munky-058 found some concept art of a Grunt in Halo: Faith. What do you think?(Louis Wu 21:54:05 UTC)

padraig08 stopped in with a couple of tidbits he found on DeviantART – a UNSC Hunter (huh?)… and a really adorable little Grunt costume NovemberAdam made for his son for Halloween. (More pics of the Grunt are here.)(Louis Wu 13:36:19 UTC)

munky-058 was the first to mention a new piece from the Halo: Faith soundtrack – The Landing was posted last night. They’ve also posted Scarab – a more tension-filled piece. If you’re curious as to where the music for this Fan movie is going, go listen to these pieces!(Louis Wu 13:32:52 UTC)

Bungie’s Joe Staten gave the convocation address to the Northwestern University School of Communication class of 2011 – he took the lessons he learned in his life (much of which has been spent at Bungie, working on Halo titles) to impart words of advice to the graduating students. Halo makes a few appearances. Worth watching! (Thanks, urk!)(Louis Wu 22:45:09 UTC)

CaptainTony pointed out a preview of the Halo Essential Visual Guide coming from DK Publishing in a bit over a month – there are several pages of example content. It’s pretty interesting to see how close these look to a ‘bible-style guide’ that Bungie created for Hollywood filmmakers back in 2005 (an example page is here, on Bungie.net) – makes you wonder how long this has been in development!(Louis Wu 18:25:25 UTC)

Elzarthebam put together another montage of footage from HBO Euro customs… some funny bits in there! (I think my favorite was the first Myyke clip – don’t get in his passenger seat!) Just 3 minutes long – go watch.(Louis Wu 17:28:23 UTC)

Arby ‘n’ the Chief Season 6 kicked off last weekend, with a 20 minute first episode… but we missed it until MrWezzle pointed it out. Arby’s deep into a bottle of JD, Chief’s drawing obscene art on the walls, and a group of gamers have decided they don’t like the crackdown on online cheating. I’m really glad XBL doesn’t work like this…(Louis Wu 14:54:56 UTC)

CruelLEGACEY let us know that the first episode of Playtime is now live. On the plus side, this means we’re done with trailers. Another plus – it’s pretty well-done; Cobra asks Warren to help him get better at Halo, but things don’t go too smoothly. New episodes on Tuesdays.(Louis Wu 13:22:26 UTC)

I… holy crap. That’s just… wow. Go look.(Louis Wu 16:53:37 UTC)

nomis78 has released three new panoramas, bundled up ALL his recent panorama work for easy zipped download, and is giving away Amazon vouchers. Read his post for full details!(Louis Wu 15:07:26 UTC)

Moorpheus19 noticed an article at Computer and Video Games which points out that Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has said that Kinect support is built into Halo: Anniversary. (Don’t worry – you will NOT be required – or even able – to control your in-game player via Kinect.) (Louis Wu 15:06:47 UTC)

Xbox 360 UK recorded the audio from the Terminal demonstration in their private showing of Halo: Anniversary at E3 – and have now released that (thanks, Elzarthebam). Our forum is full of comments from folks who seem to have forgotten that 343 specifically said that this was an example of how a Terminal would work, but that it’s NOT a Terminal that will show up in the game. If you listen to it, please remember that it might include placeholder material. (Louis Wu 15:05:31 UTC)

Prime999r created a Halo machinima based on Boris Vian’s 1959 poem “L’évadé” – dialogue-free, but very nice cinematography!(Louis Wu 17:36:38 UTC)

The Podtacular Anniversary Podcast went on for a LONG time last night – I ended up having to leave after 4 hours or so, but it went for at least an hour past that. (The archived version is just 3 hours; I’m not sure what was cut out.) It was a lot of fun, and I heard a lot of great stories from all around the Halo community – if you weren’t there, but you have a lot of free time, you should listen to this! (Louis Wu 17:34:48 UTC)