Little Freemans series

[CTN]

Little Freemans is, most likely, the first Romanian Machinima series. It is placed in the Half Life universe some time before Gordon comes out of stasis. The series features three original characters, Starch, Jeffy and Sphyncter who rezide inside a small rebel base. Their mission is to provide assistance to City 17 escapees and guide them along the escape route. However, things rarely happen as planned much to the disadvantage of the fugitives...

 

Character Bios

 

Starch is a 37 year old con man who used to do all sorts of petty crimes until the Combine took over. After that, he traded on the black market for a short while but when the invaders' grip got tighter around the cities, the supply routes got thin and Starch found himself out of business. Seeing how the Combine raides got closer and with no way to escape City 17, he had no choice but to join the Resistance and hope for other business opportunities. Starch is a natural leader and a tough man. He has no problem deceiving others while throwing in a sarcastic remark.

 

Jeffy is a 33 year old medic who was sued for malpraxis in the days before the war. He used to be involved in organ trafficking. When the police found out, he was encarcerated and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he witnessed the 7 Hour War. The Combine left him there but he was rescued by the Resistance along with other prisoners. With the records being lost and the chance of a clear reputation, Jeffy claimed he had been imprisoned by the invaders for refusing to operate on human enlisted Combine soldiers. Without other options, Jeffy joined the Resistance as a field medic. He is a cinical, corrupt and indifferent man whose cowardly actions are often times funny.

 

Sphyncter is a Vortigaunt scentist and he is in charge of the base. On his home planet, he studied ways to develop agricuture by means of various energy sources. A peaceful life was all that Sphyncter wanted for his people. When the Black Mesa incident occured, he got teleported to Earth and finally joined the humans in the fight against the Combine. For the past twenty years, he has been studying along with Earth's last remaining scientists. When he was asigned to work on weapons development, he declined, preferring to aid fugitive citizens and conduct his own experiments close to the first line of battle. Sphyncter is wise and peaceful but incredibly naive.

 

Episode 1 - First Asignment

 

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Episode 2 - Green Mustang

 

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Edited December 31, 2011 by Guest (see edit history)

[Alyxx Thorne]

Not really my taste, but the animation is well done.

[CTN]

Thanks, I know this kind of humor doesn't appeal to everyone but I do have more projects coming up some of which will be very serious. Not the next one though, that one will be a parody. It's a pity machinima takes massive amounts of time to make. For example this episode took about 3 months to make in my spare time after work...

[Axeldeath]

pretty cool

[Koach]

nicely done lad! i really laughed... mostly on the medkit and the toxic waste thing. LOL

[CTN]

Laughs are the best reward...

[Koach]

hell yeah... thats the kind of machinima i like... that "dark" humor u talk about is the humor we got in this country. we enjoy people's suffering.

[CTN]

It's the same here, man. How do you think I would come up with this humor otherwise? Wait till you see my other series. I hope I can finish it in a month or so.

[imperial1scout]

Meh, good material, but the voice acting put me off. I couldn't tell if it was the accents (if so I'm sorry) but something just seemed off.

[CTN]

Yeah, I did all the voice acting, except for the girl. I know I'm not a very good actor but I hope I'll get better over time. I will be using a real actor starting from episode 2 for the hat character, Starch. Sorry for the accents, I don't think I can change that.

[Arby]

I just watched it. I was most impressed by the animation, but a bit put off by the voices, like others said. I thought Starch, the guy in that hat, had the most fitting voice, reminded me of the gas mask guy from P.A.N.I.C.S.

[imperial1scout]

Yeah, I did all the voice acting, except for the girl. I know I'm not a very good actor but I hope I'll get better over time. I will be using a real actor starting from episode 2 for the hat character, Starch. Sorry for the accents, I don't think I can change that.

Don't worry about the accent thing, I feel bad for it even distracting me.

[The Hamburglar]

animation, great.

script, really great.

voice acting, needs work.

[CTN]

Thanks, guys! Fortunately, actor Ionuţ Maierean came here today and recorded Starch's lines leaving me to do the voices of Jeffy and Sphyncter. He didn't have much time available, so we couldn't rehearse much, but I'm happy with his performance. If I can't deliver properly for Jeffy's voice this time, I'll probably get an actor for him as well. I'm gonna keep Sphyncter's voice to myself because I really enjoy playing him.

 

As for animation, I'll work harder on it this episode. Episode 1 was more of an animation experiment since I was learning while working but I think I got the hang of it now. I was hoping to do a better animating job with Malf Hockery but the Gordon custom model wouldn't perform all the flex animations properly so unfortunately he will stay that way through out the whole series unless someone fixes the model.

[ProHypster]

ThatSmartGuy.... approves!

 

CTN, try to make the talking a little more realistic by making it faster and actually more interactive and interruptive, same with the animations, it seems too.... smooth. Lots of people don't realize that real talking and movement isn't supposed to be crystal clear and smooth, you might need voice actors.

 

Watch some of the tunnel episodes and notice the constant interactive and interuptive environbment with Mike and Dave, lots of times they talk at the same time.

 

Good luck!

[CTN]

Episode 2 is FINALLY done after 3 months of hard work!

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/rochinima?feature=mhee

 

However, I will not advertise my work on Ross' site anymore. It was ok for the first episodes since I was starting out and wanted to see people's reactions but I think I should have a place of my own. So, if you enjoy my machinima and want to receive updates on my work, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I really want to get the machinima.ro website up but at the current work rate it doesn't seem likely to happen. If anyone would like to help me with the website please go ahead and contact me. I am trying to set up a simple work press site but I lack the necessary knowledge and time to do it.

 

I will still answer any questions and messages on this forum also.

 

About the episode, it was really more work than I had expected, I wanted to finish it about a month ago but the Source engine lived up to its buggy reputation. I watched the first episode recently and I was amazed with how bad my acting and animation was. Hahaha! But I am confident that I have made emprovements on both. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

[Brad]

That was hilarious, great job.

[Axeldeath]

Wow, that was very good. It really deserves a lot more views though.

[HLPrincess]

Looks pretty good but the voices are too quiet and they need much better quality. It's hard to understand.

Or make subtitles! Then I can say if I like it totally or just like ;d

[CTN]

That was hilarious, great job.

Wow, that was very good. It really deserves a lot more views though.

 

Thanks guys! I also hoped this episode would get more views but I guess it's hard without some proper advertising. I'm confident things will change if someone decides to help me get the webesite up.

 

 

Looks pretty good but the voices are too quiet and they need much better quality. It's hard to understand.

Or make subtitles! Then I can say if I like it totally or just like ;d

 

All my videos have subtitles. They also have annotations in the beginning telling you subtitles are available in Romanian and English. The volume has been normalised to 0dB. Can't get louder than that or it would clip. There has been a problem with LF E1 where the audio was normalised to -6dB but MH E1 and LF E2 have proper audio levels.

 

As for acting, please be more specific. I'm confident there has been an emprovement since E1 and also using an actor for Starch's voice should make a difference. But I'm very interested in some detailed feedback about acting since this is the weakest aspect of the series.