Instead of taking the overly comedic kiddy route, this short cinematic went for professionalism and still made me laugh. I love how they tackled the star power item in stop motion animation. Made by a group of college students in thirteen nights of filming, this video is one of ten short films competing in a Harley Davidson contest at this year's UCSB Department of Film and Media Studies video project. If you enjoyed the invisible trip down Rainbow Road, take the time to vote for them here. You don't need to make an account or sign up for anything, it just takes one simple click to support some fellow gamers.

Nintendo must be sick and tired of all our amateur and unofficial Nintendo videos spreading like fireflowers online. If you've got any talent at making short films, then they're willing to premiere your mini movie at Rockefeller Center's annual Summer film showcase next month. The main rules are that it needs to be Nintendo themed and only three to five minutes long. Here are the prizes you could win: 

First Place winner:

   • Trip to New York City for the winner and a guest
   • Film screened at Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase at Rockefeller Center
   • $10,000 in cash
   • Exclusive meeting with Craig Hatkoff, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival
   • Wii & Wii software
   • Nintendo DS Lite & Nintendo DS software

Second and Third Place:
   • Film screened at Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase at Rockefeller Center
   • Wii & Wii software

7 Finalists will each receive:
   • Nintendo DS Lite & Nintendo DS software

Ten different winners? Damn, I might even give this a try, the majority of the entries will probably be middle schooler fanboys who can't work a camera. If any of you submit a video be sure to YouTube it up and share it with the rest of us. The submissions deadline is June 6th, and you can read the official rules here.

From now until June 15th, Electronic Arts will be holding an Army of Two weapon design contest:

To enter the contest, gamers will need to submit an image of their weapon and a brief 500-word description. Please click on the game website to see the official rules. Gamers can also access new gameplay screens on the site as well as see examples of customized weapons in the game. Once gamers submit their designs, the images will be posted on the site for the community to vote on. Come June 16, the top weapons will be reviewed by the development team who will then pick two lucky designs to be created and included in the game.

To enter the third person co-op shooter contest, submit your designs here. I was going to show you what the top rated entries were so far, but you have to be logged in to preview them up close, and their servers are currently being bogged down by brilliant bullet beasts like Curse'omatic 5000.

Want to help shape the future of Halo 3? It's not much, but Bungie is running a contest that lets gamers design Spartan emblems:

This is a skill-based Contest. The object of this Contest is to create an original emblem to be used as a decorative element for Spartan armor in the Xbox 360 game, Halo 3. For purpose of this Contest, each original emblem you create and submit in the Contest will be called an “entry.” All eligible entries received will be judged using the criteria in Paragraph 4, and the judges will select one person who will receive the prize described below.

There's about ten million different rules, but it's pretty simple - just make something cool using only two colors that they can legally include in the game, and you'll be seeing your creation in Halo 3.

Game Life found a contest Midway's running on Myspace with a $25,000 prize for whoever can submit the best video:

"Midway, developers of the upcoming John Woo-endorsed game Stranglehold, are offering up-and-coming young filmmakers the chance to win big money for putting together an homage to the celebrated action flick director. Entries must be no longer than two and a half minutes long, and will be judged on overall quality, creativity, and strength of the use of John Woo's signature techniques. The winner will get $25,000 and a film premiere on Spike TV."

Asking gamers to pick up guns and roll the camera might not work out so great, but if all goes well I'm sure at least a few of the entries will be entertaining. Starting on April 30th, you and your film friends can enter your videos here.

Major Nelson has an offer you can't refuse, but probably will. It's not my fault if you wake up to a severed Wii in your bed: "Got a great idea for a TV Show? How would you like $100k to produce your great idea AND have it digitally delivered over Xbox LIVE?" Ok Nelson, I'm intrigued, tell me more:

The “Xbox LIVE Originals” contest will invite a wide range of artists and Xbox users to create a 5 to 15-minute pilot episode introducing an original television series.  The pilots may be any genre (comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, etc.), and they may be live-action, animated or both.  All entries must be submitted before June 29th, 2007.  A selection of standout finalists will be featured exclusively on Xbox LIVE Marketplace starting in July.  The winner of the contest will receive a $100,000 deal with Xbox LIVE to create a six-episode series based on the short pilot as well as an exclusive screening event at the 2007 New York Television Festival.

That totally didn't rule out the porn genre, I'm going to enter this looping NSFW Tifa boob bounce and see how far it gets me. Xbox Live? More like Xbox Live Nudes, check out my NSFW neon sign submission below. Just drop the controller in your lap and Tifa will take care of the rest. That's what Sony gets for screwing around with rumble, say good bye to your gamer girls.

I bet I know what the first real submission actually was, it looks like those Project Put Gamers On TV guys might finally get the recognition they crave. Be warned though, it costs $25 just to enter. Although I can't blame them, I wouldn't want to watch countless clips of inside geek jokes either. If you're interested in giving this contest a try you can get the full details here. The Wii should do something like this, since, you know, it has channels . . and remotes. Yeah, work on that Nintendo.

Every year the Game Developers Conference holds a Game Design Challenge, where a few famous industry veterans are given a difficult design theme and challenged to make a whole game idea that revolves around it. This year's contestants were God of War developer David Jaffe, legendary Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, and Midway Games' Harvey Smith. What was this year's topic? A game that focuses on a needle and thread interface and gameplay. Pretty limiting, but it allowed them to explore mechanic ideas they normally wouldn't consider. They were told the theme back in January, and at the GDC they had ten minutes to present their ideas:

First up was the trash talking David Jaffe, who talked about a game that would use needles and thread to create paper airplanes and compete in competitions against others. Players would get to level up their stitching skill abilities and eventually stitch on weapons to improve their designs. Creative, but not the winner.

Next was Alexey Pajitnov, who presented a top-down game idea much like Mario Party's paint stamping mini-game. Two players stitch paths across a flat playing surface and try to cross over each other's lines to kill them. Since stitching involves visible thread and hidden thread below the cloth surface, it allows for strategic moves that your opponent can't see. Pretty boring though.

Last up was last year's winner Harvey Smith, who was determined to make the simple sewing game as advanced as possible. His idea was an RPG adventure about a little girl who fights evil with a magical sewing needle with help from her stuffed animal sidekick. The goal of "The Tailer's Daughter" is to save your father from the evil rulers (shown in the slideshow as Bush and Cheney), and the  the plot is an allegory of today's political problems. Gameplay involves a crazy special controller that would come with the game, and you'd use it to solve sewing puzzles and sew upgrades onto her stuffed animal to fight bosses.

Harvey's game was the most thought out of them all, and it actually sounded like a weird Psychonauts meets Katamari Damacy game that would probably be awesome but never sell well. Even though Harvey won last year and had the audience's love with his shots at Bush, Alexey still won by a landslide, mainly because he fucking invented Tetris. Maybe next year they'll find the guys who invented Pong and make it a fair fight.

A few weeks ago I found out that one of my friends online had been sitting on the domain name Wiitube.com and secretly setting it up for launch. I don't see Google buing them out any time soon, but it's still a great place to hit up on your Wii when you're bored, and now there's another incentive to stick around on his site. If you register for Wiitube, give your account an avatar, and upload at least one video to their site, then you might be the random winner of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Wii game giveaway. If you're up for giving your odds a try, you can sign up for their first giveaway here.

Since gamers are violent and sexual disasters and the Pope hates us, we might as well try to repent - a North American university television channel that reaches 700 campuses and 6 million students has plans to run a gaming competition called "Change the Course of HIV Challenge" with the goal of not just raising HIV/AIDS awareness in America, but also making an Internet AIDS game to get their point across - stop getting AIDS. Not up for ethics today? Well there's $5,000 prize involved to the winning idea - count me in!

What game would appeal to 15 to 24 year olds gamers the most? A naked woman playing Russian Roulette with a room full of dicks? Too many polys. A Magic Johnson basketball game where no ball is safe? EA already owns the rights. Ah, I've got it - Fetus Fighter! A game where an irresponsible mother gets pregnant at an early age with one minor fallopian twist in the plot - her newborn will get AIDS unless you save it. I could even make her have twins to make it two player as you gather up enough amino acids to escape a premature birth, while dodging Mommy's syphilis cells. That has Xbox Live Arcade written all over it. You think I'm joking, but give me one weekend to mess around with GameMaker and I'll see what I can do.

The mtvU television challenge is dedicating $75,000 to the project and the submissions deadline is March 16. They say that a person on Earth is infected with AIDS every 15 seconds, I'll give them a game with 15 diseases. Check back Monday for the demo download.

Final Fantasy XII still isn't out yet in Europe, and to celebrate its overseas launch, Square Enix is up to no good yet again. They'll be holding a cosplay contest that sends the top three FFXII cosplayers off to London for a two night trip to show off their costumes on the stage at the official launch event when the game releases on February 23rd. The competition ends at midnight on February 11th, so get your CosplayCraft skills on and try your hardest. I'm scared to ask, but do any readers actually partake in cosplay? The stigma is strong, I know, but I actually have a friend that does it without resorting to complete creepiness - if any readers send in their cosplay pictures I'll gladly post them on the site. But please don't kill anyone.

For official details on the cosplay contest, hit up Sqaure Enix's official announcement here (it's the PDF at the top of the list).