'Animation as a killer marketing tool, and Moviestorm's role' from the New York Film Academy

Moviestorm are pleased to promote a post from the New York Film Academy, which explores the history of animation, it's role as a marketing tool, and Moviestorm's role in advertising and marketing.

By Zeke Iddon, lead content consultant for the New York Film Academy

For decades, animation has been a major vehicle for advertisement. In fact, animated commercials actually predate animated features by many years. In the early 20th century, when Vaudeville was giving way to silent movies, animated ads for various products were often shown on the big screen, accompanied by sales pitches. By the time Gertie the Dinosaur, the first character-based animated feature, came to the screen in 1914, audiences were already accustomed to animated marketing messages.



As animation became more advanced, commercials continued to be important. Today, many well-known mascots and beloved advertising campaigns are delivered through animation: From talking M&Ms to the GEICO gecko, many brands have created iconic advertising campaigns through the use of animation.

Why Animation is So Effective for Marketing

Part of the reason why animation is so valuable for marketing is that it interacts with the brain differently from real-world imagery. Animations are a type of caricature that exaggerate the features of their subjects. The resulting combination of bright colors and simple shapes can be instantly absorbed by the brain, making animation extremely adept at triggering an emotional response.

Today, animation is just as relevant as it was a century ago. If anything, it's even more vital than it used to be as a generation of tech-savvy web users has little patience for text. The fast-paced, simple-to-digest nature of animation makes it very appealing for many businesses.

Of course, there are a few other reasons why animation is a popular option for marketers:

• Animation is not constrained by the limits or reality, allowing messages to be delivered through a more symbolic or fanciful approach than would be possible in live-action commercials.
• Unlike static print advertisements, animation can tell a story and capture the viewer's attention through motion and sound.
• Animated commercials age more gracefully than those featuring live actors, who can quickly become dated by clothing, hairstyles or other factors.
• Animation appeals to a wide segment of viewers, and it's possible to direct a marketing message at several demographics at once.
• It's simpler to brand animation than live-action advertising. Many of the mascots that serve as brand spokespeople have been “alive” for more than 50 years thanks to clever reimagining.

Whether a business is planning to launch a full-scale marketing campaign with animated advertisements or just wants to take advantage of animation to jazz up some existing informational materials, there are plenty of compelling reasons to use animation for your business.

The Cost of Animation: A (Potentially) Limiting Factor

If there's one thing that prevents many businesses from taking advantage of animation in their marketing campaigns, it's cost. A simple live-action ad featuring a single talking figure in a business setting may be boring, but it's affordable. Animation can be more labor-intensive and costly, especially if outside vendors must be hired to complete it. When businesses do try to cut corners on animation, the results can turn off potential customers who are accustomed to higher-quality work.

Animation is expensive because it's labour-intensive. Whereas a static image for a print ad must be drawn only once, animation requires 24 illustrations per second of film. It takes a staff of 15 artists approximately three months to create a single half-hour animated television show. Despite the many benefits of animated advertisement, that sort of expense simply isn't in the budget of many businesses.



Fortunately, there are a few solutions that can help make animation more affordable for marketing departments. Computer-generated animations are not as labor-intensive as traditional cel-shaded animation, and audiences are growing increasingly accustomed to the 3D-rendered look in animation. In addition, talented illustrators from places like the NYFA are constantly entering the workforce, willing to apply their degree-level skills for a comparatively inexpensive graduate wage.

In many ways, video games have paved the way for improvements in animation, and some creative players have learned to modify existing animations from games into completely new products through an artform called machinima.

Moviestorm takes advantage of some of the technology behind machinima to enables artists to create unique animated features. The software is affordable and intuitive, and it offers the first video-sketch tool. 

Users can utilize the content packs offered in the download and customize them to suit their needs, and affordable bulk licenses are available for business use. If you're curious, you can try a free 14-day sample and see whether Moviestorm can provide the advertising solution you've been looking for.

While the cat's away ...

Most of the Moviestorm team are taking a well-deserved break at the moment, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are sitting on our laurels. Everyone's favourite hard-working art guy, Chris Ollis, has this to share with you all:

Now that the dust has settled on the early access release of version 1.4 I'm taking the liberty to let slip some other stuff that we've been doin

g that should be with you shortly, and some even more exciting things from the future!

First up we've got a new and incredibly useful content pack nearing release. It may not seem like the most exciting thing we've done when you first set eyes on it, but I can guarantee every serious Moviestorm film maker will want it and it should make character driven dialogue sequences all the more impressive.

Looking further in to the future we're tackling some stuff that we've wanted to do since day one. It should also make a fair few users happy, and save a few from having to struggle with their own mods of existing animations.

Yes that's right - we've finally had some fun with swords. While Dave would like us to break this down in to all the different sword types, weights, rules and other professional standards, I'm more keen on just whipping them out and hacking away a bit :D

While on the subject of violent acts, I've also been messing around with similarly unpleasant animations in my spare time, and given a good wind I should start handing out handy little packets of jumps, falls, punches and stabbings to help Moviestorm step up a gear. I know people have been shouting for this for a while, but believe me the video footage I recorded as a template was in the can so long ago I've had to get a cinefilm converter to play it back on :D

Don't bother asking for dates, you should know by now ;P

Chris

Fixing the bleedin' obvious

I have quite a lot of computers in my life, and they all run Linux. In fact, the only time I leave the confines of my beloved Linux is when I'm at work (where my machine at Moviestorm Towers is a Macbook Pro). Most of my machines run a variant of Linux called Ubuntu. Last year, the Ubuntu development team announced a new project which they called 100 Papercuts. The idea was that they would identify 100 little irritations which were reasonably trivial to fix. Most of the issues identified were minor and really not too significant, but as they all pile up they start to become a serious problem. One papercut, after all, is only an irritant, but if you get enough papercuts all at once you just might bleed to death.

I was quite taken with this idea (the papercuts concept, not the bleeding to death), and spent some time talking about it with Dave and Andrew. As a consequence, we recently launched our own "papercuts" project for Moviestorm. Whilst Ubuntu's Papercuts project attracted over 1600 recorded bugs within a few weeks, our initial brainstorm generated a slightly less ambitious 200(ish) issues. We're going to be tackling these "papercuts" a few at a time, aiming to fix between 10 and 20 papercuts each time we have a code release.

Let's take a look at some of the papercuts for the forthcoming 1.3.1 release.

MS-3277 Keep window positions and sizes after the user has adjusted them

Wouldn't it be nice if, when you moved a customisation window over to the left, it appeared in the same place when you next reopened it? Now it does. We haven't implemented this behaviour for every window yet, but it's in place for all of the "adjust something" windows (what we call Activity Customizers).

MS-4887 Improve transitions between major mode views

This one's not so easy to spot, but the load time required to switch Views - to move from Set Workshop View to Director's View, for example - has been much improved. A lot of clever process threading and Clever Engineering Hacking in the background has allowed us to make these transitions faster and smoother.

MS-4826 Can't remove user images

I'm going to be totally honest with you here: this is one of those bugs that represents a lack of functionality not through deliberate choice but just because we forgot to put it in. Once you add a custom image to a set object, there's no way of actually removing that image if you change your mind later. The ring menu for such objects now features a "clear image" option, which removes the image. It also works for held props and bodyparts.

MS-4815 File overwrite message is confusing

This one was ridiculously easy to fix, but had still been sat in our bug database for a long time. Being such a small team, it's easy for small things like this to never actually make it onto anybody's "to do list", simply because there are so many other, bigger things that need to be done. That's exactly what the papercuts project is good for: making sure that issues like this do eventually get addressed. Here's the dialog as it appears in the current released version of Moviestorm:

And here's the new version:

A lot clearer, I think you'll agree.

MS- 4809 Can't find the movie I last worked on

My Moviestorm "movies" directory currently holds about a hundred different movies, in various states of completion. When you spend a lot of your working day testing Moviestorm you tend to accrue a lot of test movies. The load screen will now allow you to sort those movies, either by name or by modification date. That means that the movie you last worked on can be quickly brought to the top of the list.

MS-4806 Typo on first page of Help

Yes, well. The less said about this the better. Let's just move on, shall we?

MS-4786 Warn me if I'm not placing a character at time 0

Ever had a character appear halfway through a scene because the timeline wasn't at the start of the scene when you issued the "place here" command? Yeah, me too. Not any more:

MS-3690 Autosave

Matt has already blogged about this one.

There are about half a dozen other papercut issues in various stages of completion, but this should give you some idea of what we're hoping to achieve for 1.3.1. This is an experiment, so the choice of which of our 200 papercut issues to address first has been almost arbitrary. What about you? What little annoying niggle would you like us to fix? Comment with your papercuts, and I'll add them to our issues database.

Cutting Room View - new and totally redesigned

We give you a pretty good deal with Moviestorm. You can download the core software for free, and we work hard to ship regular updates and improvements. Those updates are also free. Usually, we'll give you a handful of bugfixes, a handful of new content, and a new feature or two. Some updates are bigger than others, of course, but every new release brings something shiny.

We're hard at work on the next big update right now, and it's going to be great. You see, we've made a few changes to Moviestorm's venerable Cutting Room View ... and when I say "we've made a few changes", what I mean is that we've spent months completely redesigning and improving the Cutting Room View, almost from the ground up. Here's how it looks in the current released version of Moviestorm (version 1.2.0.2):

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And here's the same movie as it appears in our latest development snapshot.

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There's a lot that's changed, so let's go through it one thing at a time.

The timeline
We've given the timeline more room on the screen, so it's easier to see what's going on. The way the tracks are used has changed as well, giving more prominence to the picture track. You'll notice that each item on the timeline has useful additional information. Movie footage clips now show their scene name as well as the camera name (so you'll never have to wonder "which Main Camera is this?" again). We've also added timecodes to the start and end of each clip. It's hard to describe how useful that is until you try it out, but it makes you wonder how you managed without it. The behaviour of objects on the timeline should be more logical, too, allowing you to drag objects to the timeline and have them snap into position, and allowing you to change the order of objects on the timeline without becoming hopelessly confused.

Objects on the timeline have a more logical colour scheme now. Shots from the same camera will share a common pastel colour. If you've added additional cameras, they'll each automatically get their own colour.

The preview window
Yes, it's smaller. That might seem like a step backwards, until you notice the extra button next to the playback controls. That triggers fullscreen mode (an entirely new View which allows you to watch your movie in all its glory, without any buttons and bits getting in the way).

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The clip bin
Adding audio or images is easy with the new Cutting Room View. Just drag and drop from the new "clip bin" area to the timeline. The same drag-and-drop functionality is used to add your camera cuts to the timeline. The tab which contains your camera cuts was always pretty awkward. Once your movie gained more than about a half dozen shots, the list became pretty cluttered. Plus, it had those weird invisible '+' buttons. The Movie Footage tab in the clip bin contains all your camera cuts, from every camera in every scene, presented as a much more logical list of thumbnails. Each cut is timestamped so you can see exactly where it came from, and they're grouped according to scene and camera. There's no need to find the hidden button to add a clip to the timeline any more - just drag and drop.

Extra shiny bits
As well as all these improvements, we've also added some brand new features. The first is the Transitions tab, which allows you to choose from a list of different transition types for your shots. If you're like me, you'll use a straight cut most of the time. That's fine: just drag your clips to the timeline and Moviestorm will use a straight cut by default. Occasionally, though, you'll want to use a different transition - maybe a cross-fade, or a fade-through-black. For the first time, you can now do that within the Cutting Room View. Just drag the new transition onto the timeline. It'll snap into position between your two clips and will apply the appropriate transition in real-time.

Incidentally, that means that Moviestorm is playing back two pieces of action at the same time, and overlaying one onto the other (and that's real-time 3D events, not pre-rendered video clips). That's some seriously clever coding from Julian, Conor and the rest of the Engineering team.

Finally, and for the really fun eye candy, we're ready to release the filters which we've teased you with for so long. Filters are dragged onto clips, and can apply some subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes. Your external video editor might already have some filters, of course, and there's nothing to stop you using them in the same way you always have. The great thing about applying the filters within Moviestorm, though, is that we can use the 3D data from the movie to do things that a 2D filter simply couldn't achieve. Moviestorm's Fog filter, for example, will apply a stronger fog distortion the further away an object is from the camera.

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So. That's the new Cutting Room View. We're still working on the final bits of tweaks and polish, but we're pretty confident that it'll be ready for the next major Moviestorm Release - version 1.3.

Big thanks - as always - to the members of the Moviestorm Pioneers Club, who have been helping us out with their opinions, suggestions and comments throughout the redesign process.

All this secrecy is driving me crazy

We have a lot of exciting things planned for the future of Moviestorm. Some of them you'll see very soon, some you'll see a long way down the road, and some of them just won't pan out at all. The trouble is, we honestly don't know which is which yet.

We do our best to keep you up-to-date with what we're working on, but the lovely Moviestorm community is insatiable. You just want to know absolutely everything. So, in an attempt to satisfy your curiosity / tease you some more (delete as appropriate), here's a proof-of-concept video from one of our development builds.

This one' s getting a brand new tag of WhenIt'sReadyWhichMightBeNever. Enjoy!

Happy Land

You get a lot of stuff for free with the basic version of Moviestorm. There's costumes, props, sets, gestures and moods - as the recent Base Pack Contest shows, it's amazing how many different types of movie can be created.

With all these options available, it's worrying how many Moviestormers' first movies involve, sooner or later, somebody being shot. Come on, guys! We know conflict is at the heart of drama, but there's so much more to life! Why not tell a happy story, full of bright colours and friendly characters and rounded corners ... in short: why not take a trip to Happy Land?

The worst Moviestorm crash we've ever seen

We want Moviestorm to be easy to use. We try not to dazzle you with an enormously complicated interface, with hundreds of buttons and menus. In some cases, this means that you can't get the level of precision you need for a certain task. We're always trying to find ways to let you do that, without transforming the Moviestorm interface into the control panel for a supersonic jet.

One of things that can sometimes prove difficult is precise positioning of objects in the Set Workshop View. Thankfully, we've got some new functionality currently in development which will help.



This gizmo is called the, er ... well, it's actually called The Gizmo right now, because we haven't come up with a more sensible name for it. It allows you to "nudge" an object by very small amounts, until you get it exactly where you want it. As well as allowing linear movement, the Gizmo (somehow I think that name is here to stay) also allows you to apply rotation to an object, in any direction.

We let Ben take the Gizmo for a test drive, and he got a little carried away:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

Height is important. More precisely, differences in height. You can use height to create drama, contrast, emotion, interest, beauty, menace - a clever director can do almost anything with a good, varied set. Up until now, Moviestorm didn't handle height very well. Characters could only really move around on a single level plain, which meant it was very hard to get shots like this:



Woo-hoo! There's no cheating in that shot. It's just plain ol' Moviestorm. That tower really is as tall as it seems to be.



We're using some brand new development code, which Mark has been quietly working on for the past few months, allowing characters to walk on surfaces at different heights. The tower is Amos's work (and, incidentally, his first official art asset for us).

Just in case you don't believe that it really works, here's a clip from the movie Alex is working on at the moment. He's asked me to stress that this is a really, really rough first draft, but it is all rendered directly from Moviestorm in one single scene.



Coming soon. As always: When It's Ready.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Back in the olden days, when Moviestorm was still a young whipper-snapper of a movie-making tool with very few of the cool features it has today, we made a series of short parody movies to show what Moviestorm was capable of. The movies were made by Michelle Pettit-Mee (a leading light of the machinima community, now working as part of Bioware's cinematic design team but back then the Machinimator-in-residence for Moviestorm) and were parodies of well-known scenes from film and television. We had a Pulp Fiction scene, a Phoebe-like Friends song ... and a short sequence that looked suspiciously like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.



We released the Romeo and Juliet costumes as part of a very early Content Pack, and they're still kicking around. We've learned a lot since then, though, and we've also improved what Moviestorm is capable of. Since it's Valentine's Day very soon, we thought it was about time that these two old favourites got an upgrade.



As you'd expect, both of these costumes are tintable.

We'll be making these available to you (along with a handful of other new assets) very soon. Stay tuned for some more sneak previews over the next few days!

Thank you, Pioneers!

We're very close to releasing the long-awaited version 1.1.7 of Moviestorm. As part of our development process, for the first time we've let the members of our exclusive Pioneer group get early access to the new Moviestorm. We've asked for honest feedback, bugs, and criticism of both the positive and negative kind. The feedback thus far has been extensive and enthusiastic.

We're busily logging every one of your comments and issues in our database. It's been really useful to get reports on some of the more obscure aspects of Moviestorm, particularly where it relates to user-created content packs or your existing movies, as those are areas where we really can't test very much at all.

We may not have time to reply to every one of your comments, but they're all much appreciated. Please keep 'em coming!

Moviestorm 1.1.7 leaked

Among the many interesting people that Dave and I spoke to at the HCI2009 Conference was machinima stalwart Michael Nitsche (seen here milking an invisible cow).

Michael had already seen Moviestorm 1.1.6 (which was the version we were showing off at the conference) so I booted up the development environment on my laptop and gave him a quick tour of version 1.1.7 - well, I did promise, after all. He seemed impressed. Sufficiently impressed, in fact, that he took some sneaky snapshots of my screen and posted them on his blog.

So that just proves it: if you want the scoop on what's coming soon for Moviestorm, bump into me in a corridor somewhere and have your camera at the ready.

The FreePixel blog, incidentally (to which Michael posts, along with Erik Champion and Friedrich Kirschner) is a great read. If you're interested in studying machinima as an artform and as an emergent movement, add it to your reading list.

Get used to dissipatement

Sometimes it's the small things that make the difference. Take a look at this:

That's not a clever blend of several different renders. That's pure Moviestorm, generated in a single take from one scene. We now have the ability to make objects disappear (and reappear) during the course of a movie. This is the sort of thing that you might not immediately see a use for. The longer you have it in your arsenal, though, the more useful it begins to appear.

All I've done here is set up two barrels, one on top of the other. The burnt barrel is hidden at the start, with the rusted barrel visible. I use the show/hide functionality on both objects, using the explosion to cover the transition. Silly, yes, but fun and potentially very useful.

This new bit of functionality is already working in our current development code. Hopefully, we'll be able to ship it to you as part of Moviestorm version 1.1.7. As always, our usual get-out-of-jail-free disclaimers apply, but I'm reasonably confident about this one.

Incidentally, version 1.1.7 is shaping up to be a massive release. It's straining at the seams with tasty good stuff. I think it's our most exciting release for a long time.

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

I use Moviestorm every day, often running through the same few test sequences each time. Although I love it, it's sometimes hard to get excited or inspired when I'm so familiar with Moviestorm that I regularly dream about it and see the interface swimming in front of my eyes when I wake up in the morning. Nonetheless, every once in a while something I've thrown haphazardly together to test a bit of functionality will remind me that, actually, Moviestorm is a storytelling tool above all else.

Here's a bit of silliness that started as a test of the Pyro pack and ended up as quite a cool short sequence.

I know it doesn't fit on the page, but dagnamit, it's so pretty I don't want to butcher it into a smaller size. Watch the full version on my Moviestorm page.

I've no idea who the hooded pyromancer might be, or why he's attacking the cameraman in an art gallery, but that doesn't matter: from such initial fragments are big stories woven.

Now then. The disclaimers. I know we always throw in the usual "when it's ready", "development code", "your mileage may vary" disclaimers, but in this case I really do have to emphasise: the mobile fireballs are something that we're trying out at the moment and they still have some bugs. You - hopefully - won't see any in this video, but that's more by good luck than good management. Rolling balls of fiery flaming death might not make it into the Pyro pack at all. Certainly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were only static objects by the time the pack is released, with mobile fireballs scheduled for a future update. We'll try and get them ready, but I can't promise that we'll manage it.

Don't worry. They'll still be balls, they'll still be great, and they'll still be - most emphatically - of fire.

The Wizard of Mods

We've been promising an improved Modder's Workshop for a while, not just because we're altruistic and want to give you nice tools, but because it makes life a whole lot easier for us too. The new version is now based around wizards, which makes the whole process not just quicker and easier, but a lot less error-prone.


Here's a basic Moviestorm mug. Not very exciting, is it? And, much though you love us, you may not want to put Moviestorm branding all over your movie. So let's open it up and retexture it.

First, define an addon which your new model is going to live in. This will be the thing that you can distribute to other Moviestorm users so they can use your mod too.

Next, give your cup a name. We've picked the highly innovative and original MyMug.

Now pick the parts of the mug that you want to retexture. The mug only has one part, so this is easy. If you're dealing with a more complex object, then you can retexture each part of it independently.

We're going to replace the existing texture with one we made earlier, so we select the Replace option. (We previously made the new texture using Photoshop and a public domain image to edit the .dds file attached to the original mug. It's in AddOn\DomesticDrama01\Data\Props\Mug\Textures if you want to try this yourself. However, it's even easier if you use the Edit option to create a copy of the original object and then you can get straight to the textures and edit them in your preferred graphics editor.)


Now we simply select the file we want to use as the new texture.

Et voila! Here's our new mug!

Finish off by publishing the new addon. This will contain a new template and your new texture, so the file size is pretty small and it's easy to distribute. This one's all of 86Kb.

The entire process takes slightly under 30 seconds once you've done it a couple of times.

Simple, huh?

Moviestorm 1.1.6 & 1.1.7 update

Moviestorm 1.1.6 will be going into initial testing this week.

Key features for this update include:

• Support for the upcoming pyros and hairstyles packs
• Support for a third content pack (which we'll announce shortly)
  
• Improved modder's workshop
• Various minor bug fixes

Testing will take 2-3 weeks, so we're aiming for a release towards the end of June assuming all goes well.

In development for Moviestorm 1.1.7 we have a whole bunch of performance improvements and major fixes for the animation blending. We've already seen some big steps forward in terms of performance, but they won't be ready for release in 1.1.6 - as often as not, fixing one issue reveals a load of other previously hidden problems. On the animation side, we've been dealing with the dreaded "popping", and at the same time changing the way the animation system works so that it works better when you have a character simultaneously using a prop, gesturing, talking, emoting, and moving around the set.

We'll also be giving Moviestorm a whirl under Windows 7 and see how well it behaves. In Dave's words, "I don't see any problems, but that was what I said about Vista." If anyone's already given it a go already, drop us a line and let us know what it was like!

In which Johnnie forces another work experience student to blog

Saddened as we were to lose Rhys at the end of last week, we've been buoyed somewhat this week by the addition of Ivan. Like Rhys, Ivan is here at Moviestorm Towers on a work experience placement. Also like Rhys, he's a keen Moviestorm hacker, his particular claim to fame being getting Moviestorm running on a sexy little netbook.

Ivan has done some great work in the QA department, including finding a bug which had gone unnoticed by the entire team for over a year. We asked him for his thoughts about Moviestorm now that his week with us is almost over.

Well, this has been a fine old week, and I have become a seer into the future of Moviestorm. What will happen is [CENSORED] will [CENSORED] and *stops talking as is being punched in the head by the censor machine*

Okay, that's me in crutches. Well, my time here started off very friendly, albeit very quiet and a little awkward. I ended up bringing in a set of headphones just to listen to the hum of the magnets. I've been doing QA work since i arrived.

I completely and utterly blame Johnnie for the mistake on Wednesday in which I spent the entire morning installing an incorrect (and broken) version of Moviestorm and then the rest of the day logging bugs that weren't of any consequence. In so doing, however, I got to see something great that I can't talk about but have to be cruel and just hint at.

One of the most interesting things I looked at was the new "hair" pack (I had a small inkling that it might be something from the musical but looks like it's not) in which the new options for hairstyles were revealed, i.e. morph sliders, different skin-head designs (how? you ask? wait and see, mwahahaha!), some anime styles and most importantly ... pink hairdos for men! Gasp!

I wasn't allowed to see the Pyro pack save a few glances over people's shoulders and some whispered comments now and then, but from what I have seen, it should cause some "ohhhs".

I'm not going to go on for too long, so I shall wrap up by saying "Johnnie did it!".

As a special bonus, here's a video capture I made earlier in the week, showing some of the morphing options available with the new hair deformation sliders.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

I'll admit it: I'm running out of puns.



Here's another work-in-progress shot from the Hairstyles Pack. This is a short haircut for female characters. There's a parting on the other side of the head, which means that my title pun is just about tolerable.

I've still to show you the morph sliders in action on the new hairstyles. I'll post a short video capture of those in a few days time. Meanwhile, don't forget to take a look at the brand new Moviestorm website if you haven't done already.

Funky librarian

Here's another of the upcoming hairstyles, and a first look at some of the customisation options.


No, you're not seeing things. That's all just one hairstyle. As well as changing the colour, you can trim the fringe and adjust the length all the way down to the shoulders to create many different looks from one basic template. This one cut gives you everything from schoolteacher to arts student and TV presenter.

Click on the pic for a real close look at the variations available.

Hair today, shorn tomorrow

Yesterday's screenshot gave you a taster of one of the longer hairstyles in store for you in the Hairstyles Content Pack. You seemed to like it, but some of you were worried that the only hairstyles we'd give you would be styles with long hair (and at least one eye obscured!). To allay your fears, let's go to the other extreme today and take a look at one of the shortest hairstyles we're working on.


This is a very short, shaved cut for male characters. There are several variants from which to pick, from the subtle ...


... to the, er, not-so-subtle:


I've got a few more images still to show you, and maybe even a video or two, so check back over the next few days to see some more of the work-in-progress Hairstyles Pack (and more terrible puns in the post title).

Click the images to see a high-resolution version.

Fringe favourite

A little while ago we asked you what sort of hairstyles you wanted to see on your Moviestorm characters. The upcoming Hairstyles Content Pack contains hairstyles inspired by many of the ideas and images you sent us.

I've got an early development build of the Pack, so I'm going to sneak a few screengrabs for you over the next couple of weeks. Let's start off with this, which is one of the new female hairstyles:



There's a huge amount of variety and customisability planned for the Hairstyles pack, so keep an eye on this blog in the coming weeks to see if the hairstyle you asked for has made it into the Content Pack.

Oh, right, yes - I almost forgot: When It's Ready™.