Trevor Boyd and Steve Ilett of LegoMatrix.com have completed 440 hours of stop-motion production to reproduce the famous bullet-dodge scene from the Matrix, just in time for its ten year anniversary.

We went to great lengths to match camera angles, lighting conditions, continuity errors, focal depths and so on, but obviously we had to work within the limitations of point and shoot cameras and the Lego medium. Not having any knees or elbows on the minifigs can make it tricky to reproduce the actor’s movements, but we tried our best.

For extensive behind the scenes info, click here.

Students at DePaul University’s College of Computing & Digital Media in Chicago have developed an original game to compete in the Independent Games Festival. What makes the game unique is its visual delivery, or lack there of. It is a first person exploration game where the main character can only make out his or her surroundings by viewing sound waves emitted by a tuning fork.

As a mysterious epidemic causes children everywhere to fall into comas, one child wakes up in an alternate reality. It is up to this child, the player, to determine the cause of the epidemic and save the other children trapped here. By way of the devil’s tuning fork, a magical instrument that allows the player to perceive sound waves, the player must find all the children and successfully escape this alternate reality, thereby waking up from the coma.

The development team and their concept art can be view here.

What starts off looking like a student’s film project quickly turns into a full on, in-your-face graphics fest, that builds gradually more amazing over the five minutes. What is particularly clever is its ability to tell a story without any dialogue, with what essentially is a series of cut scenes of action.

The choice of shots is what gives a sense of order to the unfolding events – the boy at the start who feels the footsteps for the first time (00:20) – the tourist with her camera filming the invasion as it happens (01:32) – the news reporter standing less than 100m away from the action (01:45).

The guerrilla-style shaky-cam puts the audience right in the thick of the chaos, as if they are experiencing it in real-time. There is no coverage of rescuers, army generals or Government officials, but the arrival of fighter jets who engage with the enemy towards the end suggests that the world is watching and trying to stage a counter-attack.

The new extended trailer has been released for James Cameron’s Avatar, and this time there is more information on the plot and the characters. It seems that the humans are trying to mine a valuable mineral from the land of the indigenous race, and they have genetically engineered creatures that they can control remotely to infiltrate the local population. While doing so, a soldier starts to question his orders as he learns more about the culture of the aliens, and how it is being destroyed.

Disney are making Prince of Persia into a movie. The popular franchise is due to hit cinemas in late May, and by the looks of the trailer it will stick closely to the rich ancient colours, Arabian architecture and traditional clothing that featured in the game. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who brought us Pirates of the Caribbean, so expect more sword-tastic action, minus the Jack Sparrow.