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Machinima Island was an experimental project created by Inter-Activa which mixed social networks, virtual worlds and machinima. The project was conceptualised in 2004 and completed in 2006. The project has been quoted as an early example of transmedia and hypercomics and won an Arts Council award.
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The idea behind Machinima Island was to develop a narrative dynamically, in collaboration with audiences, and then develop that narrative into a series of ongoing animation episodes (in response to user input), using machinima techniques. To allow that, the producers published a series of basic/introductory videos that introduced the characters and their environment to the audience. Then they also published a website where audiences could add comments and proposals (comments were also permitted via SMS). A whole virtual set was created for this project, including the characters and purpose-built avatar control techniques in Second Life. Though the experiment was well received, the series were canceled because of the lack of input from audiences (see 1% rule (Internet culture)).
As well as receiving 3 nominations and one award at Machinima Festivals, [1] the project was showcased in festivals in Europe [2] and Asia.
The Website
The site contained information about the project, character descriptions and introductory videos. Audiences could add comments freely about the characters, episodes or the plot, rate the videos as well send comments via their mobile phones. The website was designed by Cuttlefish. The goals of the site were to develop a community around the series and act as the main vehicle for the resulting text/narrative, which from there was turned into animation episodes using the virtual world.
The Virtual Set
The set and the characters were designed completely purposely for the project. A virtual puppeteer technique was also developed specifically so that the gestures of the characters could be controlled in real-time by means of using the keyboard. The project won the Best Technical Achievement award at the 2007 Machinima Film Festival Europe. *[3]
Several artists collaborated in this project conceptualised and produced by Ricard Gras, among them - Gareth Howell, Alex Lucas and Saatchmo Prototype.