We’ve added yet another Gallery Page – this time for a newcomer to the Halo art scene by the name of Theo Prins. His first piece made it into our last Misc Art update… but since then, he’s been sending quite a bit, and I’m really taken with it. I decided there were enough featured artists that it was time to create an ‘HBO Gallery‘ page, and remove the individual links from the ‘Hot Pages’ list on the right. Hopefully, the fact that the art links are one level down won’t stop people from exploring them! Start, right now, with Theo’s page. There’s some mind-blowing stuff there.

Over at Bungie.net, Frankie pointed out a post by Lorraine ‘Mehve’ McLees, detailing the work behind the Halo Movie Companion, the work put together to help the movie studio understand the Halo universe a bit better. Great read!

That Weasel has posted a second segment for the Rockets on Prisoner 2005 awards – ‘Best Music Video’ nominees… and the winner. Available in 6 flavors (two sizes of 3 separate formats). Go grab the one that works best for you!

There were rumors floating around that Peter Jackson might be directing the upcoming Halo movie – today, Bungie’s posted an article that might just floor you. Jackson is on board – as Executive Producer. That means WETA, the special effects house behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Jackson’s upcoming King Kong, will ALSO be on board, creating the sets and effects that will bring Halo to life. Wow. Just plain… wow. Joe says he and Pete Parsons are headed down to New Zealand next week to meet with Jackson… if you had fears that Bungie would abandon the movie to the heartless Hollywood machine, put them aside.

JW points out a story on Joystiq which discusses a purported leak of the Halo 3 script on a website known as Riches Will Rust. The poster is brand new to that forum, with no personal info shown… and the script itself shows itself to be… well, below Bungie writing standards is a nice way to put it. Anyway – the script is fake (that’s from an official source, not just me), but that fact isn’t stopping it from getting all over the internet today. Spread the word, if you can. Update: Frankie has now posted an official ‘it’s fake’ note on Bungie.net, for those who were skeptical of the unnamed sources.

I’m lovin’ it. Last night, Elnea recorded ‘Blow Boys Away’, a parody of Breaking Benjamin’s ‘Blow Me Away’ in which she stands tall for the fairer sex. It’s hilarious. It’s available in MP3, Real, or WMA formats from her RvB Journal – but if you’re not a member (and don’t feel like becoming one), you’re probably better off grabbing the mp3 from us. Lyrics are also up. I’m still chuckling.

XerxdeeJ stopped by to say he’d posted another couple of entries in his Tied the Leader blog – there’s a great rant about ‘skill’, and what it means in a game of Halo 2, and a plea for advice on how to improve the XBL connection in his new digs. Go read!

The Daily Toreador, a newspaper in Lubbock, Texas, has an article about a Halo 2 tournament held in a local church. It’s a nice general-interest piece, with opinions (that will reach the general, non-game-playing public) about the upcoming consoles, and Halo’s place in online gaming.

Dennis Powers wrote to point out a milestone over at the Halo CE Chronicles – over 50,000 downloads of the series (and counting). Nice! If you haven’t seen it, and don’t feel like downloading each episode of Season 1 individually, he’s re-released the season in two chunks; episodes 1-5 in one file, and episodes 6-9 in a second. Go look!

Dan Chosich and Loren Judah, both longtime contributors to the Halo community, have put together Sentient Arts, a website devoted to giving artists a place to display their work. It’s not Halo-specific (though I’m sure they’d accept Halo-related material) – but it’s pretty slick-looking, and it’s definitely a resource that many in this community could make use of. Check it out! Comments can go in this forum thread.

Okay, so the DOA4 rumor we mentioned recently is true – it’s the new top story at Bungie.net. I’m a little disturbed by the jiggly bits in the image in that story… but then, Frankie’s never been totally couth. There’s still plenty under wraps, but the bottom line is, SOMETHING from the Halo universe will show up in the next DOA game. More as we know about it.

Today’s One One Se7en looks once again at Stuntmutt’s favorite weapon… and its effects.

Must have been a little while since the last update – there are 17 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today. Go read!

Game Informer has posted an article that claims that a character from Halo will be appearing in the upcoming Dead or Alive 4, and that it won’t be the Master Chief (or a Warthog). At this point, this is in the Wild Rumors category, but if more info surfaces, we’ll let you know. Looks like GhaleonEB was first out of the gate with this one.

The Multiplayer Map Pack is STILL being reviewed – Gaming Excellence posted a thumbs-up yesterday, giving the release a 9.1 out of 10. The extras got mentioned, but didn’t seem to contribute to their scoring of the product at all. (This makes me sad, because things like the interview with the dev team are pretty darn cool.)

PodTactacular Episode 11 has been released – this one’s 30 mb, an hour and a half long, with tips on Backwash and the Battle Rifle (among other subjects). Go listen! Thanks, Spelchek.

Chris ‘CPU64’ Bryan dropped off a new render using new technique (final gathering, which calculates global illumination from rays cast from the object’s pixels rather than from a light source) – the end result is pretty slick!

There are a number of direct download mirrors popping up for the Metal Gear Solid movie we released yesterday (though with reported download speeds in excess of 1 mbps, you might be better off with the BitTorrent links for now) – That Weasel has put up mirrors of both versions, and Roland dropped off a mirror for the WMP9 version. Given that these are out there, we’ll add our own – here’s one for the WMP9, another for the QuickTime. (For those who wonder, yes, we really do like the BitTorrent bandwidth savings; in the 18 hours since this video was released, something over 50 GB of it has been served to the public; HBO accounted for only 30 GB of that. If we reduced our output by 20GB every 18 hours, we’d save almost a terabyte every month. Not too shabby!)

That Weasel points out that although the Grand Finale Awards Ceremony for Rockets on Prisoner is still in production, a ‘pre-release segment of the ceremony’ has been released. Comes in four flavors, two sizes each for WMP9 and QuickTime. Download it, and see who won the Award for Best Trailer!

The next step in montages – now we have trailers for upcoming montages at the beginning. I’m just waiting for the animated popcorn and candy clip… over at Halo2Forum.com, you can download UnReal’s first montage (lots of sniping, lots of sticking), and it comes with a trailer for Halzred’s Montage 3 tacked onto the front. The whole thing weighs in at 94 mb, WMP9 format. While you’re there, you can grab a copy of MADDOG’s Montage Trailer, a mix of Halo and Halo 2 footage, weighing in at just under 38 mb (WMP9 format). Thanks, Z.