since a few of you got pretty confused, here's a quick FAQ for you:

Q: Is Civil Protection cancelled?
A: No. Production is underway on what's going to be the longest episode so far.

Q: Will you continue making the Halo videos?
A: No. Trying to get 3 people online at the same time reminded me why I work in single player to film.

Q: Did you delete my comments?
A: No, but I held back the ones saying it was April Fool's Day to see how many people fell for it. All the comments are back up now.

Q: Did you stage fake comments?
A: No. Those are all by you internet people.

Also if you missed it, for April Fool's Day last year, I took down the site entirely and put this up instead:

Link

Speaking of the website, I’m leaning towards relocating the homepage for a couple reasons. The main one is that I’m making videos aside from just Civil Protection (though that will still be my main focus), so a different name might make more sense. Another is that I want to add extras like subtitles, alternate shots, etc., so more flexibility would be nice. Finally, everyone who’s helped me try to edit the website seems to hate using blogspot. I don’t have any definite plans yet, but I’m looking into different options.

I'll make another post when I have something to update, but right now everything's still in production.