The Unified Theory of Art?

Have you ever heard the term 'walkabout'? Apparently it's Australian in origin, and was when an Aborigine guy would stop whatever he did for a living and wander around in the bush for an extended period of time.
Of course, I'm not about to say I just did that.
However last Friday, I decided to go back to London for the weekend. Rather than the usual preparations I grabbed some comic books (Hal Jordan Rebirth 1-6) and headed off. No burning stuff that I might need to continue working on onto CD, no taking my "Master book of CD's" with me in case somebody robbed the flat. I just left.
In the five days I spent at my parent's house, I went to the cinema to watch Star Wars Episode 3 (for a second time), Sin City, and The Cat Returns, and enjoyed a crap load of TV shows as my parents have Sky. While being amazed by Sin City I again couldn't help but imagine what it would have been like in Machinima form. For a good 5 days I was able to watch lots of creative films and TV shows without going back to my computer to continue work on Bouncers. It was like some holiday away from making films, in order to REALLY enjoy other films.
Beneath all the annoying moments in Machinima, from trying to coax certain tools into working, to bitching about why certain formats of this or that are so crap, it's way too easy to forget that beneath it all we're just trying to make something cool to watch. Complicated as the whole process may be at times, it's simple at it's core, and at least for me, is the realisation of a childhood dream to make movies(/cartoons). Watching other cool and inspiring films gave me the feeling I first had when I started Making Machinima (some 1 million years ago now). It reminded me what a privilege it is to be able to make something that other people find pleasure in watching.
To say that making Bouncers is an uphill struggle would be an understatement. It sometimes feels like we're a large production house with 30 employees assigned to this film, but 26 of them are ill, leaving four of us to do the work of all those men (or women, but they would prolly sue us all for sexual harassment anyway).
This is why I've always felt some resentment to Machinima projects that have had a budget. Theres nothing like seeing what comes of pure hard work and determination (as opposed to paying some professional to do you're editing, for example). That said, money in Machinima is definately not a bad thing.
While some (or possibly many) people will totally misunderstand Bouncers I can only hope that in the end, our hard work and determination shows through.