April Hoffmann's Blog

Introducing Isaac James

2009-06-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

Isaac James was born 12 days early on June 12 at 9:00 am. He was 8 lb 14 oz and 20 3/4 in long. We are all so excited to have him in our family! Avery loves being a big sister and wants to hold her brother constantly! Brian loves having a son and mommy is ecstatic to no longer be pregnant!

Please note: old site atlas-enterprises.net is GONE

2009-05-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know, my old website www.atlas-enteprises.net will no longer be continued. For the past year or two, it has redirected to my new website, www.atlasprodutionz.com, but now I will no longer be paying to have it hosted.

This means that if you have links to movies, cheat codes, etc that have the old website link, they will no longer work. BUT, all my movies, codes, FAQs are on my new website so just redirect your shortcuts there!

Just FYI.

New Movie's Cancelled. It's already being produced!

2009-02-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Well, the script that my husband and I have been writing for a year (that we just finished) is already being produced into a Hollywood blockbuster.

Yep, here is what OUR story was about. http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/17again/

We had no idea about this movie until today. I guess in some ways it's a complement that we wrote a story good enough to be made into a real movie. But it's also very frustrating that we got beat to the punch. We don't feel it's worth making our movie because it will come out AFTER this one is released in the theaters, and everyone would think we just copied it! The similarity is too extreme for anyone to think anything else.

SO...back to the drawing board. :(

No Sims 3 for Me

2009-01-25T15:51:00.001-08:00

Personally, I'm completely dreading the release of The Sims 3. As a movie maker, it will be YEARS before Sims 3 has caught up to where we are now with Sims 2. Making movies will be thrown back to the stone age! I'm also afraid that all the focus will go to the Sims 3, and new custom content, hacks, and mods will stop being created for Sims 2.

From what I've seen, I don't feel like The Sims 3 is different enough from 2 to change over yet. The difference from Sims 1 to 2 was so extreme that it was like getting an entire new game! But this time the differences will mostly benefit game play (like the new neighborhood function) but not movie making. I know game play is the main purpose, but for us movie makers the release of the Sims 3 will only hurt (for awhile). Plus, on a side note, I don't like the way the new sims look! I think they look weird and almost LESS realistic - in their faces at least.

Anyway, that's my opinion and rant about the Sims 3. I know a lot of movie makers who aren't planning on switching, but I know many who are as well. I sincerely hope that the Sims 2 doesn't fade away into obscurity and that people will still enjoy watching Sims 2 movies! I'm still planning to release one this summer!!

Well, I did make a new movie...

2008-09-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

...but it's not the one I posted about before. This is a short promotional video promoting my and a partner's business, Pro Clips Online (www.proclipsonline.com)

It's called "The Zinternet." It's funky and fun; go check it out!

www.atlasproductionz.com/zinternet_final.wmv

Or go see it smaller on my website www.proclipsonline.com It's embedded on the Profile page.

Movie Delayed...

2008-06-08T13:13:00.001-07:00

I'm sad to report that our upcoming movie is going to be delayed. In addition to having major computer problems (my old one broke and the new one I got turned out to be a lemon, so I had to get ANOTHER new one), I've actually been getting a lot of work for my Memories Media business as well as my ProClipsOnline biz. So I've been working, just not on my movie!

I still plan on releasing it, though, so don't give up on me. :) Within the next two weeks, I'll have a new music video posted on the Promo Video page of my Atlas Productionz website. It will be called "Hydrogen Highway" and I'm producing it for someone who is trying to sell their song to an auto company.

So that's the update.

New Co-Business and Website!

2008-03-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

Great news! It's a long story, but I met someone online who wants to partner with me making machinima promo videos!

He gets the clients, writes the scripts, and I film the movies! I'm so excited for this venture!

Please check out our new site: http://www.proclipsonline.com/ (I built the site)

A new promo video (for OUR site) will be posted on the site sometime late this week or early next week. Stay tuned!

New Movie Coming Soon!

2008-01-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

After a three year hiatus, Atlas Productionz is finally going to release a new Sims movie! I'm sure since it's been three years, no one checks this blog anymore - but just in case, I thought I would announce it here first.

Release date is not yet set, but it will be either late spring or early summer. It's hard for me to gage how long it will take since I've never made a full on production since I've had my baby.

BUT, I can tell you this. It's going to awesome! Spread the news.

A trailer will be released before the movie.

Two new websites!

2007-11-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

I've created two new websites. First, a new Atlas Productionz site: www.atlasproductionz.com
It's going to replace the old atlas-enterprsises site, so update your links (tho the old site will eventually redirect automatically).

My second new site is www.averyhoffmann.com I'm learning Dreamweaver and decided to practice my new skills with my dauther's website. If you ever saw the old one, you'll see how much better this one is!

Enjoy!

Won second place in Halloween Contest

2006-11-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

Fun news! With my first movie in over a year (which I made in five days) :) I won second place in the Sims99 Halloween "Scare the Witch" contest.

It was so fun to make a movie again, even if I was rushed and really didn't have time to polish it up. I'm honored I won anything at all!

Take a look and be scared! Click here to watch movie. Or, click here to see all the movies at Sims99.

I'm on CBS News!

2006-08-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I thought I'd let you know that I am on CBS News tonight in an interview about Machinima! If you miss the TV airing, you can check it out on their website! It was filmed several months ago when I was pregnant. It took them along time to air it, but it's finally on!

Here is the link

If that doesn't work, simply go to http://www.cbsnews.com/ Type in "Machinima" in the search bar, click on the article, and my picture will be on the front of the article. The video on the right side of the page is about Machinima, and I'm in that as well for a few seconds. :)

It was a fun experience. It's always funny to see how much they put in the video compared to how much they film; they were at my house for over three hours filming!

Enjoy!

A website for Avery

2006-05-16T21:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! Just thought I'd let you know that I've created a website for Avery. I just published it today, so it's still rough and unfinished, but it has lots of pictures and a video of her first month of life! www.averyhoffmann.com

Motherhood is extremely challenging and time consuming, but everyone tells me it gets easier. So hopefully, when the 'easier' time comes, I'll be able to make more Sim movies. In the meantime, The Awakening will be screened at three different international film festivals this summer: Brazil, Paris, and Australia! Pretty cool. I'll post those websites later.

TTFN and enjoy little Avery's site. :-)

Introducing...

2006-04-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

Avery Elizabeth Hoffmann! Born Sunday, April 9th at 5:56am. 7 lbs 10 oz, 21 inches long. She is so beautiful and precious to us; we are so blessed! She is healthy and strong and loves to be held. I had a easy, non-complicated birth and now we are at home enjoying our new daughter, and learning the ropes of this parenting thing! It's definitely not easy, but it's already rewarding. It's like everyone always says; it truly is a miracle.

Any...Day...Now...

2006-04-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in the final throes of my pregnancy. I'm due in less than two weeks, but I'm hoping and praying that she'll be early! I'm SUPER uncomfortable all the time and each day is a challenge just to make it through, but I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end.

I'm bummed I didn't get to make a Sim movie while pregnant, but I can tell you that I really miss it and I don't plan to stop after the baby arrives. As soon as we have a really good story idea, I'll start filming. Anybody have any good scripts that aren't super long?

The next post will most likely be bearing the good news and a really cute picture! ;-) Until then...

Awakening 1 selected for 2006 DC Independent Film Festival

2006-01-25T18:57:00.000-08:00

The DC Independent Film Festival showcases world premieres, award winning features, shorts, animation and documentaries by local, national and international filmmakers. See the website here: www.DCIFF.org.

My first episode of Awakening was chosen as one of the nine Machinima films accepted! There were 1,200 film enteries all together (not all animation, but films total). For a complete list of the selected Machinima films, click here.

The festival takes place March 2-12, but that's about as much as I know about it. Appearantly the selected directors will ge their picture in the festival program, so the exposure should be fun!

An update...

2006-01-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

Hello all! It's been way too long, but the holidays sucked away all my time. I wanted to make a Christmas movie, but that didn't happen. Now that it's a new year, and I only have three months left until I'm a mom, I'm fervently working on trying to write a story so I can make at least one more great movie/series before I'm forced to take a sabatical. I miss making Sim movies! As soon as we come up with an idea and start filming, I'll let you know what to expect. I also might have some more exciting news about The Awakening, but I don't want to announce it yet until it's a done deal. Until then, enjoy January!

It's a Girl!

2005-12-01T09:44:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd let everyone know that my husband and I found out that we're having a baby girl! We were both a little shocked cause we had thought all along that it would be a boy. But we're so excited! I'm 5 1/2 months along now, so a little over half way done. Yay!

"The Movies" by Lionhead...My Review

2005-11-27T12:23:00.000-08:00

I've been asked several times if I've heard of the new game "The Movies" by Lionhead. The answer is yes, I own it and I've been playing it for a few weeks now. While it is a fun game to play, I'm very disappointed in its potential to create Machinima movies.

For those of you who don't own it yet, I'll briefly explain how the game works in terms of creating your own movies. There are dozens of precreated scenes in which you can place actors into. Within these scenes, there are pre-set camera angles. So without some sort of cheat code or mods, you cannot choose your own camera angles, or how your scene will look. For example, if you want someone to punch someone else, you will have 2 or 3 choices of 'punching scenes' to choose from and that's it. So basically, after a few months of people making movies with this game, we'll have all seen every precreated sequence there is, just with different actors in different stories.

There are also only so many sets at this point. I'm guessing around 40 or so. There is no way to create your own sets, either, so those will quickly get old as well. You can tinker with lighting and props, but that will only take us so far. There is a huge technical discussion of this game on Machinima.com. Here is the link if you're interested in the particulars. LINK You can also place these scenes together in any order, but that's almost as much customization as you get.

So my take at this point is don't by this game in hopes of it becoming the next best Machinima tool. There is talk that Lionhead might release some additions that will make customizing movies easier, and I'm sure there is a large crowd of modders out there working away to improve the limitations. But until then, I won't be using it to make any movies. The Sims remains the superior tool in my opinion.

First Place Winner at BitFilm Festival!

2005-11-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Awakening Episode 1 won first place in the Machinima category at the Bitfilm Festival in Hamburg, Germany! I'm so honored and excited that I won. They will be officially announcing the winners on Bitfilm's website soon. Check it out here! The picture is of the cool Bitfilm robot I get, as well as a cash prize! Whoohoo!! :D

Awakening Series Nominated for MFF!

2005-10-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

My Awakening Series has been nominated for "Best Machinima Series" for the 2005 Machinima Film Festival. Yay! My series, or part of it, will be shown during the festival in the “Best of the Fest” reel. Awards will be given out on November 11th, so wish me luck! Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to attend this year, although I really wish I could. Does anyone live in NY that would like to go on my behalf? ;-)

Here's the full list of nominees: Machinima Festival Nominations

My EA Commercial is live!

2005-10-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

As of today, October 25th, I've been told by several people that they've seen my commercial. Since I don't have TV, I'm unable to see it until it's posted on the Sims website, but I thought I'd let everyone know on my blog. So far it's been seen on MTV and on the Gilmore Girls. I'm excited that it's showing, but I feel I should comment here that they chose the movie I liked least of the ones I made. The original idea I had for this particular commercial was basically changed, and now it appears that it's making fun of the President. This isn't AT ALL what I wanted to portray and I feel bad that it may come across that way. I have great respect for anyone who runs the United States, whether he makes mistakes or not. SO, for what it's worth, whoever sees the commercial and reads this blog will at least know how I really feel.

See it here!

Website Down for Oct 19th

2005-10-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
For those of you who can get to this site without going through my main site, I wanted to let you know due to domain reg problems, my website will be down for the next 12 hours. My email doesn't work, either, so if you have tried to send me anything on Oct 19th, please resend it on Oct 20th. Sorry for the inconvienence and let anyone else know who is wondering.
Thanks!

20,000 Unique Visitors in SEVEN days!!!

2005-10-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

I usually don't share my website statistics with everyone because...well, I don't see why anyone would care. But this month, I logged on to check my bandwidth and much to my shock, BOTH of my websites were at 100% by Oct 6th! Usually I don't reach 100% until the end of the month. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I looked at my reports and found that someone had posted my website on i-am-bored.com as well as flabber.nl (the biggest blog site in the Netherlands). Needless to say, I got 15,000 unique visitors in TWO days, and the number has continued to climb to over 20,000 as of today! I had to buy a third domain and post all my movies there so I my site didn't get shut down, but that's already gone up 10% in one night!

It's pretty exciting to get so many hits, as my usual unique visitor count is in the 5,000-6,000's for the month!

Just thought I would share the crazy news! :-)

AWAKENING EPISODE 3 IS HERE!

2005-09-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

After almost five months *shaking head*, Episode 3 is finally here! It was never meant to take this long, but…life happens.

Did you know that I’ve been working on the Awakening Series since December of LAST year?! Crazy! It will be nice to have it off my plate, I must admit. I’m already getting excited about what I might do next!

Well, since I don’t have a guest book yet, if you’d like to leave comments about what you thought about Ep 3, feel free to leave them here.

Enjoy!

Episoode 3 RELEASE DATE!

2005-09-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

As promised, The Awakening Episode 3 will be released this month, and the official release date is...Sep 25th!! Mark your calenders and help me spread the word, please!

Thank you all for your patience with the release of this episode; I know it's been forever!

Awakening Episode 3 Progress

2005-09-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Things are moving along fast now; I'm making great progress on Episode 3 (finally!). On top of an extremely busy summer, I've been struggling with morning sickness recently. This makes it very hard to want to do anything, let alone film! I appreciate everyone's patience and support, and a release date should be announced soon. The good news is, it will be released in September for sure!

Stay tuned...

Big News: I'm pregnant!

2005-08-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

I can hardly believe it myself! Brian and I are very excited as this was planned and hoped for. I found out a little over a week ago; I'm only six weeks along and will be due sometime mid-April. So this will be a very interesting and exciting journey, one that I hope you will enjoy "sharing" with me via blog!

On a sadder note...Episode 3 will not be released by the end of this month. I am now expecting sometime mid September instead. There have been so many life things keeping me from working on the Awakening, and I want it to be an excellent episode; not just thrown together. So I appreciate your patience and support!

Also, I'm still working on fixing the last glitches on the website. The person who was going to help me is currently out of town, so I'm waiting on his return.

More news to come soon....:-)

New website is live!

2005-08-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, after months and weeks of toil, trial, error, and more errors, the newly designed website is up! Please be patient as I work out all the kinks (as I'm sure there will be many). Advanced movie making tips has not been published yet, which is why the link does not work. A guestbook will hopefully be added soon, as well as fixing the contact me page and newsletter form.

I would like to say a giant thank you to Sid Phreak of London for his hours of help on this website. I couldn't have done half of it without him.

Since there's no guestbook yet, you can leave your comments here about what you think of the new site! I hope you enjoy!

EDIT: I was just informed by another source that it took a very long time to load the site. I will be working on fixing this as on my computer and computers close to me, it took less than 10 seconds to load. Can you let me know if it took a long time for it to load for you? Thanks.

The Very First

2005-07-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well, there is a first for everything, and this will officially be my first blog entry I've ever made on my own personal blog page. I'm busy redesigning my webpage so this will be short, but I'm excited to get my site posted and start talking to my friends and fans about the world according to April....