Wednesday, December 29, 2010

LF Guild

Edit: as per request of the participating guildies, here's a Making Of Video.

Just before taking a few months break from WoW I kicked all my own alts from the guild (boy kicking a few characters feels good, scary stuff!). Since my return to WoW I've mostly played my main. But for this blog (which I'm starting to love!) I play my old main GuyMontag though. And when I run around Stormwind: boy do I get invited to guilds a lot (almost all rubbish). Seeing some advertisement in chat as well, I decided to show you how guild recruitment for an RP-server actually goes...


For this one I really need to give a big thank-you to Athel's lovely guild Vengeance (Darkmoon Faire EU). When I asked in guild chat for assistance with the final shot I got over 10 responses in no time! I tried to fit as many of the helping characters in my final picture as possible (if you're not there I still love you!). There are some more screenshots and nice video footage too which I hope to put some of on my Youtube channel soon too.

See you all in 2011, if all goes well with a new video episode of The Burning Man on Sunday.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Hyjal Documentary

While Guy is almost ready to pick a zone, a gnome from the Gnomish Casting Corporation (GCC) comes to help Guy Montag choose, providing him a documentary in BBC's "Planet Earth" style...



The voice acting thing turned out pretty tough actually. It's really weird hear yourself talking (specially if you're non-native to English). My Starcraft II casting hero even puts himself on camera, don't know how he does it!

On the brighter side, my skills with Sony Vegas seem to improve a bit. I was able to churn out 2 more minutes of film than last week, in nearly the same amount of time. Finding the correct rendering settings also helped: 20 minutes is much more appropriate than 5 hours.

Finally, a special thanks to my guildies Bimbus, Ygdrasil, Cyrelle and Llew for appearing in a few of the scenes. Go Vengeance!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Brand new zones

Guy Montag is done running about Dalaran, and ready to take on those Cataclysm zones. Blizzard promised us great new quests with loads of "brand new stuff", 'cause "everything we know has changed", apparently. As Athelstane already finished those zones it made sense to prepare Guy accordingly...


Fear not, because there are lots of things to fall in love with in Cataclysm. For me, it just weren't the 80-81 zones, I'm afraid. Sure: the cut-scenes were lovely. But after that it felt like just any other grind with no challenge whatsoever.

Note that although I want to make this a [Wednesday = Comic] and [Sunday = Machinema] blog, I most likely will publish my posts on the day after, as it usually takes way past midnight to finish things up :D.

Anyhow, with this I hope my comics and machinema's are ramping up some power to make it to the Sunday Funny's and Moviewatch of Wow Insider some day. See ya Sunday for a new vid and next Wednesday for a new comic!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Leveling Characters & Video Editing

So the blog is about the character Guy Montag leveling to 85. But what about the video editing level of his Master? I'd say you can consider it "target is too low level". But: leveling is all about taking one step at a time though. So I figured I'd combine the first step for Guy Montag (getting back to Azeroth) with the first step for myself (learning to edit video's).

The result is not great, though not bad either for a first attempt ever at an actual machinema. For the idea I used the credo from classic painting classes: learn from copying the great masters. In this case my hero was Stoker and his How to Paladin series, which I recommend to anyone who can appreciate modern-day dada-art. Check out the result below:



The 5 hours of editing were followed by 7 hours of codec-hell: who would have thought that rendering a simple video would be so tough? Still, the overall result was good enough to push me over the (rather high) mental threshold associated with posting a public youtube video. And now that it's on the interwebs there's no stopping it anymore!

Hope you enjoyed it :-). Either way: come back next Wednesday for a new comic, and for a new video next week.

Guy Montag is ready for you! Are you ready for Guy Montag?

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Individualism is overrated anyway

A blog on leveling from 80 to 85 in WoW! But which character to choose for this epic journey...

Guy Montag: I choose you! Not because you're my main, because you're not. That's my tank, Athelstane. Not because you were my very first character, because you were not. That's my (woefully ugly dwarven female) priest Kiradin. I chose you because of all my characters I suspect you'll be best at pissing off quest mobs, quest givers, other characters (and players), and all the while burn stuff To The Ground.

Off to Cataclysm we are!