One One Se7en looks at a recent Bungie Weekly Update – MC shows that you can dress him up, but you can’t take him out.

Bah. I hate forgetting. It’s still today… for a little while longer. Today’s Halo: Resolution has the cardboard box meeting up with… trouble.

Wow. NeoFreak posted some pictures of a Master Chief bust he made a while ago out of Sculpey – I’d find a spot for that in MY home! Beautiful.

Wow. It’s been a LONG time since the Miscellaneous Art section was updated. I decided it was time to stop putting it off… I process 86 entries today. Neither the server, nor folks on slower connections, can handle that kind of load, though, so I’m going to release them in 30-image batches. They’re currently sorted by author (first name, because many people submit with just a one-name alias), not submission date (it was too much work to figure out what came from where) – so if you’ve submitted Miscellaneous Art in the past 3 months, and your name begins with A or B, your material is up now. Tomorrow I’ll post C through P, and Saturday will be R through Z. It’s going to be so nice to have an empty queue! Apologies to EVERYONE involved. This batch is primarily sketches – go see what’s there!

Okay, I wasn’t going to add yesterday’s mini-update to the Weekly Bungie Update Archive… but it turns out Frankie even created new Mister Chief artwork… how could I pass it up? The (tiny) item is now part of the official record. Sheesh. (Thanks, Jager.)

Eric Trautmann has updated his blog with the information that he won’t be involved in any future Halo projects for Microsoft. As he says,

“…it feels reaaaaaally weird to know that things like hypothetical novels or comics or whatnot will happen on someone else’s watch.”

Trautmann has been a guiding force on Halo novels and the like from the beginning; for the fans, too, there will be a shift. We’ll miss you, Eric! (Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for finding this.)

TeamXbox has posted higher-res versions of the first Halo 2 ad (we posted lower-res scans on Sunday) – stop by if you want a better look! Thanks, LaMuerte.

Sparky has written the second of his series of Guides – this one is a Guide to Oddball. (The first can be found here – it was a guide to vehicle handling.) It (and the rest of the series) has found a permanent home at Rampancy.net – this is ideal, because the format gives people an opportunity to comment and augment. This guide is another great read – there are general tips about Oddball, and then specific comments about each multiplayer map, with respect to the gametype. Good stuff! Thanks to Narcogen for the heads-up.

Sep7imus has whipped up a fun morale booster for the Covenant home front – a 3:08, 11.2 mb QuickTime video that gives those left behind a reason to cheer for their soldiers! You can find copies on files.bungie.org and mythica.org.

Hehe – looks like Frankie posted a mini-update over an the Underground forum. One item – but it’s great to hear! (Thanks, Jager.)

A couple of new times have been added to the Going Nowhere Fast leaderboard – Truth and Reconciliation is now down below 25 minutes, and AotCR is less than 7 minutes. A reminder: The contest ends in a little over a week! That means if you’re mailing a tape, it needs to get mailed SOON. (Rule 77 states specifically that the entry ‘must be in the hands of a judge’ – we’re not talking postmarked, we’re talking here.) At the moment, the cumulative time for the entire game, start to finish, is 2:46:11… can we get that down to 2:30? Come on, people!

There are lots and lots and LOTS of Bungie fans that would love to see the game played out in today’s Calvin and Halo. Hmm…

The third annual Maxgames tournament will take place in the IMAX theater in San Jose next month – a short article about it can be found on 1Up.com. The first iteration of this event was attended by vector40, who wrote up his experience for our audience. Thanks to Fuzion, this time around, for pointing it out.

For Mac OSX users, Matt(Uh…#5?) has created a Konfabulator Widget to countdown to Halo 2. Details (pics, links, you name it) can be found in this forum post. Update: both Matt and Sanchezthellama have made available new versions with fixed dates (Matt’s also has a different background). Cuts waiting time by a month or so. 🙂

Dolbex dropped us a note about a pretty major overhaul to the Major League Gaming website – there is a TON of new Halo content there. In fact, there’s an entire Halo subsection, with links to all the fun stuff – but the beauty of this is, it’s a whole bunch of sites, bundled into one, all sharing content. If you were a member at any of the following sites:

• www.halo50k3.com
• www.chitownmayhem.com
• www.halonationals.com
• www.mlgpro.com

you should be signed up on the new mlgpro.com site. Current reading should include the writeup for Midwest Mayhem, the 2-day Chicago tourney that took place last weekend (though you can view it in any number of skins, just by picking the look that works best for you). They’ll be adding new events every couple of days, so check back regularly!

smeginfrell has put together a Halo 2 teaser ad, using footage he’s created himself using some 3D rendering/animation software. It’s short (1:15) but sort of large (9.2 mb in WMP9 format, 9.6 mb in QuickTime format) because of its large screensize: 856×480 pixels. Very nice work, overall. Take a look!