Arstechnica article here

Apparently, directly supported by Valve who licensed the updated Source engine and provided the producers with additional animation and cinematic tools.

If only GabeN & Co. did provide the same stuff to Ross!

Teaser trailer here.

Regards

The story has potential and it couldn't have been produced as live action for this budget so animation was the only alternative. But while the budget is too small for a live action and high end animation, it feels too much for machinima. I'm really curious on how they are going to spend all that money.

I hope Valve will show some support for us independent machinima makers. You can barely make something decent with current tools.

Well for a project with 18 million in funding, I'm pretty damn sure I could be persuaded to go back to Source and find enough help to get all the problems with it fixed. I can guarantee the Source engine they'll be working with is not what I've been working with.

Probably on modellers, animators, higher end motion capture, and marketing.

This also kind of shows the divide between costs of an animated movie. They're operating at 18 million, which is considered economical in Hollywood terms. So far I think the donations page has raised over $1,800, most of which will go towards the movie project. While that's more money then I've ever had to put in a project in my whole life, that's still 0.0001% of the budget for what's considered "economical" for normal computer graphics movies. Guess we'll see who gets done first!

I was obvious they would be spending the money on that. To be more precise, I should have asked "how are they going to spend all that money and make it seem like they aren't throwing it away?" Because judging from the trailer, they are doing exactly that. The models, sets, animation, physics are outdated. I don't know how much animation, VFX and post houses charge in the US but in Europe you could do wonders with this kind of money. Maybe this is a minimum amount required for this project in the US but it sure seems a lot of money to spend just for this movie.

Have you seen http://www.ironsky.net? It's a finnish indie movie produced for just 7 million euros which features almost 900 CGI shots that are very high quality. Not to mention it's a very enjoyable dark comedy. Now that's money well spent!

Well I think if you had people that you were paying competitively to develop ALL your assets, textures, models, animations, and all, the total would definitely run in the millions. As it is for my movie, I plan to use as much content from other games as is practical, it's mostly just characters that will be custom developed. Also marketing will eat up as much money as you're willing to throw it.

I haven't seen Iron Sky, but I've heard of it, I didn't realize they had finished.

My main theory about this movie is that they intend to pay a great deal of money for marketing purposes at the expense of quality. Either that or Gabe made them pay through their noses for licensing. The trailer also hints that the movie will be turned into a game and the articles suggest that it might be released on Steam. Upon further thinking it would seem that the movie itself is a marketing ploy by Valve. That would explain a few things about it...

Thank God for fan created content! I'm starting to rely quite a bit on in for my series otherwise it would be even more frustrating. My machinima workflow: write the script with Source limitations in mind, fail to animate a certain scene, get pissed off, fail again with a simpler solution that is further away from my initial intention, get more pissed off, make the characters stand and reframe. Then the next scene...

Iron Sky was released in april. I recommend you watch it to get a grasp on how resourceful people can be on a small budget. It has its flaws but the satire and CGI make up for the inconveniences. I'm ashamed to say CGI makes up for anything in a movie but, in this case, it's an indie breakthrough.