Damien Valentine 01:00
Hello, and now for something completely machinima. My name is Damian Valentine, and I'm joined by my co hosts, Phil rice, Ricky Grove and Tracy Harwood, hey there. Alright, we're back for another month of machinima reviews, and this time it's Ricky's film. So let's get right to it, and you can tell us what was he chosen for us, sure.

Ricky Grove 01:22
Thank you, Damian. I hooked up with my an old friend of mine that I collaborated with on several different films, and he was known as M dot strange for a long time, but he, he dismissed that, and he's now. His name is Mike, and he's now just referring to himself as m, so that's who I'm going to refer to as M. That's the name of his YouTube channel, which is where I got this particular video from. As we've mentioned on this show before, he created a very interesting machinima tool using Unreal Engine, no Unity engine, and it's called nightmare puppeteer. And M is a very interesting artist because he is a an outsider. He's somebody who lives outside the grid, and when Bitcoin came around, the first time he I remember his excitement. He was telling me about this, and he invested all the money he had into Bitcoin, because he said, This is going to be the future. Well, when Bitcoin went off the charts. Years ago. He became a multi millionaire. This is great. This is an outsider guy. So he now lives in Lisbon with his wife, Rachel, who was a fan, who he hooked up with, and is a lovely lady. She's a good singer and a music person, and he's gone crazy with he's a self taught artist that taught himself programming, and he created this very interesting animation tool called nightmare puppeteer that's on Steam. And the unique thing about it is that it reflects his method of making films and his art philosophy, which is he likes randomness and chaos. He is a, I guess you could say he's a sort of benign anarchist, is the best way I would describe him. I know that seems to be a contradiction in terms, but it's not if you had met him. So when I hooked up with him, I asked him what he was doing, and he said he'd made some updates to nightmare puppeteer and that he was working on some new apps. He did a note taking app, he created a community of artists app, and of course, he made a musical, an animated musical, last year, which is, which was fascinating, and continue, he's, he's one of these people. And I've always thought that this was part of what makes a genius. They have inexhaustible energy. They can't stop themselves. They're so energetic. So it was a delight to talk to him, and I went back and reviewed some of the updates to nightmare puppeteer. He's added quite a few things. One of the things, cool things that he did is you can add, you can import 3d models much more easily, although you do have them as props, so they come into the game quickly. He's added new scenes, better animation properties, and one thing that he created, which was very strange that I haven't quite figured out yet, is this television program he gives you the ability to create an AI Direct. Did animation program that is all random, so you can use different sources. You can go to twitch and take dialog off of Twitch, and it'll become part of your animation. You can select the characters. You can tell them to do things. You can create long links of dialog. Now you have to remember, all of the dialog is non realistic. It's it's non sequiturs. So it's very funny. In fact, I think that characterizes a lot of his work, is that it's very funny, but it's also very satirical and very critical of the sort of he's not a Marxist or socialist, but he's very critical of big business and big business concepts now that this whole spew of stuff I've been talking as by way of introducing this film that I selected. So as I was going through nightmare puppeteer, I also checked his website, and I came across this very, very strange and potentially offensive short film created in nightmare puppeteer. It's called eater, and it's from a larger collection of speeches that he made called hate speech, the movie

Ricky Grove 06:24
that that gives you an idea of what this is about. And essentially, it's a monolog by a very strange character about global warming. And I can only say that the what made me choose it, even though I know it's risky, it's filled with absent language, obscenities, there's a shock value to it, which he intended. That's part of his thing, very satirical, but also very funny. It's not for everyone's taste. I think some people might be bothered by it, but I wasn't at all. I was laughing like crazy because I know his sense of humor and his his love of of demolishing sacred cows, he just loves to do that. But what I loved is the the the absurdity of the animations and the absurdity of the situations. And I was surprised he uses an AI voice for the speech. And I was surprised at that at first, because I thought he's a he's a good actor himself. Why didn't he just do his own monolog? And I realized he chose it because it gave that artificialness to the voice that I thought it was perfect for the satire in it. I've watched it several times, along with many other short films as we'll give you a link to his YouTube channel, because he's got such great stuff on there, stuff that is little less abstract and offensive, but he's always looking for a way to wake people up, and this is certainly a video that will wake you up if you watch it. So I was very curious as to how you guys respond to this very strange about six minutes, I think, video, what do you guys think of it?

Phil Rice 08:33
It was hard to get through. And even even it's one of those things where, like, I knew that that was part of the point, right? But even so, it was, it was tough one to get through, and it was tough for me to pinpoint the exact target of the satire. Maybe that's part of the point too. I don't know, but it's like, at what level is this being satirical, you know? And at what level is he, I don't know. It took a very strange position on some of the positions that he was, that the character was taking in it, that it really made it hard to to know what the message was supposed to be. And again, knowing him, I know him a lot less well than you do Ricky, I know him only through his work. I've had minimal online interactions with them, but I know that that's probably part of the point is that there's an elusiveness to him that's that's present in all of his work, this sense of mystery, I guess, about like if you were to ask, Well, where does he really stand on x? It's very hard to answer that question about just about anything except. This very clear theme of anti establishment, anti cultural gatekeepers, that's like, clear and prevalent throughout all of his work. Every single thing I've seen from him. There's elements of that, yeah, and even in, even just in his I followed his blog when he was keeping one, and that's the topic, and it's, it's always a sense of, it's like half of it is him, kind of, in almost this gangster rapper kind of way, kind of puffing himself up about, you know, how hard he's fought this fight to not sell out, right? But then he has this amazing way of weaving into those posts, this sense of encouragement for who he realizes his audience is is a lot of his audience is other people who feel like outsiders. And it's really weird that this real sense of care comes through, even though he doesn't use traditional ways to to convey that. But it's there. It's present. Not so much in this film, I didn't really get that wasn't, that wasn't the effort involved in this film is, is, is an eye care message. But you know, it's it's it. This is consistent with his voice. This is harsher than most things. It's a little bit more on the nose, I think, than most of his work. Most of his satire is a little bit more layered. There's more nuance to it. This seemed a little angrier.

Ricky Grove 11:37
It's an angry film.

Phil Rice 11:38
Yeah, yeah. There's an anger in all his work and his offline speech, at least what he puts out there in public, I have no idea what he's like, one to one. He's probably not like that at all, not at all. But, yeah, this seemed angrier, and I kind of took it as a we're going to talk some about this in our News episode if we next time we do one, but it's kind of a there's a sense of, maybe he's never really been happy with the direction the world of art is going, but maybe more so now he's unhappy with the way it's Going, like it's like you would think at this point of history where those cultural gatekeeping powers seem to be losing power. But the real truth is, is that with these, these tech companies that are behind the AI, that are making all the money off the AI, are the cultural keepers falling away, or are they just changing identity? You know? Is it just someone else taking that over and and art is still going to be a real art is going to be a fight against that, you know, I've so and maybe there's some, you know, he's getting older, like we all are you, if you're someone who fights for and shouts out for change, and then doesn't seem like the world really is, is changing really? You know, it's changing. On a surface level, there's an appearance of change, but underneath it's still the same forces going on. So I kind of got that sense of it. It was hard again. It's hard to this is not a movie I would recommend, like to most people that I know, because it's tough. It's, it's, it's, it's hard to watch, hard to listen to. Yeah, but I think, I think I can say Message received.

Ricky Grove 13:41
Did you see any humorous things in it at all?

Phil Rice 13:46
I saw that. I saw I recognized the humor, but I it's, it's my humor has drifted a bit from from where he was getting the jokes from so I didn't, it didn't resonate with me. It didn't make me laugh, but, yeah, but I appreciated it like I there's there's crap.

Ricky Grove 14:11
Did you not laugh at him going on about eating, getting his stomach so stretched by becoming a famous eating person, that there were periods of time where he, I mean, the flatulence jokes in there now, were enough to laugh the absurdity of him going to the hospital to visit a friend. And remember, the whole monolog is addressed, DIRECT address to the audience. And he's, he's obviously gone to the hospital to do something, and his friend is just a mass of gristle and bone and and flesh writhing in the bed. I mean, to me, that was just hilarious.

Phil Rice 14:53
Yeah, I don't know why it didn't connect with me. Because I think if that had been presented in let's. A new, a little bit more nuanced story form, I would have found it hilarious and more powerful, but because it was, because it was that direct, delivered recitation, I don't know why. It just didn't. It just didn't, it didn't get me the way that, that it did for you. But, you know, this is, this is the the work that he does. And, you know, I want to say, add one more thing about nightmare puppeteer. I say this hesitantly because I haven't tested it yet, but it's like it's the next thing on my thing to test the model import thing. It's not very well documented, but from what I understand from his notes, you can actually bring in FBX models of characters, not just props, but actual characters, and it will split. And in night rare puppeteer, the head is is independent of the body, so it will split that there's a process that you have to take the model through in unity, and then you can bring it in. And I want to try that. I've got a specific idea that I'm going to try that with, so I'll report back when I've tried that. But yeah, he's it's amazing that he's still putting putting time into that thing. And he charges what isn't it still 99 cents. 99 just an insane price. Insane. I just got

Damien Valentine 16:18
to add to that, if you can import FBX character models, that means that anyone using religions character creator can create a character in that and then bring it That's right, that's that's exactly.

Phil Rice 16:31
That's the workflow that I'm going to be testing Damian, and I'll report on it on the show here. But I'm going to take a character, I want to take a character I've made in character creator for and have it be usable in nightmare puppeteer. And when I when I figure how that works, I'll do a tutorial on it. Yeah, you get anyway. That's all I have to say about the film. So whoever wants to

Damien Valentine 16:53
go next, I could see the humor in it, but the humor has kind of got a two those scenes have two sides to it. Says, like Ricky, the example you gave of the guy in the hospital bed. There's humor of how this looks and how ridiculous it is, but then there's the other, the message behind it, and you kind of get both at once. So it's a kind of, it kind of comes across as, yeah, it makes you laugh when you watch it, and then you start thinking about it afterwards, and maybe watch it again, and then you get the, you know, the message behind it as you're thinking about it. And you know, humor is a good way to get people's attention, because, you know, you make someone laugh, and you've got their interest, and then they think about it afterwards, and then you know that the seriousness comes through, right? So, you know, I think this film did a good job of that, and it's really hard to follow what Phil was saying. There's a lot of it does come across as a very angry film. He's got a lot of anger at the way things are going in this world and society and people at the top, and this is a way to he's chosen to express that with his mat, mere puppeteer tool. Well, do you want me

Tracy Harwood 18:13
to add? I've got quite a lot to say about this. I think Sure. But before I do, you know what's bizarre again, is that every one of the films that we've picked this month, independently of each other, I have to say, has something to say about the social condition in some way or another, which is super interesting, isn't it? I mean, you know, this is, this is about a social problem and its impact on the environment. Phil's, when we come to yours, Phil is about some kind of psychotic, murderous crow. Damien's is about the very existence of of humanity. I've picked is about automation, and it's and its impact on, on, on the human race. I mean, what a bizarre set of coincidences. So we should all pick these kinds of films, but I guess we'll pick up that on that maybe as we go through a little bit. I've got a fair bit to say about this, really. And, you know, it's not a film I would choose to watch, I have to say. But I think what's immediately interesting about it is that it's, it's not really behaving like a traditional kind of machinima. And I'm going to use that as my kind of inflection point for this, because if you go back to what Machinima is, sort of, you know, filmmaking inside game engines, this clearly, is operating in that kind of space, but it's very evidently stretching as well, because this, to me, is more of a cinematic essay. It's a bit of a rap track, and it's a meme of sorts. And the topic, I think, is, well, it's a commentary, obviously, on eating junk food and the implications that has a. On, you know, social practice on climate change in general, but it's utterly revolting in the way that it's portraying it. And I guess humans are utterly revolting. And maybe he's just reflecting on that, and that's maybe the anger that you're commenting on. But I'll come back to that in a few minutes. I think in terms of the film, there's a lot of ambiguity in its structure. For me, there was, you're watching it, and I'm, you know, certainly, as I was watching I was thinking, Well, is this a narrative, or is it a satire, as you sort of say, or is it doing something else? Is it maybe a commentary on the game, or commentary on some kind of aspect of culture, or is it just about the social context? And I, you know, couldn't really put my finger anywhere on any one of those things, which kind of made me question how I was thinking about it. I think the pacing especially reinforces that it's it's not driven by any kind of plot, although there is a kind of a progression in it. And it led me to think that actually, what you're really looking at, looking at with it, is a kind of a sort of a thinking out loud about a kind of a topic area, which is interesting because you then said he'd used an AI generated voice, which meant he probably hadn't done that at all, and I hadn't considered that this. This was aI generated, simply from the point of view of this being a what was it, October 23 and really, the voice generators were only really just then getting going. So this would have been a very early experiment in some of those early voice generators. I would have thought, if indeed that's what he did. I think another thing that stands out in this, for me is how the performance is handled in a lot of machinery. Of course, performance is limited by the engine, you know, the facial animation, the body language and so on. But here, like a lot of the films that we kind of discuss and have discussed over the years, it's the voice and the editing that are really doing the heavy lifting. We've seen this done before with the nightmare puppeteer engine, which is, frankly, it's one of the weirdest things I think we've ever kind of commented on how this guy came to create this is, is beyond me. It to me, it's shades of autism that's playing out for him to do this, or he's certainly got a very unique take on the world in order to have created it in this way, it's an entirely different proposition. I'll interject

Phil Rice 22:43
real quick. I feel like that, that most people have some kind of an inhibitor in their brain that keeps them from going to the places that he goes. Right? I'm speaking figuratively, of course, but, you know, I don't mean literal places, but and he doesn't have that inhibitor, and he taps into almost like dream logic. I think sometimes with the the his comfort with abstraction is remarkable, is really remarkable. And you were right about the edit. I forgot to mention the Edit when I was talking about that, the edit is just insane. I mean, insanely good, yeah, it really, the energy that that comes through with that is amazing. So I'm glad you pointed

Tracy Harwood 23:28
that out. It absolutely is, however, what I will say is it's, it's editing. Actually, it's the editing that creates this really uncanny effect. You know, these visuals are clearly constrained, but the audio is the most expressive bit. It's even theatrical. And that tension, I think, is, is absolutely playing into what we know about and talk about a lot with machinima. It's deliberate. It's not just a limitation. So for me, there's this really strong esthetic, which is stylization over over, realism. Clearly, realism is never going to be the goal here, and it absolutely leans into that artificiality with with, you know, the kind of repetition. And this, these, what I would call awkward animation rhythms that he's kind of devised here. It's, you know, we've seen this before from him. It's absolutely him embracing the engine's limitations, which he's clearly designed to do, which I find that absolutely fascinating. This guy is doing something that I've just never seen done before, and it's the best part of this machinima. I think it's where I think this becomes art practice and not just a technique. I think one of the big themes in our recent episodes is is, is has been the role of AI and how AI. Tools have shaped what people do. You know, the the other thing I think we've talked a lot about is platform algorithms and kind of hybrid production workflows. And somehow this film feels like it kind of lives in that ecosystem. And I don't know why I got the sense of that, but good point. That's how it felt to me. And it's there through the pacing, these kind of tonal shifts and that, and the humor that's in it and it, and it's very evidently To me, being influenced by an internet native storytelling approach, not not cinema per se, very much driven by what's going on on the internet. Yeah. But I have to say, when I was thinking about it, I did not think he'd used AI at all. So I was very interested to hear you say that. The question it raised for me, though, whether it's really, whether you know, whether it was ever actually made for an audience. And I, and I was kind of intrigued to hear what Phil had to say about that, because it could have been just made for an algorithm, not an audience at all. And if it is derived from that ecosystem of being, you know, in internet, internet based, internet informed, then it may well have been that he was just commenting on that kind of algorithmic approach. And I then kind of led me off into thinking, Well, you know, who's going to watch this? How are they going to watch this? Is it relying on its theme to tickle the algorithm? Because whilst it's obviously been circulated on YouTube, it's clearly a vignette of this bigger project. But not not that I could see the bigger project, frankly, and I couldn't find any Tracy, the bigger project, because, in fact, that's being shown on a private member channel on telegram. My guess is it's so revolting and so offensive, he probably didn't want to show it on the internet. If, if, indeed, that's where that was going. Or maybe this was just a teaser and and the whole thing was a bit of fakery in the way that it was being positioned and put together, right? I have to say, though, I didn't really search that hard for it, and I'm not sure I'd have watched it, even if I'd have found it. So I didn't do an awful lot of digging. I just couldn't really face that. I don't think, I obviously don't go for the theme of it, but actually, what's fascinating is that you're never entirely sure how you are supposed to feel about the content. You know you kind of commenting on it as it being funny. I didn't think it was funny. I thought it was unsettling. I thought it was ironic, but I couldn't get whether it was being sincere and it was that type of kind of ambiguity that I thought, in the end, was actually doing an awful lot of work for it. It's meant to keep you off balance, which is something that I think experimental machinima like pieces like this does incredibly well.

Tracy Harwood 27:59
So yeah, I mean, I guess what I really like about it is it's, it's just, you know, like a, like, quite a few other things that we've looked at over the years, it is moving away from this pure storytelling approach, which I like, you know, it's definitely hybridizing it. It's kind of idea, idea driven. It's kind of platform, shape media, and it's, I think it's, you know, it's, it's, it's blending fan culture with tools, with with commentary. And that meant, led me to think about it as, I'm not sure I should be judging it by the standards that I apply to stories, because I couldn't quite get what it was experimenting with in that case. And, you know, it's, you know, the I suppose the constraints that it's embracing are one thing, but one of the things it led me to think about was what it reveals about the process through which it's been created, because I think it's as much about process as it is about context, and it's not so much about necessarily the finished piece. And it kind of made me think, is this actually not about this, the sort of the narrative arc of it, is this a rap? Is this just a rap? And again, Phil sort of said something very similar, because this guy seems to be winding himself up through it, which is interesting. But then it doesn't really commit to being the structure of a rap, I think there's this rhythmic quality to the delivery the speech and the voice has kind of the cadence, and there's a sense of pacing that kind of resembles rap, but it doesn't lock into this kind of consistent bar length that you might sort of associate with, these kind of predictable and. Rhyme schemes that you kind of get with with rap. But I do feel it's using the texture of rap without necessarily that kind of formal scaffold or scaffolding, which, again, I guess if that's what he's done, is very interesting, because you've also commented in the past how he is a musician, and rap is one of his things, I believe, which is, so he's playing with that, which I think is very interesting. Also, there's no kind of recurring chorus, which makes it like the, you know, sort of a monolog of ideas, yeah. And, you know, the Machinima side of it really is being treated as a kind of cultural texture and a kind of mode of mode of expression. It is uniquely M. I think I was going to say m, dot strange, but uniquely him couldn't be anybody else that made this. I think, yes, it definitely exemplifies what we've come to appreciate about his really experimental and kind of what I call avant garde work. Really. It's kind of loopy. It's kind of fragmented, mutating ideas, which kind of deliberately resists polish and turns the limitations of the engine he's using into this kind of style of his own, which is it does have this sense of parody, but it's always something really awkward, and it's like a, in another way, a sort of a stream of digital consciousness. I've got a bit more to say. Actually, I think, you know, the themes, the themes of it as a vignette. It's also acting as a commentary on some really quite critical social issues, and it speaks to that link between what we eat and the impact that it has on the climate, I guess, in that sense. And it sits in a what would have been a wider movement at the time that this was released about things like the the rise of plant based movements, debates about sustainability and convenience and and the increasing distrust of corporate food systems. And that's where I think it's a meme about culture turning these kind of serious issues into into humor. So it feels like it belongs to a space where activism, irony and apathy all kind of coexist. I think it's what, it's how it does it. That's the fascinating bit.

Tracy Harwood 32:19
I think, rather than sort of offering a critique in a traditional way, it kind of embeds the issue in this sort of repetition and rhythm, which kind of blurs the sincerity of the message and makes it just awkward enough for you to sort of sit back and think about what it's, what it's doing, it's. What have I put is it so does. The burger is less of a punchline and more of a symptom, which I thought was kind of an interesting way of thinking about it. I actually think it's a really clever piece, clever in a lot of ways, but especially in its messaging. Whether or not that was his original intention, I'm not really too sure. Yeah, I, I'm really fascinated by how he's done it. And you know, the more I started to think about it, the more I started to get into it. So on that level, alone, thank you for sharing it with us.

Ricky Grove 33:16
Sure to say the least, man, you're, you're, you're burning up the show there. Tracy, sorry you're making a song. Look bad. That's really fantastic insight. I can tell you a couple things before we close. One is, he's a fellow who is constantly creating, so this isn't something that he planned or, you know, worked out to the most careful detail. I'm sure he loved. He writes like crazy, and he has all kinds of notebooks. I'm sure he wrote this monolog, and then said, Well, what can I do with it? And then came up with this thing on the fly. I'm sure that's what happened. And although the the this particular piece is harsh, not for his intended audience, which is, like Phil said, outsiders like himself, but for the general public. But that's not the only kind of film he does. So if you watch this film, know that he does many other traditional things. He has gentler things. So don't be grossed out by the guy. You know, this is just one of those things where this is how he decided to make it. The other thing that I wanted to say was that he you, and this, this came out of one of your comments, Tracy, is that he distances you the observer. So somebody like Brecht, the great German playwright, would love that, because by having a monolog, which is usually the goal is to create empathy for the person who's talking and intimacy and intimacy, he avoids that altogether you're. Kept at a distance, and you're constantly put off balance, as you point out, because he's always moving to something else and doing something else. I found many of those changes funny, but that's just me, you know, just how I saw it. And then the last thing I want to say is that, and this is a theme that I think it's going to go through all of our picks for this month, is the sense of style we think. And I'm going to talk about this in the next film too. Style because, because Americans in particular, have embraced realism in all of their popular and commercial art forms, if you talk about style, it's seen as artificial because it's not realistic when, in fact, that whole definition of style is completely off the mark. Style is a representation of the content and how that content is presented, and it's usually an individual style. In this case, we have somebody whose style is anarchistic and absurd and non sequiturs with things that don't match that he's making match. That's his individual style. And I think, as you pointed out Tracy, nobody else does animation like he does. You could see, and that's his particular style we're going to see in the next film. There's a different kind of style that comes out, and I want to talk about that when we get to it. That's it all I have to say, unless you guys have something else you want to add. I kind of

Damien Valentine 36:41
got thrown off a little bit because I was running into some technical issues, so I was kind of keeping my on that, and I didn't say everything I had in mind. But, you know, I think Tracy covered a lot of it. I do agree. It's a very clever film with the way it was presented. The one thing that kind of disappointed me a little bit was learning that the voice was an AI thing when he is such a talented voice actor, that's my only criticism of it really. Ricky, you mentioned he done a he's produced a musical, so I'm gonna have to check that out, because I'm kind of intrigued to see what he's come up with there. That will be something I have to check out. His channel. For His channel is very good,

Ricky Grove 37:19
and it's up to date too. We'll put a link in the show notes.

Damien Valentine 37:22
And the final thing I'll say is, as also, Tracy said, as soon as I started watching this, this is definitely an M film, without even being able to look at who made it, because, you know, his style is Tracy, to him,

Phil Rice 37:37
that style goes into his music as well. He's very, very, very prolific music artist. It's kind of hard to locate his stuff sometimes because he does it under different persona names. So like, one of them is dolls in waste world. I think that's the name of the artist. There's no indication that it's him, but it's him, and he's done some others under some different names and stuff. Some of it is on Spotify, some of it's on Bandcamp, some of it's elsewhere. So he's kind of the chaos that he injects into his films is kind of in his distribution strategy as well. But if you hunt for it, you can find it. And his music is very interesting and also very uniquely him, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, if you're into that, if you're interested in very untraditional music, it's, it's worth, worth chasing down. I had one other thought real quick, Ricky, and that is because I've been puzzling over, trying to come up with a possible explanation for why did Ricky laugh and we didn't, and me in particular, because Ricky and I have have we similar, we have a synergy of sense of humor, typically. And I'm wondering if it comes down to your life experience. Ricky has brought you into closer orbit with the absurd and the avant garde, through, through your own personal experience, through your career experience. You told me about your avant garde Emmett guard theater experience. It's mind blowing, like I can't even imagine being there. And so that's, I think that's that's added to to, let's call it the language that you understand. You know, a language that many don't, that maybe the others here on the show don't, including me. And so it that's why it impacted you in a different way. I think I was never able to get out of that unsettled feeling that Tracy described. So I was never I kind of have to be, I have to be, at least comfortable to some degree to laugh. And if that's true of everyone, I think you were able to achieve a comfort with this disjointedness because you've got access to that additional language and experience about the avant garde. I. That it didn't distract you in the way that it did me. Maybe that's my theory.

Ricky Grove 40:06
Well, now listen, early in the film, he talks about him being a genius of eating and having won all of these contests. Then there's a little moment of reflection where he says, and I began to think of other geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci stuffing sausages down their throats. You can't tell me that isn't funny. Yeah, I'm sorry. I You don't have to have a background in the avant garde to appreciate that silliness.

Damien Valentine 40:40
I thought it was

Ricky Grove 40:43
funny. One

Tracy Harwood 40:45
thing look, in homage to this, my background is of the spitallo waste incineration plant, because I just thought, How silly is it? All? That's what my background is. Yes. In honor of you,

Ricky Grove 41:04
Ricky, thank you. And by the way, everyone, I want to recommend nightmare puppeteer, which is on Steam for 99 cents, as a very interesting tool. There's lots of community support. He's done excellent and funny, I think, funny tutorials on how to do introduction and how to do stuff. It's, it's, it's unusual and different, but it's cheap. It works as machinima, and it's worth checking out. Well, we'll be sure to provide a link, right?

Phil Rice 41:36
I said I only had one more thing, but I have one more quick thing, Mayor puppeteer, because you reminded me, it's very interesting to me that central to nightmare puppeteer, since its very earliest version, has been the fact that there's a ragdoll physics engine you can't turn off that is always there whenever you're manipulating a character on the screen. And I feel like that. The reason for that is because it is unpredictable. It's it's impossible to have minute control over anything in nightmare puppeteer. When I, I shared with him the the film that I made, I don't know, a year or two ago with with nightmare puppeteer, and I just, I sent it to him privately, and says, Hey, I made this with your tool. Thanks for making it. Hope you like it. And he replied, like, almost immediately, like within a day and and was very sincere, and said, thanks for sharing this with me. I appreciate it. And I had kind of loaded up quite a bit of praise and my and told him about my experience using nightmare puppeteer. And he says, I made it because I wanted people to to be able to create without thinking as much about how they create that. So the tool would just kind of would be adding something to the equation constantly. That's what makes it different. Like, if you're comparing it to something like I clone, where you can achieve just absolute minute precision over the movie of finger joints. You know, there's nothing like that, and that's intentional. It's not sloppy, it's not lazy, it's it's very intentional that he wanted something that would help you tap into these other ways of thinking about creating, and it was just, I don't know, I think I always suspected he was conscious of that, but it was, it was kind of cool and interesting to hear him actually say so that, yep, that was the intent is just for it to be a different way of accessing your creativity, yeah, to A tool that participates in a way, and at the same time, stays out of your way. Yeah, that's tough. That's hard to do so and I feel like he's pulled it off.

Ricky Grove 43:51
Well, you know, he was always telling me, and all the times we had long discussions like Chekhov's men philosophizing, we'd get together and have a beer and philosophize. And one of the things that he was really ragging on is people's hypocrisy, artists hypocrisy, saying they're going to make this and they're going to make that, and then they never finish the project, partially because they're so worried about how it's going to be perceived, and so it's not good enough. It's not good enough. Well, he said, That's just bullshit. It keeps people from being able to finish things and get things done. And so I think nightmare puppeteer is a tool where you do it and it's done. You know, you leave it if you finish the project and you move on to the next thing. So you can, you can grow as an artist by creating over and over and over, instead of talking about creating, which was his big thing that pissed him off like crazy.

Phil Rice 44:53
I think we could. Someone could form an entire podcast just on. A declared yet abandoned machinima projects, and they would stay just as busy as we

Tracy Harwood 45:09
Yeah, and the stories around them, yes, yes, yeah.

Damien Valentine 45:16
Wonderful pick Ricky, thank you. Yeah. I really enjoyed it.

Ricky Grove 45:19
Thank you. I know it was risky, but sometimes why not? And, you know, put it out there and see what happens, right?

Damien Valentine 45:28
Yeah, sometimes you have to take that risk, all right. So I think that wraps up this week's episode. If you've got anything to say about this film or nightmare puppeteer for us or the show, please send us an email at talk at completely machinery.com you can check out our blog and all the latest information at completely machinery.com and from myself, Phil Ricky and Tracy, we'll see you next week. Bye, bye. You.