Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 5)

3. Know your enemy. If they're slow-moving, plan your moves. Panic will only kill you. If they're fast movers, run like hell. Fortify your Defense Ground. And pray to God they don't know how to climb walls.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 4)

III. UTILITIES

You may ask, why should you should concern yourself with utilities during the zombie apocalypse? In fact, utilities will play an important concern of your Defense Ground with regard to water, electricity (power generation and supply) and communication (including the Internet).

Water may be present in the water pipes a few months after the zombie apocalypse. But afterwards, when the water stations have been left unmanned, it's certain that potable water will become a precious commodity (especially in a tropical country like ours). Gathering water bottles from supermarkets and convenience stores will be one stop-gap measure but it would be better if you can commandeer the equipment of those water filtration shops that sell bottled water. With the equipment, you can filter your own drinking water.

Certain apartment buildings and condos have their own water tower where they store emergency water (in response to those waterless years in the '90s). Determine which buildings have these. Some houses have their own water towers as well. Another option to consider are swimming pools. Drain these pools of water (which has chemicals) then let it fill up, either via hose (if there's water still coming from the pipes) or when it rains. With this reservoir of water, you can now use your filtration equipment to make potable water.

With regard to power generation, most of the buildings have their own emergency generators (also in response to those electricity-less years in the '90s). Find out which ones have these generators, determine which need gasoline to run, and which buildings have a nearest gasoline station to siphon gasoline from. However, be warned that the profligate use of electricity such that your defense ground (i.e. your building) becomes so well-lit, it might as well be a neon arrow pointing at you, saying to zombies, "eat me" or to fellow human scavengers, "attack me".

With your emergency power available, you can now use telecommunications equipment like cell phones, radios and the internet to gather news on the status of the rest of the world. You can also use these to communicate with other survivors and network on a possible push-back of the zombies.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 3)

II. LOCATION

Location of your Defense Ground-- or the areas around it-- is important because you will need materials and supply during a zombie apocalypse. Therefore, keep in mind where to find the important materiel. These include: easily-preserved food (like canned goods), water and liquids, weapons and ammunition, medicine, building supply, vehicles and gasoline, and light supply (like storm lamps, oil, matches, etc.). In other words, you'll need to know where you'll get your survivalist equipment.

Whether or not you will stay in the city during the zombie apocalypse, you will still need material and supplies. Before, during and after the zombie rising, mark those areas where you can immediately grab the most number of material and supplies. For example, in the Ortigas area, you can raid malls like SM Megamall, Edsa Shangrila Mall and Robinson Galleria Mall for your food and equipment. You can also get weapons and ammunition at the weapons shops in SM Megamall (at the top floor) and Robinson Galleria Mall (at the 2nd or 3rd floor, near the hobby shops). There are also weapons shops at the basement of Makati Cinema Square and at the outskirts of the Cubao commercial areas.

If you need a quick raid for food supplies, Ortigas is also a good choice given the number of 7-11 and Ministop convenience stories at every corner. (Packs of cigarettes will also come in handy to keep you awake and destressed. Liquor like whiskey also serves as good explosives though watch out you don't get caught in your own blast!) And if you need more weapons, remember that police stations are your friends-- unless the police have already carted away the firearms for their own protection.

However, what's important to remember during a zombie apocalypse is that you'll need vehicles to keep you mobile to gather your supplies or to serve as escape options. Bicycles and motorcycles will keep you moving light and fast but you'll need some form of protection. You can use SUVs or vans, something large but with added engine power. Buses with added protection are also good; have a blowtorch handy to add metal sheets, gun ports and barbwire. Don't know how to use it? Learn fast.

What's interesting to note that some of the secondhand automobile lots that sell imported vehicles in Ortigas also offer bulletproof vehicles with high-powered engines. The lot beside Tektite Tower has a number of them being offered. Learn also how to hotwire vehicles on the more than likely chance that you won't be able to find the keys to start these machines.

And obviously, remember where all the gas stations are. You definitely won't get anywhere if you don't have gasoline in your fuel tank. In addition to this, know what kind of gasoline your vehicle: unleaded, premium or diesel. It's a bitch to find a mechanic during the zombie apocalypse who can fix your engine if you flood it with the wrong kind of gasoline. (Gasoline can also serve as good fuel for your explosives.)

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 2)

2. Determine your Defense Ground, Weapons Supply and Escape Routes.

Once you verify that the reports are truthful despite going against all logic and science, look around and assess your situation, whether you're in the office, in school, at the mall, or at home. Keep these three things at the back of your head always in order to survive.

A. Defense Ground

Your Defense Ground is dependent on three things: access points, location and utilities. The first one is the most important, which are the access points into and out of the structure (whether building, warehouse or home) where you're hiding out.

I. ACCESS POINTS

Know all the access points to your location, whether doors, gates, windows, height of walls, and underground passages. If it's not defensible, leave it for a better one. But before you do, find out which are the best.

A house with a sturdy door and windows you can lock is good, a house with a gate and walls are better, which is the norm in any middle-class suburb in Metro Manila. Think of Quezon City, Marikina or Paranaque. Take advantage of the security-consciousness of Filipino homeowners with their penchant for grilled windows, triple-lock doors, high walls, and easily-secured garage gates.

Buildings like high-rise corporate centers and condominiums are indefensible unless used as waypoints to a better position; there's only one way up and down the stairways especially once the power goes out (and the elevators). Granted, the stairways can be defensible (like what they did in 28 Days Later) but only to a certain point. Once the building becomes surrounded and infested, you have no choice but to go up. Options like flight or jumping to the next building will be then become prudent. Likewise, a building has too many hiding places to be thoroughly secured. (There are exceptions to this but we'll get back to that later.)

A house with high gates with spiked walls is better, but a subdivision with high walls and a secure gate is best. There are a number of exclusive subdivisions whose security is top-notch with its high walls and gated roads, like Dasmarinas, the Valle Verde series, Forbes Park and Ayala Alabang. Of course it remains to be seen if these can be secured against the massed zombies. Admittedly, you'll need manpower trying to secure these areas given how big these subdivisions are. However, these can be considered as secondary goals to be achieved once the push-back to reclaim the city is initiated.

If you're trapped in Metro Manila, one of the best places I could consider as a good place to secure is the Alexandra Condominium compound in Ortigas, Pasig City. This compound with several low-rise condominiums is bounded on two sides with a deep canal (almost a moat!), high walls at the frontage and back of the compound with easily defensible gates, and high walls beside several structures.

The guardhouses of the compound need to be reinforced with sandbags and steel sheets but the roof is high enough for a guard outpost on top of it (a sniper or a heavy machine gun or even an improvised flame thrower). The gates of the compound can be secured furthermore by covering them using steel sheets and using a number of the SUVs and vans parked in the compound as mobile weights which you can reinforce the gates. The vehicles will keep the gates blocked in cases of massed attack (or even a raid by rogue survivors) but you can also move them in case you have to bring in vehicles into the compound. However, be careful if you do use a flame thrower on top of the guardhouse as we all know what happens when someone becomes careless with a flame near parked cars.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 1)

1. The most important thing to remember is this: when in doubt, DO NOT.

If you see TV news reports on ABS-CBN or GMA 7 and hear it on the radio like DzMM about a possible zombie uprising , don't be a dumb shmuck and ignore the signs. You seriously think that if the local or national government can't even tell you when the metro is flooded like during Typhoon Ondoy, it'll tell you that the zombies have come back from the dead to eat your brains?

Keep track of all information. Note the first occurrence, the secondary attacks. See where the incidents are spreading towards. Likewise, don't limit yourself to mainstream media. Use the Internet: social networks like Twitter and Facebook worked during the Ondoy flooding, maximize your use while it's still available.

Plugging Holes in My Reality

While I'm trying to finish several articles for work (including my day-job), here's some interesting things that are out in the Internets:

A. Nikki Alfar, together with Kate Aton-Osias, is calling out for submissions for the yearly Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 6. Wow, is it that time of the year already?

Editors Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias invite you to submit short fiction for consideration for Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 6.

Philippine Speculative Fiction is a yearly anthology series, which collects a wide range of stories that define, explore, and sometimes blur the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all things in between. The anthology has been shortlisted for the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award, and multiple stories from each volume have been cited in roundups of the year’s best speculative fiction across the globe.

First-time authors are more than welcome to submit; good stories trump literary credentials any time.

Submissions must be:
1. speculative fiction—i.e., they must contain strong elements or sensibilities of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, alternate history, folklore, superheroes, and/or related ‘nonrealist’ genres and subgenres
2. written in English
3. authored by Filipinos or those of Philippine ancestry

Submissions are preferred to be:
1. original and unpublished
2. no shorter than 1,000 words and no longer than 7,500
3. written for an adult audience

In all cases, these preferences can be easily overturned by exceptionally well-written pieces. In the case of previously-published work—if accepted, the author will be expected to secure permission to reprint, if necessary, from the original publishing entity, and to provide relevant publication information.

Submission details:
1. No multiple or simultaneous submissions—i.e., submit only one story, and do not submit that story to any other market until you have received a letter of regret from us.
2. All submissions should be in Rich Text Format (saved under the file extension ‘.rtf’), and emailed to kate.osias@gmail.com, with the subject line ‘PSF6 submission’.
3. The deadline for submissions is midnight, Manila time, November 15, 2010. Letters of acceptance or regret will be sent out no later than one month after the deadline.

Editors’ notes:
1. Please don’t forget to indicate your real name in the submission email! If you want to write under a pseudonym, that’s fine, but this can be discussed upon story acceptance. Initially, we just need to know who we’re talking to.
2. If you’d like to write a cover letter with your brief bio and publishing history (if applicable), do feel free to introduce yourself—but not your story, please. If it needs to be explained, it’s probably not ready to be published.
3. We advise authors to avoid fancy formatting—this will just be a waste of your time and ours, since we will, eventually, standardize fonts and everything else to fit our established house style.

Compensation will be Php500 for selected stories. In previous years, we’ve provided contributor copies of the book, as well as small royalty shares, but we are strongly leaning toward shifting Philippine Speculative Fiction to digital format, so we’re shifting to outright financial payment as well.

Please help spread the word! We’d really appreciate it if you’d publish this invitation on your blog, e-group, etc.

Thanks,
Nikki Alfar & Kate Aton-Osias, co-editors
Dean Alfar, publisher

What's doubly-interesting is that this is the first time the PSF series is offering payment for the work. Cool.

B. The infamous Adam David has put up this one-time project he asked us to write for, a six-word graphic story compilation called Sais. Go check it out. My story was called (and appropriately drawn) "Noir."

Below is a quick snatch-and-grab of the first part of the story from Adam's site:


Pretty, no?

That We Know But Have Never Seen

One, I just want to give a shout-out to my online buddy Jayaprakash Satyamurthy of India (or JP as people call him) who's put all his fiction online for free up at the blog Empty Dreams.

I've known JP-- who's even more of a bookhound than me-- ever since the now-dissipated forum days with the infamous rabble-rouser Gabe Chouinard. Moreover, JP 's erudite and cutting declarations at his blog is only rivaled by his discerning book taste (some which can sampled at Gabe Llama's cozy little forum Gambols & Frolics).

Go check it out.

Two, another shout-out I'd like to give is for those local writers who're interested in submitting to Alternative Alamat by Paolo Chikiamco of Rocketkapre. Paolo's looking for new stories (or new ways of telling old stories) of local legend and he plans to put the anthology up for sale as an ebook on his site, one of Rocketkapre's offerings to the world.

Mind, he's not referring to the usual Filipino monster tropes like the manananggal, the aswang, the tikbalang or the dwende. He's looking for alamats or myths and legends, which our country has in great abundance. It's a good idea: after all, one can only take so much nth iteration of the aswang in the city.

So go forth and submit. We need more of our stories out there.

Bibliofilia: Dover Publications

Cheap books. You can't go wrong with 'em. Which is why I really like the price tag on Dover Books when I find 'em (either here or abroad). But then again, when it says on the cover that it's a 'Thrift Edition', you gotta go with the flow, eh?

But what makes me gaga over their stuff is their category of Detective Stories, Science Fiction, Ghost Stories, and Supernatural. I mean, what's not to like there, right? Similar to the Wordsworth books, this company has been coming out with a lot of the good older stuff.

For example, I bought a Dover edition of copy of G.K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare at Fully Booked when they still had a lot of stock then. Granted it's not as fun as the edition as this one by Penguin but still, a copy is a copy.

Likewise, during my trip to the US, I managed to pick up the Dover-edition of Edwin Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. And among the handful of Abbott's editions on the bookshelves, the Dover was the hands down winning price for only $2!

Definitely a good buy with these books when you see them, even with the brand new ones.

Reading the Story from a Phone Book

I'm probably either still crossing the international dateline or defrosting after the 20-hour plane ride. In the meantime, check out these really links I've trawled from the 'net. Some of them are a bit old (internet-wise) but they're still damn interesting.

The first two links are of particular attraction to me given my own dictionary project. As the blogpost title says, it's like coming up with a story based on a phone book.

1. The Shared Worlds Summer Think Tank at the Wofford College came up with a recent Fantastic Bestiary with a lot of writers chipping in their two-cents worth of monsters. If you need more convincing, think Jorge Luis Borges with a lot of help.

2. Meanwhile, China Mieville has his own dictionary of terms with A to Z part 1 and A to Z part 2. I particularly like the one where he defines xenagogue as "a writer of the fantastic."

3. On the other hand, The Philippine Online Chronicles has this interesting article called a Conversation with a Sorcerer. Here, writer Dennis Villegas actually interviews a local sorcerer on how Siquijor magic works. Lots of good resource material here.

4. Lastly, it looks like World Literature Today has a great May issue out that dives in deep into international science fiction. This one looks good and it actually reminds me of the international science fiction feature in the Words Without Borders December issue.

(I particularly liked the latter as it first led me to read Hiroshi Yamamoto's The Stories of Ibis currently available via Haikasoru and now locally thru FullyBooked.)

Feminism and Legends

Why are some of our legends wrapped around the female mysteries-- from a male point of view, of course-- of pregnancy and giving birth?

At the start of Natsuhiko Kyogoku's The Summer of Ubume, there are some introductory definitions on the legend of the ubume. In this case, the Japanese legend states of a ghost of a pregnant woman who has died after giving birth.

In Filipino legends, pregnant women of yore faced the darker side of myths with beasties like the manananggal and the aswang out to eat their unborn fetuses via long, thread-like tongues that can slip in and out their wombs like some inhuman mosquitoes.

Accordingly, miscarriages and other pregnancy maladies were blamed on these legends. However, though science and modern medicine has soothed away most of these worries in today's modern age, some of these fears are still prevalent especially in the provinces.

My other question is: do the same intertwining of legends and the female pregnancy also apply to other countries?

On a side note, I keep forgetting to promote Rocket Kapre's upcoming e-anthology called Alternative Alamat. In this case, Paolo wants to promote a review and updating of Filipino myths and he's raising a call-out for stories in this vein.

You can check out his compiled The Myth(ing) List of what possible myths you can write about. It's also interesting reading of what you can expect when the dark falls 'round these parts. *wink*

Bibliofilia: Wordsworth Editions

Coming off just having picked up a hard-to-find copy of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder (published by Wildside), it reminded me of this thread at a forum about psychic detectives given that Carnacki is a type of a Sherlock Holmes for the supernatural and the occult.

Personally, I've had limited reading experience with this type of sub-genre (the combination of mystery and the supernatural) but I can't help but be attracted to check this out. After all, the pattern of these stories indicate an otherworldly/quirky protagonist who has face the Other-ness of reality and these bear a marked similarity to some of my own stories.

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of new material with regard to this subgenre (except for Sarah Monette's collected stories of Kyle Murchison Booth, The Bone Key which came out in 2007). However, one well-known publication that does is Wordsword Editions, with its category Mystery and Supernatural reserved for that subgenre.

Going through their library, I see they have their own version of the Carnacki book (The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder), as well as Alice and Claude Askew's Aylmer Vance: Ghost Seer. They also have a collected set of stories on the subgenre The Black Veil & Other Supernatural Sleuths edited by Mark Valentine, with its blurb reading like a who's who:

Here are encounters from the casebooks of the Victorian haunted house investigators John Bell and Flaxman Low, from Carnacki, the Edwardian battler against the abyss, and from horror master Arthur Machen’s Mr Dyson, a man-about-town and meddler in strange things. Connoisseurs will find rare cases such as those of Allen Upward’s The Ghost Hunter, Robert Barr’s Eugene Valmont (who may have inspired Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot) and Donald Campbell’s young explorer Leslie Vane, the James Bond of the jazz age, who battles against occult enemies of the British Empire.

(Meanwhile, they also have some great non-subgenre classic titles I wouldn't checking out like Robert W. Chambers' influential The King in Yellow and Lafcadio Hearn's Oriental Ghost Stories.)

All in all, an excellent selection of books available here.

Monster Evolution

(picture taken from here)

Boo!

A week's rest after launching Demons of the New Year and I'm back in the blogging saddle again. Given that it's the holy week coming up and most of the people in this country are going on holiday, it's about time I start blogging again. I know a lot of writers who're planning to do some writing in the interim.

In the meantime...

I was reading the first two issues of Budgette Tan's Trese (an excellent series that takes a modern look at the darker side of Filipino mythology) and I got into thinking of evolution of monsters-- specificially, the tiyanak.

There are three theories posited on the creation of these shape-shifting changeling monsters, i.e. (1) from unborn babies, (2) unbaptized babies and (3) aborted babies. I'm wondering from a historical perspective if these theories apply to the different periods in Philippine history or were they already present throughout time. If the first, then the monster myth is actually evolving as time passes.

For example, i'm thinking if the first theory was prevalent during the pre-Spanish period. And when the Spaniards started converting everyone into Christianity, the second theory started spreading.

Now, I'm presuming that abortion had been present even before the Spaniards came (hello herbs!) But I'm thinking that whatever guilt that can be accrued from abortion would have been magnified in the 21st century such that the rise of the collective concept behind the third theory is only a recent thing.

What do you think?

When Worlds Collide

One time while I was reading China Miéville's The City and the City, I observed the phenomenon of rain falling while the sun was still shining.

Obviously, there's an explanation behind this phenomenon, called a sunshower, and a quick check on the Internet shows that a number of folklore around the world linked to it. In this country, it's supposedly because a couple of tikbalangs (half-human, half-horse monsters) are getting married.

However, what did struck me about this event was that-- similar to Miéville's book-- maybe our reality is not the only one around and there are other realities close enough to ours to sense and maybe even cross into.

I've always said that despite us Filipinos living in urban environs for years on end, we still haven't shaken off our rural roots. And that we still carry folkloric and mythological baggage of our rural forefathers.

So it's no surprise that for those of us in the city, we still remember these folkloric aspects of the monsters hiding in the dark woods and jungles of our cultural memory. This despite being city folk through and through. And who knows, maybe they're also here deep in the woods and jungles of our cities, right?

Case in point: no matter the surrounding, whether it's on the forest trail or just an abandoned open field in the middle of the city, we still remember to mutter Tabi-tabi po or Makikiraan po ("One side please" or "Excuse me please") just in case we might step on some dwende's toes.

Yes, we're all civilized, rational people here. But on the off-chance that it's all true... well, we Filipinos are known for hedging our bets (or being segurista), yes?

Movies, Creepy Hand Logos, Japanese Birds, and Other Things

• The indefatigable don has joined up with a movie group to produce/analyse/critique movies, which you check out at pelikula. Good stuff there.
• Meanwhile, there's a great project to help local Filipino creative work called Project 20:10 (their Facebook page here). On their website, they state:

"Seems the main problem for our lack of good local content creators is lack of support. And the main reason why there is no support is the lack of good content creators. Looks like we’ve got a deadlock to break.
So who’s going first?
Both are.
PROJECT 20:10 is a campaign to get people to support more local content, as well as create more local content. By joining the project, you pledge to read/watch/play the works of twenty (20) local authors/ creators/ developers who you haven't supported before, before the year 2010 is up.
Also, by joining, you pledge to create an original piece of high quality fiction/ comic/ animation/ game worth at least ten (10) pages/ minutes/ levels before the year 2010 is up."

• In other news, this is old but Words without Borders in December had this great International Science Fiction issue. Check out the articles and fiction there. I particularly liked Hiroshi Yamamoto's The Story of the Ibis.
• Lastly, criminally underrated SF author Peter Watts did a fantastic retelling of the sci-fi classic film John Carpenter's The Thing through the eyes of the alien(s): "The Things". You can read it over at Clarkesworld or go directly here (and you can read its conception over here).

New Monsters for Old

Talking about the relatively new 'monster' of the Broadway Centrum slasher reminded me of an earlier idea I had somewhat similar to Neil Gaiman's first novel, American Gods.*

In that concept of the old-versus-new, I wondered if there were any new monsters to begin with being bred in Metro Manila, a city that combines the best of two worlds: 21st century technology and provincial superstition.

At the top of my head, I remembered the urban legend slasher. I also remembered another urban legend, the half-human/half-snake beast living at the bowels of a well-known mall.

In that particular legend, the monster is supposedly the male twin of the mall magnate's daughter. Rather than kill the child, they let it run loose through the secret tunnels and passageways of their giant mall.

The child later grew up to be an adult by feeding on people--specifically women-- in the mall. How did/does he do it? Supposedly the changing rooms of the mall have drop hatches which dumps the women changing in these rooms straight into the monster's lair.

Which brings me to my next question: we all have old monsters in our country's history-- but are there any new monsters being bred today? (Politicians, serial killers and the like not counted, please.)

*On a separate note, here's an interesting idea...

These are your Monsters

One of the earliest scariest stories I heard when I was a kid in the '80s was about the slasher of Broadway Centrum.

I'm sure you've heard of this one: a couple was walking to their car parked at a dark section of the street at night after watching a show at Broadway Centrum. Unfortunately, when they got to the car, they saw all four of the tires had been slashed. So the boyfriend decides he'll find some help while the girlfriend stays inside the car for him. The girlfriend waits... and waits... and waits. But no sign of the returning boyfriend.

Finally, she sees a returning figure but it's not the boyfriend. She's nervous but she ignores the guy, thinks it's somebody passing. (Obviously, she makes sure the car doors are locked.) But the guy heads toward the car and starts knocking at the window. Freaked, she starts honking the horn to attract attention. The guy is scared off and runs away-- but not before he throws something at the car. The object lands on top of the car's hood and the girl sees its the boyfriend's severed head.

Sound familiar? It should be: it's even listed in Snopes, and even made into a movie.

It's fascinating to see though, how a Western urban legend has managed to make to Asian shores and even managed the trick of adapting itself to local cultures. Reminds me of the concept of 'memes as viruses'.

As part of myths and legends that seem to translate from one culture to another, I've come across a WW2-era story about the Kumakatok (i.e. 'Those who Knock') in this book while doing research. It's strange because, among all the mythical monsters and legends in the book, the kumakatok is the only one that has a different cultural aspect from the rest. In fact, aside from the seemingly non-Filipino flavor to this legend, this one seems to be the only urban-related mythical beings in the lot as well.

To wit: the kumakatok is a trio of supernatural women dressed in robes that would knock on the doors of a number of random houses in Metro Manila at night. Usually those houses the trio would visit, some terrible incident would befall a member of that household.

One night during WW2, most of the houses and buildings in the city were visited by the mysterious beings before they disappeared. The battle of Manila soon followed, which killed 100,000 men, women and children and destroyed most of the buildings.

Looking back, these beings in comparison seem a reversal of of the Angel of Death that visited Egypt and slew those whose doors were not painted with lamb's blood. Reversal because rather than saving those whose doors were marked, those people actually die.

It does make me wonder though why the kumakatok don't feel like Filipino monsters for me. Anyone else know a mythology that involves the marking of doors?

What do you think?

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Ataque de Panico

"(Uruguayan director Federico) Alvarez, known for his 4-minute short movie Panic Attack (“Ataque de Panico”) which spread through the Internet this year and caused quite a buzz, has been signed up by (Sam) Raimi for a feature film debut. The director had earlier created the short movie on a $500 budget." (Excerpt from here.)

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Escape from City-17

"What can you do if you happen to have the kind of computer equipment you want and just $500 Canadian (US$400)? Do what two indie filmmakers did: make a movie! This is what gamer-filmmakers David and Ian Purchase did when they came up with a short film called Half-Life: Escape from City-17 in 2008. Using machinima and Valve’s Source engine, they managed to create a movie that combined CGI, photographs and traditional video." (Excerpt from here.)

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Cup of Tears

"Combining samurai action with science-fiction graphics and manga influence, the trailer shows the stylized filmmaking reminiscent of movies like Zack Snyder’s 300, Frank Miller’s The Spirit, the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer as well as Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City." (Excerpt from here.)

The War is Coming to Town

Airships! Moorcock warlords!

Sorry, I just had to post that picture. Must do a story on it...

(Taken from here.)