The launch of the long awaited season 3 of the web video comedy You suck at Photoshop is a boon to all would-be Photoshop jockeys and comedy aficionados. It also heralds a bright new age in crazed online learning with the launch of Big Fat University.
One my favorite web video series, Zero Punctuation is a weekly video game reviews created by comedy writer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and produced for online magazine The Escapist. Yahtzee’s hilarious animated reviews are fast-paced, expletive-laden and viciously rude. But most of all, his relentless quest for quality in such a crud-infested industry is both entertaining and inspirational.
In this entertaining TED conference Scott McCloud summaries his theories about comics from his two ground-breaking books Understanding Comics (2003) and Reinventing Comics (2000).
Even if the Arbiter had yet to make it’s first on-screen appearance, these three Machinima comedy shorts from John Graham are just as hilarious (or even more!) as the more recent episodes.
Master Chief likes to spend all day playing video games (very badly), going online to lolcats.com and watch pr0n. He is also an action figure based on the famous character from the Halo series. His daily routine is disturbed by the unexpected delivery of The Arbiter, another action figure with more common sense, courtesy and spelling skills than his grammatically-challenged and homophobic roommate. Through these unexpectedly endearing characters, the author spoofs typical abusive and stupid gamer behavior and offers insightful critiques of popular video games.
I recently finished watching the excellent Extended edition of the Lord of the Ring trilogy on DVD. What better way to honor this masterpiece than by watching this memorable excerpt from the 2003 MTV awards where Gollum himself picks up the award for Best Virtual Performance and "thanks" MTV, Andy Serkis, Peter Jackson and his team for his miserable experience shooting the movie by hurling angry, obscene abuse to all of them.
More Machinima excellence from Zachariah Scott of Lit Fuse Films. This gorgeous music video clip set in the world of Half Life II is a wistful, poetic vision of the life under military occupation where privacy and hope are things long forgotten.
Shimmering Waters
