Clear Skies 3 machinima undocks to excited EVE fans
Three years ago, the EVE Online community stood in awe of the incredible EVE machinima Clear Skies, directed by Ian Chisholm and written by Ian Chisholm and Richie Powles. Featuring a combination of space footage filmed in EVE and scenes inside ships composed using the source SDK (Not Garry's mod), the 40-minute masterpiece delivered an impressive blend of action, story and British humour. The film spawned a cult following both inside and outside the EVE community, going on to win the award for best long-format film at 2008's annual Machinima awards.
Fans cried out for more, and around a year later our patience was rewarded with Clear Skies II. It was somehow bigger, better and more polished than the first film, with a wide range of new voices and some old favourites making a return. We once again followed the adventures of captain John Rourke of the Minmatar battleship Clear Skies and loved every minute of it. The film was a huge hit with fans, but with the story wrapped up in a somewhat neat package and Ian expressing a desire to take a break from production, we weren't sure if a third film would ever see the light of day. Fans of the series were excited to find out this week that Clear Skies III has now officially undocked.
Skip past the cut to watch the Clear Skies III trailer and find out about the third film in this incredible series.
In January of this year, Clear Skies' creator Ian Chisholm pushed out a teaser trailer for Clear Skies III, revealing that the film was only a few months away from completion. The big day finally arrived this week, as Clear Skies III hit the web. The 80-minute film is a colossal two-gigabyte download, but it's absolutely worth the wait. The Clear Skies production team has seriously outdone itself, bringing EVE Online to life like never before. Without spoiling anything, I can say that the story is fantastic, the characters are believable, and the action scenes are better than the first two films put together.
The production team has grown significantly since the second film, now including lipsynching, photography, sound design and motion capture specialists. Some artistic liberty has even been taken with the game's soundscape, transforming effects like the pitiful jump drive "sploosh" to the common ship warp. Head over to the official Clear Skies webpage for more information about the film and to download all three parts. You won't regret it.
