Last night, we filmed the first scene of Season 2 of The Leet World. Pretty wild. Of course, we would have gotten more done, except we were having all kinds of technical issues with the capture card and with the camera computer. But hey, I guess that means it’s business as normal, eh? Wouldn’t be TLW if there wasn’t a bunch of complications. Now that the dust is all cleared out, we should be off to the machinimaking races.

I can’t wait to show you guys some proper screenshots, and you should start getting some of those next week, once we have some things we can really display. For now though, I have brought some teasers…

Looks like somebody’s got a bit of an upgrade…

Have fun with that. Also, I just put up an article at GamerSushi titled “Are we Really Ready for the Next Gen?”. You guys should check it out, and I would appreciate it if you could Digg it, too, for those of you who enjoy it. I’d heart you forever. Or at least for today.

Season 2 production is fully underway. We got together and recorded audio for episodes 1-3 the other night, and it was definitely a time saver already to do them all at once. Since the hard part is getting everyone together and then getting started, it really took about the same amount of time as it does for one episode. The method is already working!

The reason I waited so long to update this week is because I was hoping to have something cool to share with you guys, but I’m going to have to wait just a little longer. Rest assured, a barrage of content is going to start coming out next week, ranging from Web Zeroes episodes to TLW teasers, screenshots and even the soundtrack very soon.

Also, I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Ross Scott’s work, but he has put together a brilliant machinima piece called “Oil’s Well” that he produced in Half-Life 2. Give it a watch, and visit his website.

So, here’s the commentary for Episode 3 of The Leet World, which we were finally able to record when Daniel got back. Pardon some of the audio levels, there were a few mic issues, forcing us to record it the way we would a podcast, rather than what the last commentaries sounded like.

On the plus side, it is now attached to the video of Episode 3, so no worries on playing it yourself in time with the audio file. We might get around to the first two eps eventually, but there definitely wasn’t time to do it over the weekend. This whole commentary thing has been trial and error for us, that’s for sure. I think the Ep 4 commentary will be perfect.

So listen/watch, comment and enjoy. Don’t worry if you don’t see any video at first, it doesn’t start til a few seconds in.

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Wanted to give you guys a couple of production updates, as well as some screenies from the new episode of Web Zeroes that we filmed over the weekend. For future information, 9:30 am-11:30pm shoots were first thought up by the devil. And carried out by his bee-eff-eff Daniel, our steely-resolved director.

The first two episodes of The Leet World, Season 2 are almost written. There are some things we learned from the Finale - namely, that filming 3 “episodes” at once goes a lot faster than the normal method.

The idea this season is to film in 3 episode chunks. It’ll be an interesting experiment. So, by the time we release Episode One, we should be done filming the first three. What’s even cooler for you guys is that in theory, you should be getting a new episode almost exactly every two weeks on the dot, and in the meantime, we’re three episodes ahead, not killing ourselves. I’m a fan of the not killing ourselves part.

Of course, that’s all in theory, which, like Nick’s beard, is the subject of much speculation and myth. Men have died on those furry peaks. We’ll see how it goes. Filming hopefully starts next weekend.

Here are those screenshots I promised thirty seven seconds ago:

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been without Internet for a few days here.

However, I return with some good news. A few weeks ago, we submitted our videos to the Machinima Festival that happens in Novemeber. Well, the results are in: Smooth Few Films has been nominated for several machinima awards!

Here’s the breakdown:

• Day in the Life of a Turret- Best Short Format/ Best Music

• The Bag Boy- Best Short Format/ Best Voice Acting/ Best Writing

• The Leet World- Honorary Mention, Best Series

I won’t pretend that we’re not disappointed that The Leet World didn’t get an actual nomination for Best Series, seeing as how hard we’ve worked on it, or that it wasn’t recognized for the incredible music that Jace has continually produced for us. Personally, I still can’t think of another series save for Red Vs Blue that devotes as much as we do to characters and story, but to each his own.

All that said, though, we’re excited to be nominated for what we did get nominated for, and hopefully we can take home some kind of award come November, when the winners are announced.

In other news, production is starting on The Leet World, Season 2, and we filmed the next episode of Web Zeroes over the weekend. Stick around, because more things are coming this week, including commentary for Episode 3 of TLW!

I mentioned we’d have one or two other surprises coming up soon…

Introducing: The Leet World Store, where you can get your first ever TLW shirts!

Right now the selection is pretty limited, but this is just a trial run. Currently, the only colors we can offer are red, white, military green, brown and charcoal for the guys, blue, pink and yellow for the ladies. I’m partial to the green and brown, myself.

It should be noted that since we’re going through Cafepress (for now), any issues you have with ordering, delivery, etc, should be taken up with them.

A quick note about the price/selection of the shirts… Our available merch is going to be limited at first until we get an idea of the demand. If it turns out that there is a big enough demand for these shirts, we should be able to offer a wider selection of shirts (catch phrases, etc) and have more flexibility on pricing. At the moment, we are limited as to what kinds of products we can offer and the pricing points we can set. This is step one in a several step process. Happy browsing!

In other news, Jace is hard at work on the Season One soundtrack, and what I’ve heard is exceptional. In addition, the first episode commentary should be up within a couple of days.

To borrow from Frodo (Smooth Few Films), we’re glad that you will be with us, Samwise Gamgee (you dudes), here at the end of all things (the release of part 3 of the Season Finale), or rather, the end of Season One of The Leet World.

That should be tomorrow, by the way. I can’t promise a particular time, it could be morning, it could be later on. But it won’t be today, so lay off the F5 juice.

The final running time is somewhere around 18 minutes, and it’s an action packed mofo on top of all of that. We will spend most of the evening and into the morning hours toiling away, and then Nick leaves me to fly to California for a (much-needed) vacation.

Happy waiting. If you haven’t yet, check out our Announcements about what’s going to be coming after the season is over. Cool stuff.

EDIT: Good lord, dudes, chill. Yesterday I said it would be out at “some point” TODAY. It could be out tonight for all we know. Don’t expect it until much later in the day (it’s early morning right now). And if you don’t what time of day that is for you, google it.

I’ve been promising some announcements for several weeks now, so I figured it was time to stand and deliver. I’m no Lou Diamond Phillips, but I think I’ll be ok. Also, you may want to read on to see an interesting tidbit about part 3 of the Season Finale.

Here’s the stuff in the works…

(more…)

Funny how time flies.

One year ago, we released the trailer for The Leet World on our old blogspot. Since then, we’ve devoted the last year to making this show in our free time. The only break we had was for about two weeks in January, and even then we were working on “A Day in the Life of a Turret”, so not really. It’ll be kind of nice when we’re done for the season and I can, you know, play some video games or sleep in on a Saturday.

Since that launch one year ago, we’ve seen some awesome stuff happen. Our community has grown and gotten larger, more than some of you even know. When we started, we would see maybe a few hundred visitors a day, whereas now we see thousands. Hopefully, we’ll just see that growth continue as we keep pressing on in our creative endeavors.

We definitely want to thank you guys yet again for all the support you’ve shown us in the last year. Some of you have been here since the beginning and some of you are fairly new. Either way, we appreciate all that you’ve done, and thanks for watching our goofy show.

A couple of quick updates: there are some cool announcements coming over the next two weeks. Also, we won’t be putting the trailer on our website until we can get music on it that we actually own.

Just like I promised, I have arrived this morning bearing gifts! Well, one gift to be exact. The Leet World Holiday Special! It’s a card, from us to you. Try to imagine it in an envelope in your mailbox. Sure, it’s a couple of days late, but I doubt there will be much complaining about that. Give it a watch. Share it with your friends.

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There are also some other versions available for download…

HD Mpeg 4

640 x 360 Mpeg 4

640 x 360 WMV

Remember, there will be plenty of other extras coming in the next couple of weeks. And maybe even another video. Stay tuned!