Blog of Baron Soosdon

My favourite fan-art of all time!

2010-03-10T04:49:00.001+02:00

'Nuff said.

NERD RRRAGE!!11

2010-03-09T20:28:00.004+02:00

"Machinima takes effort.
PvP videos do not." -BaronSoosdon

Oh wow, I did not ever think that this little sentence could make a pathetic whiney emo go liek:

Ahahah! I'm so happy that this sentence might be the one that makes me echo to eternity! On my random googling and browsing session I ran into this piece of gem here:

In case you can't click it, it says "35. Unlimited Escapism and most other stuff by Baron Soosdon http://www.baronsoosdon.com/ even though he's an arrogant, stupid ***hole for saying crap like "Machinima takes effort. PvP videos do not." Dear Baron: Screw that. And your Model Viewer. And yes, I'm aware that you can do crazy stuff on private servers. Don't be mad because you're not good enough to make a good pvp movie."

(link to the original post: clix)

MAD?!

MAD?!?!?!?!

I was completely and absolutely sane when I said that! And I meant every single word of it!

But I think I overreacted. That sad emo is not worth a mighty FFFUUUUUUUU---

I think this is a bit closer to the truth in describing his reaction:

Something that's not going to be machinima!

2010-03-05T23:55:00.003+02:00

Something REALLY different this time - I've taken a non-machinima video as one of my side projects and also as a part of this "reinventing the stuff I make"-thing.

A music video is the best way to start, and the music is this:

It's a mash-up of the Oasis song Wonderwall and Myon & Shane 54's Helpless.

Plans always change, but the initial plan is to create this by only using my camera, Photoshop and After Effects. I'm going to avoid using any machinima or game related stuff in it. But as ideas develop on the way, who knows what'll happen!

The style of the video is very similar to The Device Has Been Modified - as the lyrics of the song play out, the words and letters are synced to them.

I have no timetable on this, as this is a sideproject from all things machinima. I also don't expect to finish this anytime soon, since I'm filming it in FullHD and that does punish your machine.

The good thing in all this is that there will be no sick amounts of Fraps files to fill the HDD!

Destruction, Rebirth, Dead Murloc

2010-03-01T22:32:00.004+02:00

The YouTube account drama takes an unexpected twist and turn, as the account seems to have been restored for now.

But still, I haven't changed my mind. Something new must become out of all this!

I'm not sure what the future will bring, but I'm playing with the thought that World of Gnomecraft 2.0 will be the last movie I release on this particular YT account. I am not planning to get rid of the BaronSoosdon alias or anything.

"Nublock Movies" on the other hand is expendable.

The best thing about all this DRAMAH is the inspiration it gave me. It's been an eternity since I've gotten an idea for a voice-acted machinima with a plot.. Especially for one which has all three key ingredients: a beginning, middle part and THE END.

When I now think of all the machinima ideas I had in mind prior to this drama, all I can see the word "CANCELLED" written in red text above their imaginary screenshots. The XT002 movie is an exception. For it, I see only static with red pixels here and there.

Destruction brings rebirth.
Rebirth brings dead murlocs.
You know the rules and so do I.

Not Photoshopped.

2010-02-26T21:36:00.012+02:00

5.7K+ YouTube subscribers.

Gone in an instant. *poof*

Without no e-mail explaining why.

I have sent an inquiry to YouTube via their extrefuckingmely-hard-to-find complaint form. Oh wait, that is actually not a complaint form - you could just tick some boxes. If this was a copyright problem, I thought they'd just disable the video in question and/or send a notification about it.

Search function is your friend, so I used it! A lot of other users have the same issue as well, accoutn shut down without any warnings before or after.

This has to be said first - I am not emoing, raging or angry at the moment. Just extremely, EXTREMELY disappointed. Hell, I'm not even drunk.

I always thought that I would quit (WoW) machinima on my own terms, when I want, when I had achieved enough and made all the movies that had to be made. Therefore, I have made this decision: if I am not getting my YouTube account back, World of Gnomecraft 2.0 will be the last WoW-machinima you will ever see from me.

The reason for this is just the p0w3r of teh internets. Using all those subscribers is (was?) a good thing to get the word out of new videos and other stuf..

Making a new account is not an option, there is just no way to get those subscribers back. Sucks - but life does that a lot apparently :)

If this is the universes way of saying "lol go on, find another engine" - so be it!

This may be a goodbye to WoW-moviemaking, but not to machinima or video editing in general.

We shall see. I just want an explanation from them.

UPDATE!

I guess this is it then!

I'm not giving up that easily, I did reply to this mail though - hoping for a reply.

Update 2!

Almost forgot about the unfinished stuff while mrgrlglrglrl'ing to YouTube. Let's go through them in order

The Palest Horse - definitely not cancelled! Almost every voice has been recorded and I'm ready to move on with this. Even if this YouTube drama is means the end for my music videos and stuff like that, I sure as hell am not going to quit without making at least one full-length plot machinima.

The Ballad of XT-002: Very Bad Toys - after the YT drama, I don't know. Probably not. I did come up with some great ideas for the unfilmed parts, but I can live without finishing this movie.

There are also two other unfinished machinimas on my HD, which I think I'll release as they are. I haven't touched those two in months.

UPDATE 3

In case YouTube was the only way for you to watch my machinimas, no worries! Almost all of them are stored elsewhere on the interenets.

Vimeo
WarcraftMovies
WeGame
Myndflame

A new video by Gnomechewer

2010-02-25T21:55:00.005+02:00

Gnomechewer is back with a new video.. and how great video it is! This machinima went directly amongst my all-time favourites!

I'm assuming that Mr Chewer still uses Vegas to create the videos. That makes this video even better, since Vegas is a very limited program when compared to After Effects (in terms of compositing and all that). "Gilnean Like Me" is the burning bright light in the sky which burns away all the blood elf rap and terribad parody filth!

The song is catchy and the video is stylish in it's Gnomechewerian style! The only downside is that I can't copycat Gnomechewer's style unless I eat his brain and consume his powers.

I give this machinima a top score of five burning murloc villages.

No polar bears!

2010-02-19T19:22:00.003+02:00

Something different this time - photography!

Outside of WoW, there is this game called Real Life. You are always playing it and you can only LOSE the game. That doesn't mean that there isn't any loot! In this came, the loot comes in the form of pictures which are taken with this device called camera.

The other day, it was sunshining outside. That means that it's safe to go out since the polar bears are not out there to eat people. The sun makes the bear sparkle, they don't like that at all. Those polar bears come mostly out at night, mostly.

It was safe to go to the frozen lake to hunt pictures without the fear of being eaten by a sparkling polar bear.

So here we go - pictures. They have been slightly Photoshopped: level adjustments, brightness/contrast plus some photo filter. All lens flare is natural in it's unaltered form!

Just in time!

2010-02-01T06:32:00.002+02:00

It's been a while since my last post, so I'll get to the point right away!

I finished my entry to the Alienware contest by Blizzard just in time in the last minute.

My entry is called..

It is an independent sequel to the previous World of Gnomecraft machinima I did in 2009.

The most important part of this video is the soundtrack by Caruu which kicks ass and is extremely catchy at the same time.

I had damn fun during the three-day creation process. Whether I win or lose, I'm proud of this machinima.

Hopefully the people at Blizzard will pay attention to a little message I put to the end of the movie :)

Well anyways, now it's back to continuing being unemployed and finishing stuff.. yea, I'm talkin bout that XT002 clip among other things!

And remember kids... PUNTING IS A SIN!

T For Thunderfury - The Movie!

2009-12-10T06:47:00.005+02:00

Remember, remember the 5th of December..

(downloadable version inc)

Big thanks to everyone who made it there!

p.s. I'm having impure ideas of making a machinima out of that Love Boat theme house remix.. Olibith, Thrall or Narain Soothfancy singing it :D

Collaboration Machinima from 2007

2009-12-06T19:40:00.003+02:00

There was a collaboration machinima project going on in 2007. Eventually it faded out and was not continued. Seven parts were made though! Yesternight, Dopefish returned to the wonderful world of IRC and decided to put it all together.

The machinimakers included in this collaboration are (in order): Olibith, Nyhm, teh_taco, Telemora, Dopefish and me (each machinimakers name is shown on the top left corner when his clip starts)

If someone knows the name of the metal/industrial song which plays during my part, lemme know. I tried searching for it back then with no results :(

Remember, remember, the 5th of December..

2009-12-05T22:43:00.004+02:00

I'm very tempted to act like god and punish you all for your sins by making a BELF RAP VIDEO out of the Thunderfury event. To your luck, I'm not in such an evil mood at all!

Everything went well, there was one full and one half-full raid of people, either from the internets or from The Beastro.

Getting a TF has been a long-time dream of mine, now I finally got it!

While we were waiting for people to show up, an excursion to both AQ instances was in place! The silly bug thing in AQ20 wiped me and my crew of Too Many DK's, but AQ40 was more cake. Prophet Skeram and Bug Posse went down like a murloc baby to a grinder!

There was some dying, but that just happened because DK's are a weak class. Blizz needs to buff them imo!

The actual fight against Thunderaan was over so fast that I couldn't film it at all. I have liek two or three seconds of footage where the camera is pointing.. somewhere. But who cares, I got the sword and lots of pictures with DK's in them!

A we're no strangers to loveboat sailed to and from Booty Bay.

I heard there were some cookies and lesbian vampire roleplay in Alliance inns. That had to be checked out.

ZOMG THERE IS NO LESBIAN VAMPIRE ROLEPLAY AT ALLIANCE INNS! THE WARCHIEF MUST BE NOTIFIED OF THIS AT ONCE!

The actual video of the event will be ready when it's ready, it might have to wait till next year. I'll see what I got on tape and decide to what to do with the stuff, will I go for an epix "T for Thunderfury" or just simply sync it to some Backstreet Boys song.

All in all, thanks to everyone who participated! A tip to everyone ever thinking of arranging events and expecting lotsa people to whisper you: get the WoW Instant Messenger addon. It helps a bit with the spam.

MORE PICTURES
By Ellalah

RECRUITING!

RAIDERS - Ok, we are starting up a vanilla raid raiding guild. No rules in items. No (more) DK's we are already full on those (got one in the guild). Wanna join? Whisper me ingame (Soosisti, Whitelabel, Metaverse, Ilonjuhla) and ask moar. Maximum level 60, IRL age 18+ and plix know what to do. When I got the time and all that, I'll finish the webpage for the guild.

The guild is called , it's already been formed - we got a TABARD with a goat in it and a GUILD BANK full of all sorta oldskool items. Including the BoE T1 pieces for almost every class.

Recruitment is open on all classes, but the most wanted thing is a protard warrior.

p.s.

Sorry for all the gnomes that got killed! The DK's were just trying to tame you. It's a new thing among the upper class horde, to have a shiny and sparkly gnome pet.

Invitation: Thunderfury Summoning (now with video!)

2009-11-27T03:45:00.003+02:00

And now.. details as I promised!

- The event will be held at Twilight's Hammer (EU), summoning itself will start around 19:00 realm time (GMT +1), Horde Side
- Get yourself to Cenarion Hold aroud 18:00 server time
- Whisper me (I'm logged in with Metaverse) for a raid invite
- If you are someone I know from IRC, this blog or anywhere else in the interwebs - please do use a recognizeable name
- I heard there might be a chance of rickrolls
- WARNING! There are NO gnomes on horde. I repeat: there are no gnomes on Horde!
- After I got my new, shiny legendary poking thing of legendariness - the party continues at Booty Bay. Where we go from there.. we'll just have to wait and see!
- YOUR IDEA HERE! Any good and not-so-good idea is welcome, spit it out!
- Olibith and Whowho.. if you find the time, please do join - I won't tell anyone that you accidentally rolled Horde :)

Thunderaan summoning, Saturday Dec 5th 2009!

2009-11-27T01:52:00.003+02:00

I've just completed gathering all the materials for Thunderfury.

The summoning of Thunderaan will happen on saturday 5th December @ Twilight's Hammer-EU, 19:00 realm time (GMT +1).

It's up to you if you want to roll a quick DK (doing the starter quests shouldn't take more than an hour) or level something else.

For anyone outside EU realms, things will get a lot trickier. You could get a trial account, but then I you cannot be summoned, invited to a raid/party or even whisper anyone.

The other way is to buy an EU classic account, but I think it'll be a lot cheaper for you if you'll just watch the video about the event :)

I will post just a bit more info about this once I get my invitation video done.

Best thread of ALL TIME + help request!

2009-11-25T23:17:00.003+02:00

I've found the most epicest WoW-thread of all time.. OF ALL TIME right here.

Well, the thing is that I want to machinimake it. Badly.

I've always wanted to make a Silent Hill / WoW mash-up and this thing is perfect.

THERE WAS A TEXT HERE.

NOW IT IS GONE.
(to the right address)

Just to confirm: The Palest Horse gets done before this - yes, we are working on it!

"We need a Thundefury. It looks cool."

2009-11-19T05:26:00.006+02:00

I love the smell of Thunderfury Bindings in the morning..

..it just happens so that a bit earlier today, Garr decided to stop holding on to the binding and gave it to me. Brutal force had to be used though.

Getting a TF has been a longtime dream for me and it's finally coming true :)

The next step is to get the Elementium, which may or may not be easy.

Once all the quest items are in Metaverse's inventory, it will be the time to summon Thunderaan and you all are invited to witness the event (and get rickrolled, all my characters are equipped with a macro for that).

This will be taking place at Twilight's Hammer-EU.

This is how we did it 3 years ago..

I've gotten a couple of requests from people who want to be in a movie by me. Here's your chance!

For the people playing on EU realms this will be quite easy - if you have a lv55 already, the least painful way is to create a Horde LolKnight and join the fight.

For all the others, this will be a bit trickier. You need to get an EU client + an EU account. Getting a trial account is easy. The downside of a trial account is that you can not whisper any other player and lv20 is the maximum you can reach. Coming to Silithus with an lv20 might be a bit painful.

When I got all the items, I'll announce the exact date in here and YouTube.

In addition to the actual summoning event, I'm looking for good ideas on what to do with all the 2 people that show up.

Crashing Booty Bay + STV could be a nice tradition to uphold? :)

Aion Machinima: Looking Back No More

2009-11-16T20:29:00.005+02:00

Downloads
Full HD 1080p / x264 @ Megaupload

Streams
Vimeo
WeGame
Myndflame

It's finally ready - my first and quite probably last Aion machinima. My gametime ran out last week and I have no plans of buying more for now.

I still have hope for Aion, it kept me playing the longest time of all 'new' MMO's I tried. The upcoming patches promise to bring easier leveling, but that's not enough to bring me back.

Free tip for MMO developers: to defeat WoW, create something new. Do not copypasta the classes as they are in their archetypes. I want to replace WoW with something that feels refreshing and has new ideas and innovations. Machinima functionality would be a huge plus, but that's not necessary.

I will still be following Aion on how it develops. I'll even make that Aion machinima tutorial, but now I just don't have the time for that.

As for this video, making it was fun! I leaned a couple of new After Effects and Photoshop tricks which is always a plus.

Spread the word about this machinima, I hope it inspires other people to try their machinimation skills on Aion!

For the lulz!

2009-11-08T00:59:00.006+02:00

This saturday night, in the mountains..

Indeed, for the lulz!

I wish I'd have over 9000 doctors degrees and the intelligence of a protection warrior in a high-end raiding guild so I could have done all this in a SRS BSNS 3D modeling program. And if that's not enough, those damn things have too many moving buttons!

Moar links:
YouT00b
Vimeo

P.S.

If you're ever in the need of creating a vinyl record in Photoshop, check this tutorial out!

A bunch of stuff!

2009-11-05T03:21:00.008+02:00

This will be a post about many things! The first thing in my list is..

A new home!
I've been searching for a Vanilla raiding guild for a while. I had some requirements though: no silly limitations on talents, glyphs and spells. And to my luck, I found this bunch of vanillaists called Devolution on Al'Akir EU.

I transferred a lv60 priest of mine there. Skanna is the name, discipline is the game. My first time of all time.. OF ALL TIME playing a healbot in a raid environment! Can't say yet how much I like it or hate it. Pewpewing with Penance is sexeh though.

Upon joining I was immediately called to join on a journey to Molten Core! We cleared the place with 10 - 15 people. The range of gear varied a lot, but the bosses fell like baby murlocs to a pool of hot corrosive acid.

The only bosses that gave a bit of challenge were Baron G and Ragnaros. But the old tactics were quite unnecessary since everything died so fast! Hell, I did not get teleported to Shazzrah at all!

We also showed Hakkar whose bitch he is.

If you are interested in joining Devolution, you can check out their recruitment post.

The only limitations to vanilla raiding they have are not allowing DK's nor Outland items (in raids). The downside is that Al'Akir is a very full server (it was locked a couple of days ago) so getting in might take some tries.

But the most important thing is that Devolution has a respectable amount of female c0wsies! /moo

And no, no, no, no, NO NO NO NO - I'm not leaving The Beastro. This'll be something for fun as I still suffer from a burnout towards WOTLK raiding.

Aion: The Tower of Eternal Grinding

The omens and internet truths are coming true.

The grindfest hit me. I got my Elyos sorcerer to level 18 and I hit a wall. The only way to advance are either by group quests or by, umm... yeah. That's it?

I'm not completely losing hope on Aion since the upcoming patch 1.5.1 promises some ease on the leveling process. I hate grinding as much as I hate murlocs and Linkin Park!

Vanilla WoW was not a perfect game, but I dont recall a single time when I had to forcefully grind world mobs just to get a level.

Well anyways, I'm going to finish the Aion machinima. Almost half of it is done and it's been real fun to do. I just gotta find some interest to play the game more, to level up and get to new areas for filming stuff.

Music
No need to be afraid, zero rickrolls here!

Ok, I gotta make a machinima cover of this one (First there was the DUBSTEP SQUID.. next there will be the DUBSTEP MURLOC?!):

XT002 Title Slide

2009-10-30T01:27:00.004+02:00

"New title slide?! FOR ME?! I promise I won't break it this time!"

After surfing some stuff for great inspiration and justice, I visualized the title slide thingie for XT-002 in my mind.

I'm not going to animate it yet, since I don't know where I'll place it in the actual machinima.

Also, I have discovered that dubstep kicks ass:
(and also that gnomish low-frequency dubstep bass cannon must be created in order to destroy civilizations and cities)

Don't look so smug...

2009-10-23T04:44:00.005+03:00

...I know what you're thinking!

Mixing WoW and Unreal Tournament totally was not merely a setback. Did you honestly think that I'd do a machinima without mixing up games?

Oh no no no NO NO NO NO NO, that was merely an instrument, a well-timed rickroll to a much larger plan! And this time, you will know the rules and so do I!

Still no model viewer, but who needs motion when you have still images!

I took a couple of the official Aion wallpapers, shamelessly did some pen tool cutting in Photoshop and voila.

Then I took the Photoshoppages for a little After Effects trip, added some this'n'that there and here they are.

This is how the project looks in Vegas:

Those orange things are markers for segments in the song - for example vocals, beats, certain types of sounds etc stuff I want to sync stuff with.

Machinimaking: Aion vs WoW

2009-10-22T19:34:00.003+03:00

I wrote a little article to the Myndflame site about pros and cons of Aion machinimaking compared to WoW.

" ... I have been machinimaking with the game and studying what it can and can not do in terms of film making."

Click here to read!

My First Aion Machinima: Preview

2009-10-21T18:37:00.003+03:00

I've been filming the project "Aion Escapism" for a while.

I do want the movie to have footage from many different areas, so there is still a quite lot of leveling to do before I have enough varying footage.

Now that I've found the correct song for the machinima (there were two other candidates), it's a lot easier to point and shoot.

The downside is that I don't have that many female toons for the lyrics so I gotta film some of the parts in low level areas.

This picture is intentionally cropped, but let's just say that the best TV show of all time.. OF ALL TIME airs on Atreia as well!

The final movie will not be called Aion Escapism, that's just something I'm using as a working title.

Filming in Aion is not as flexible as in WoW, the camera system is a bit stiff. But, as I do have lots of WoW filming experience it has helped me a lot doing this Aion video.

Last but not least, once I'm done with the video and released it - my plan is to create a video tutorial on how to create basic Aion machinima ingame.

(for some reason the Blogger software wants to resize my pictures, but the machinima will be released in 1080p Full HD resolution)

Review: Sex, Gnomes And Videotape

2009-10-20T17:56:00.003+03:00

This is the first ever review of my machinimas written in character, by the rising star of the machinima reviewing scene, Whowho.

"So I was enjoying my vacation, I was sitting on Darkshore’s beach one night watching the waves washing in and away, and the tranquil lights of Treldrasil twinkling in the distance. When BARONSOODON drove a BOAT onto my foot! I’m a night elf! My feet are already big enough to plant and farm parsnips on! I don’t need a boat to make them ANY BIGGER!"

Go here to read it!

Interview with Saate.net

2009-10-19T17:32:00.003+03:00

The interview I did with saate.net a while ago is now available! There's an audio version available for all the Finglish lovers.

Those who want to protect their ears are covered too as the whole thing is available on the traditional written format. It was a very fun interview to give and make.

Click here to listen / read!

Baad toys, toys, toys, toys.. VEERYY BAAAD!

2009-10-18T01:43:00.003+03:00

The beautiful ballad performed by XT-002 has one more new scene!