It's a very, very strange feeling when something that you've been working on for so long finally starts to become a concrete reality, rather than a vision in your own head that you know will eventually be made real. It made me realise how much work has gone into this. I've been feeding my free time into this project for months. God knows how Hugh must feel - BloodSpell has been his life for the past few years. This film represents a lot of NonGenderSpecificPerson-Hours - love, toil, blood, sweat and tears. However, if you compare our efforts to the number of NGSP-Hours that would have been dumped into BloodSpell had it been a commercial Hollywood live-action production, or a Pixar-style 3D rendering, you start to realise just how powerful a technique machinima really is.
Now, don't get too excited - it's still not finished. There's the foley to add, and more editing to do, and maybe some ammendments based on the feedback we get from preview screenings. But my point is, it's there, and it's looking good. Soon, my friends, oh so very soon.
P.S. Speaking of the illustrious Mr Hancock (or machinimaguruhughhancock, as he's affectionately known about the office), I've read some blogs and commentaries that refer to www.bloodspell.com as "Hugh Hancock's BloodSpell Blog". It's not. Just because he's the only one that ever posts, and the only one that actually knows what the heck is going on, and the only one who's industry experience equals that of the rest of the team put together, doesn't mean he owns this blog, do ya hear?
Can I go to the toilet now, please, Mr Hancock, sir?