Office of Halo Intelligence, or OHI for short, is a semi-regular diary-type feature brought to you by various members of the Halo 4 development team. Josh Holmes, Creative Director of Halo 4, kindly agreed to write the first entry. We hope you enjoy an inside look at the making of our next title!

From the 1.12.12 edition of the Halo Bulletin:

Jessica has asked me to contribute to a Halo 4 developer diary as a recurring part of our weekly Bulletin. While we won’t be able to share secrets that would spoil any of the Carefully Planned Reveals™ that we have coming down the pipe, we will give you our impressions of some of the work that is going on behind the scenes here at 343. We’ll also provide our thoughts on anything that we do make public as part of the lead-up to the game’s launch. I realize that isn’t a lot at this stage, and trust me, this is hard for us, too. We are working on so many things that we can’t wait to share with you, but patience is in order. Good things come to those who wait. All will be revealed in due time. And assorted other clichés.…

Right now the team across 343 is shaking off the last remnants of our turkey-induced stupor and whipping ourselves into fighting shape for the year ahead. It’s going to be a huge one. This will be the culmination of a multi-year journey that has already filled several cylindrical space-canisters with delicious blood, sweat and tears. Now we’re entering the crucial final stretch in which we will ready our baby for release into the wild. It’s an exciting time but stressful, too, as we place pressure on ourselves to live up to your expectations. The good news is that the game is already looking great and fun to play. So, as we ready ourselves to give you your first real look at Halo 4 in the months ahead, we can only hope that you, too, will like what you see.

/Josh

From CruelLEGACEY:

Last week, I walked you through the planning and audio recording process for making machinima. The next step in production for your machinima is storyboarding. Like last week, I will be using my own machinima series, Playtime, as an example for this guide.

By the end of last week’s article, I had finished recording and editing a complete audio cut of all the dialog in Playtime Season 2. Every character and every scene have been pieced together into a single audio file. It’s like watching Playtime Season 2 with your eyes closed! The audio does not yet have any special effects, such as panning, reverb, or echos, nor is there any music yet. All of that will come in the final editing phase.

For now, I take my audio cut of all the dialog and break it down into scenes. I then choose a scene and begin the storyboarding process. Basically, a storyboard is a series of rough sketches. What I am doing is planning out exactly how each scene will progress visually. What camera angle will be used at any given moment? When will the camera cut to another perspective? Etc. When done by hand on paper, a storyboard can end up looking a bit like a comic book, where each picture represents a different moment in time. But…. I’m not doing my storyboards by hand.

For my storyboards, I’m using my paint program. Paint.net, to be precise, although any basic paint or photo program will do. Using a brush tool, I draw an extremely rough version of each camera angle for the scene. Keep in mind that the purpose of a storyboard is not to look good, but to organize your shots from moment to moment. Having said that, my sketches do look pretty funny!

Once I’ve got all the shots for a scene sketched out, I boot up my video editing program. In my case, I used an old version of Windows Movie Maker. Now, remember that audio file I covered last week? I take the audio, and I load it into Movie Maker. Then I take all the sketches I just made and load them into Movie Maker as well. From there, I combine the recorded dialog with the sketches to make a video storyboard! This type of storyboard is often called an animatic. Picture an extremely low-budget motion comic, and you’ll have the right idea.

I cut the various sketches together, over top of the dialog, to create a rough video version of the scene. I use this process to work out which camera angles to use over the various lines of dialog, how long each shot should last, etc. Creating an animatic like this is extremely helpful. While writing the script, I always picture a specific series of camera angles in my mind. But when I actually see and hear it in motion, I sometimes find problems. Things I don’t like, or things I want more of. The animatic allows me to make all sorts of changes to the pacing of a scene before I’ve even begun filming. All of this goes towards making the filming process run more smoothly. Of course, when I actually do film the scenes, I will again find little things that need changing or moving around, but they will generally be minor enough that I won’t need to go back and refilm a scene from scratch.

Let’s take a look at the storyboard animatic for the very first scene of Playtime Season 2. You’ll notice that each character has a letter written on their body somewhere. Because my sketches are so rough, I label each character just to be completely clear of who the camera is looking at in each shot.

That’s all for today! Next week, we’ll take a look at the machinima filming process.

– CruelLEGACEY
www.cruellegaceyproductions.com
www.playtimeshow.com

Author: Shadierliam

From Rooster Teeth:

Jack and Geoff deliver the 69th batch of fails for you on this lovely day. Join them as they celebrate all that is terrible!

Fails of the Weak 69

Last week, for our Friday Caption Fun festivities, you provided quips for an image featuring a heavily customized Warthog. Here are the top captions you left for that particular image!

“Where we are going, we don’t need roads!” –Oddesy2k
“And the Covenant thought they had it good with Ghost boosters.” –TigerClaw9906
“Field expedient methods of giving the M12 LRV greater acceleration were somewhat unstable.” –Buddy Duffman
“With the wall closing in fast, Cletus realized that maybe adding more thrusters was a bad idea.” –Ronnox36
“Armor Lock, deflect this!” –AlfaSirius
“Escape ‘The Maw’ on Legendary with at least a minute left on the countdown? I SO got this covered.” –Sunlit Fallen
“Unknown to Master Chief and Cortana, Corky 048 got left behind when they left the Pillar of Autumn,
forcing him to improvise his own means of escape.” –GunRunner48
“Tank doesn’t beat everything anymore!” –Kroadge

Now that we’ve wrapped up that picture, let’s start a new one. Up for your captioning pleasure this week is a picture featuring an angry, not to mention large, bomb. Soak in the screenshot, then leave your witty and relevant quip in a comment. Off you go!

Author: fake frogs II

From MASSAIKUR:

This week Massaikur and PAraNoia817 try out their interrogation techniques on Nak3d Eli, an occasionally clothed fan known for being a challenge expert, speedrunner, and overall lover of Halo. We hope you enjoy the interview!

From Alex:

This is a Halo: Reach trick jumping montage from Angels of Chaos, edited by himself, entitled, “This Yoink! Gets Old.” Believe it or not, these clips are actually Angels of Chaos’ leftovers, and despite the gameplay consisting of leftovers, it still features a ridiculous amount of innovation. The last jump is absolutely ridiculous, so make sure to watch this video all the way to the end. As for the editing, there isn’t much to say; the cinematography does a great job explaining the jumps like in any good trick jumping video. Enjoy!

This Yoink! Gets Old – A Halo: Reach Trick Jumping Montage

IGN put together a list of the top 10 games they are most excited about in 2012, and while I can neither confirm nor deny that we agree with their number one pick, I can say we totally agree with their number one pick.

P.S. Thanks, IGN. We’re excited that you’re excited. 🙂

IGN put together a list of the top 10 games they are most excited about in 2012, and while I can neither confirm nor deny that we agree with their number one pick, I can say we totally agree with their number one pick.

P.S. Thanks, IGN. We’re excited that you’re excited. 🙂

HRSotD (short for Halo: Reach Screenshot of the Day) is a daily feature dedicated to the wonders of Halo: Reach screenshots and the artists that capture these amazing images. A variety of shots—all of which are completely unaltered and captured in Halo: Reach’s theater mode—are included for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy the varied selection of images, and maybe even find inspiration to make your own!

Author: Advanced 90