Machinima News: Animation Meets Journalism - Computers - Software

With so many local and national news stations across the world, it's hard to separate one from the other. Machinima was one of the ideas that some news stations have been playing around with for a couple years. It's used mostly for reenactments, but some use it to show diagrams and maps. Whether the news is serious or hilarious, journalism and animation can bring various points of view to life with any story. Regardless if they just do it for one segment or the entire broadcast.

Machinima news has been around for a few years, but it has a strong presence in Japan and other parts of Asia. Reenactments are the main subject, but other networks take it further to make their newscast more interesting to watch. Elsewhere around the world, other digital artists create podcasts and blog posts for the same reasons. However, most of the news stations choose to use live or recorded footage rather than animation. However, there is more variety when it comes to animated news on the web. From sports and entertainment to commentary, you can find a podcast or web series covering current events.

There are two types of machinima news programs: partial and fully animated. The partial programming is self-explanatory, but only used during certain occasions. Fully animated shows are mostly done by bloggers and professional animators and can be found on the net. They do share a few things in common: they are both cheap to create, make the segments more interesting, and can be done by anyone with either a computer or game console.

For those who wish to play around wish machinima and create your own news show, you can either use creation and editing software with downloadable settings and avatars or buy graphic design software. You can find these for around $100, but there are some web-based programs that you can use free. If you wish to do it through your favorite video game, you can find recording software and cable to hook up to you TV or monitor's output. First person games are used the most, but feel free to play around with other titles. ETC (Electronics, Technology, Culture) does this and uses Halo to do segments and interviews.

The only drawbacks to machinima news are the fact that most are created for foreign and young audiences. Many people look at animated news the same way as robots: it's entertaining, but not the way they want to get informed about current events. However, it does cost less to create a news shows with animated anchors and reports. It's still a fairly new trend that's gaining attention, but it will be awhile before regular news channels take it seriously. Fox News' late night show, Red Eye, uses animation to act out certain situations and read e-mails from viewers. It's all done using software made by Xtranormal.com, but they have shown clips from Japanese news about their animated segments.

You can find many machinima news programs online, but there are a few news channels that do the same (mostly foreign TV). It's definitely entertaining, but not many are excited about getting their news from animated characters every night. It's also easy to create your own show if you wish to do so.

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