Several new machinima pieces received at the Machinima Archive have demonstrated that the expressive potential of this new medium is moving beyond game culture. Two recent spotlight items, "An Unfair War" and "Better Life" (the current pick) provide examples. Both express the tragedies and aspirations of human existence, through short pieces made in The Sims 2 and Second Life, respectively.

Doug Wilson of the How They Got Game group is speaking today at the "Thinking Through New Media" graduate student conference at Duke.

Nick Werner's new machinima piece, "Potentior," is now the featured pick at the Machinima Archive.

Tonight Rooster Teeth, the makers of Red vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicls and The Strangerhood, will have a special showing of their work, followed by Q&A with some cast members, tonight. This will take place at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto, starting at 6.45pm.

You can read a full description of the event, which has the endearing title, "Cock Byte: Masters of Machinima." At least you now know where the name Rooster Teeth came from.

The new spotlight item at the Machinima Archive surprised me when I first saw an e-mail from Frank Dellario about it: The venerable Ill Clan, or at least part of it, working in Lionhead's The Movies to make "Loving You (and Drinking Beer)". Not in Quake 4, or Torque, but in The Movies. Well, it just goes to show that you can teach an old machinima clan new tricks.

Michael Nitsche and the Georgia Tech Machinima Group have launched a new site. The Group is "dedicated to the exploration and development of the full potential of machinima in both the technical and artistic arenas."

There has been a lot of excitement about FacePoser 2 in the machinima community. It has clearly opened up some interesting possibilities for machinima, ranging from facial expression to lip synching. Randall Glass touched on some of the potential in "A Few Good G-Men.."

This just in from Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.  Henry

"I'm very excited to announce that Linden Lab is offering its first fellowship in visual and performing arts for creative innovation in Second Life.

Another spotlight on a recent addition to the Machinima Archive: Tristan Pope's "Deity." "Deity" is a clever parody of the Apple Macintosh "switch" advertising campaign, inspired by the common practice of switching character races and classes in World of Warcraft. Instead of switching from a PC to a Mac, the player switches from a Human Paladin to a Troll Shaman!

Just returned from a short trip to the University of Arizona, where I gave two guest lectures on Jan. 18.