Wonderful news about Among Fables and Men

I just got a mail telling me that Among Fables and Men have been nominated to the Bitfilm Awards 2008. This is a great honour for me, especially since the Bitfilm Festival isn't just some online gaming oriented festival, but rather a more mainstream animation and video fx festival that's being held annually in Germany.

The first prize in their machinima category is 1500 euros, and a robot trophy. I believe the winners will be announced some time around July 10th-12th. Last year's winner was the prominent Olibith, with his music video 'I'm Only Sleeping', and another nominee for this year is BaronSoosdon, with his amazingly 'I'm So Sick'.

With this kind of competition, I need all support I can get, so don't forget to vote for me during the public voting between May 1st - July 1st.

Another upcoming festival that Among Fables and Men have been nominated in is the Online Machinima Film Festival, which I'm still very honoured to be nominated in, even though it's "just" one of those online festivals ;)

The nominations were for Best First Film and Best Technical Achievement. I doubt I got any chance in the technical achievement category, since I'm going up against Martin's Falch full feature length epic 'Tales of the Past III', but we'll hope for the best and see the results sometime in May.

Machinima
Machinima, filmer gjorda med datorspelsgrafik, finns i lika många olika former som ”vanlig” film: humorsketcher, experimentella kortfilmer, dramer, vad som helst. Se exempel, och hör Rickard Frisegård (warcraftmovies.com) och machinimamakarna Tobias Lundmark och Marcus Johansson berätta om sina olika erfarenheter. Vad är machinima? Vilka är det som håller på med det? Hur kommer machiniman att påverka animationen på sikt?

Samtalsledare: Andrea Reuter
Bio Mauritz lördag 26 april 13.45–14.45

So, like it weren't enough to have been nominated in two big film festivals, I've been invited by the Swedish Film Institute to participate in a machinima panel, towards the end of this month. It will be at their biggest annual event 'Drömfabriken' (Dream factory), which is directed to film students, enthusiasts and the industry as a whole, with the intention to inspire.

During this event I'll also be showcasing 'Among Fables and Men' for the audience and the other participants. Speaking of which, the other participants will be Rickard 'Gedan' Frisegård (WarcraftMovies), Marcus 'Noken' Johansson (Snoken Productions) and the panel will be moderated by Andrea Reuter (swedish film critic).

To round this post off, I'll post the good words I've recieved around the internet for Among Fables and Men, from people I got great respect for:

"The top winners of Warcraft Movies' Fabled Few continue to impress. First place in the drama category went to Dopefish for this video that pushes the boundaries of what you've seen before in WoW Machinima. No voice over, no text and no moving video. This entire tale is told using still images. And it's one of the best you'll see this year.

Budding machinimists often forget how important music and sound effects are to telling the story. Dopefish challenged himself by using only those two elements on his soundtrack. Add to that the innovative use of screenshots and you get a film that weaves a spell that draws you in. And isn't that what a good story should do?"

-Dan O'Halloran, WoW Insider, WoW Moviewatch

"Ingrid and I both were very impressed with "Among Fables and Men". The title sequence is lovely and the whole film has a classy look that shows off Tobias' imagination and great sense of design. The film is wordless, but tells an interesting and strange story with striking visuals and interesting sound work.

I personally liked Tobias' experiment with narrative form by using multiple frames and interesting graphics. I think Tobias will be a director to watch in the machinima community. His work has a strong personal stamp while being beautiful and witty."

-Ricky Grove, Machiniplex

"WarcraftMovies held a contest, The Fabled Few, last month. Among the winners was an outstanding piece by Dopefish, a World of Warcraft Machinimator. The film, "Among Fables and Men," weaves it's magic through the use of images and song. No text, voiceovers, or footage were involved, which makes it quite impressive!"

-Moo Money, Massively, Cinemassively

"I love machinima like this - I just love it. Unashamedly stylised, beautifully composed and painstakingly constructed. I can confidently predict that this short but rather wonderful piece will be imitated many times over the next couple of years. The Warcraft movie community is undergoing a quiet revolution at the moment, and Tobias “Dopefish” Lundmark is one the idealistic young students waving a red flag in the streets."

-Johnnie Ingram, Machinima for Dummies

"This dialogue-less video chronicles the fairy tale journey of one man through a dream world, and takes more than a few queues from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. As the winner of the "Drama" category in the WCM "Fabled Few" machinima contest, this envelope-pushing video by Dopefish was very well received by critics. However, instead of boasting more action-oriented eye candy, this vid gets a retro-style infusion.

Using 2-D cutout models that more closely resemble a diorama than a CGI film, this vid is highly effective in its aesthetic delivery. In fact, not a single sequence was filmed in the traditional sense (not that machinima 'filming' is traditional to begin with....) and yet through unique framing & vector usage, Dopefish created a uniquely entertaining & genre-bending machnima."

-Nick Crumpton, Princeton University

"Defying the ever-evolving definition of machinima, Fables is a masterwork of compositing, repurposing imagery from World of Warcraft in a stylized Lewis Caroll-esque presentation."

-Phil 'Overman' Rice, Overman's Blog

"...You need to try something that hasn't been tried before. Something to really open some eyes and go "Oh my god, it's so different that it's just amazing". And that kind of moves me on to Dopefish's Among Fables and Men. That one is a great example of what I'm talking about; the next generation of WoW machinima.

It was technically a beautiful thing. It was new, it kind of at first feels like an experimental film, which I guess it indeed is. But it was soo fresh and soo new, and still using the framework of WoW, and its artwork and its textures.

...

There's alot of otherness about the Dopefish video. It feels like another world. It does not feel like something you've seen before. It's very evocative of this fairy tale feeling, which they were trying to get from the contest in the first place. And I thought that worked very well."

-Dead Workers Party, World of WoW Podcast #29 (.mp3)

Bitfilm Festival
Online Machinima Film Festival
Svenska Filminstitutet - Drömfabriken