Wall-E proved not only to be a great movie, but also an animator's dream. Although at first Wall-e seems limited without speech, it only further underlines the quality of the animator to bring such character and life to his movements.

Rather than host a whole review, I wanted to focus on one scene in the film (no spoilers) and hold it up as an example of what great animation can be. The scene appears at the beginning of the movie after Wall-E has returned home to his "truck." While we know that he is the last robot, nothing drives this home quieter and harder than when he tucks himself into a box and we realize that he fits perfectly into the rotating square shelves. For several minutes as he goes through his nightly routine, those very shelves are littered with items he has collected and most viewers thought nothing of them. When we realize that they were once designed to hold several dozen Wall-E units the meaning is profound. After that quiet revelation, it is hard not to be moved as he rocks himself to sleep.

I recommend this movie to anyone who has not seen it for two reasons. 1. it is a good movie, and 2. it is perfectly crafted storytelling and is full of scenes like the one above. Pixar deserves the crown it wears as the best animation studio around for their tireless dedication to meaningful storytelling and quality animation. As an animator, I am nothing but moved.

- - -

With that said, I have been fighting with myself about Maple Story 3. As I have droned on about before, I really want to get over this phase of relying on MS or SW and make more original films, but I've struggled with whether I should even spend time finishing the film. After a couple weeks full of non-animating duties, I've decided against releasing the film in its "unfinished" form, and am going to try and finish it before the end of July. Thank Wall-E in part, I always find myself refreshed after watching a great animated movie.

Have you ever wondered what your life is worth? I mean, you can calculate how much it costs in gas to drive back and forth to work, and how much the "man" pays you per hour - but have you ever wondered what your life is REALLY worth?

(note: EMO dudes, please take one big step back... I am so not asking it in a death/suicide kind of way)

To cut to the chase, I've finally dumped a bad little habit of mine. As of this afternoon I have gone cold turkey in a stone-cold kind of way. First stop, Ebay where I unloaded nearly 27 packages worth of PS1, PS2 and old PC games. Stop 2, my local used bookstore slash "den of liberalism and pot smell" where I traded in a pile of DVDs, a handful of PS2 games that were worthless on Ebay, and my PS2 and Gamecube (which were worth more there than at sucky EB Games).

Stop 3 was the hardest. I logged onto World of Warcraft and liquidated the entire inventories of my two characters that I have been playing for a little around 4 months and gave all the gold away to random strangers who passed me by. I thought this would be the easiest step, but for some reason, most people thought I was joking...

All in all- at the end of the night I had liquidated nearly 8 years of videogaming from my life. Now, this wasn't the first time I'd done this. Several years ago, my obsessive habit of keeping all my Transformers, GI Joes and other 80's toys in mint condition with all the original packaging netted me nearly $3K on Ebay and paid for the renovations to my first house. Today however, I considered this not only a spring cleaning of my collection, but also of my mind. You see, I just felt it was time to move on. Warcraft really showed this to me. For anyone who says that it is addicting and life ruining, they are completely correct! But before anyone says anything, NO, I did not get into a martial-brawl, or lose night of sleep, I just wasted hours of time that I could have been putting to better use.

Truth known, I have been wasting the last few years of my life doing things that net no rewards. Videogaming has a place, and I still own my DS (which is surpisingly fun) and I dont regret a minute of what I have done. I just feel it is time to move on, and I have made a promise to myself to spend more time improving my art, and working out at the gym. (two things that have fallen to crap over the last year.) SO WHY DO I POST THIS HERE? For one, I find it funny. Second, I hope it may also fall upon like ears.

So for anyone who wants to know what their life (or at least their obsessive videogame playing aspect of it) might be worth, it was $936.31 and 65 World of Warcraft gold pieces.

Now onto bigger and better things =)

SHIT! I've gotten all whiney and mopey again! ARG! BTW, ignore what I said... =)

After a few days mucking about with World of Warcraft I really got interested in an film technique known as 'machinama.' After a few days I got to experimenting with importing 3D animations from the game into flash. I ran into some real problems keeping the file size reasonable, but I believe the experiment is still enjoyable.

While it is far from my best film, I still think it is worth a watch even for those who are not WoW fans. For animation purists, this is really just an experiment, and I have plenty of better things planned for the near future, so check this out, let me know what you think, and keep an eye on the horizon for my next few projects.

"Warcraft: Teh Truble Wit Bunnys"

Just a quick update. I'm dedicating myself to a new flash game in the vein of "Adeshra Character Creator." I hesitate to call it a dress-up game, but it features a boy and a girl, 21 outfits each based on famous cartoon and videogame characters from the last 20 years. The player will need to match all the costumes to unlock special content. I'm also thinking about adding a stopwatch to the game to see how fast some people can be. Consider this game 1/2 cosplay, 1/2 fan-art. Expect it to drop here by the end of March/April.

However, keeping me from working 100% on that game, I've decided to dedicate myself to Warcraft for a while. NOTE!! I have no intention of being a hardcore player, but if you want to say hi or lend me a +1 stone of awsomeness, drop me a line.

I am currently a lvl 14 Tauren Druid named "Poem" on the Nazjatar server.

Here is a few unfinished costumes for the game.

If you've ever met me in real-life, I'm not a really nice guy. Short, ugly and unpopular, I've had to fight for any attention I've ever got (good or bad,) which is probably why I come off a bit arrogant and know-it-all.

I've had a bit of a personal wake-up call and I thought I would take a moment to apologize. First, I've been a bit harsh in my last few posts of Newgrounds. I realize now that in the grand scale of Newgrounds, my 5 films can't hold a candle to many of the fine filmmakers who grace these portals. To be fair, I want to be a great artist and make films with quality and substance- but all I've been able to do is irk out a few weak parodies. I don't even like MapleStory... (I'm sorry if you do)

I am sometimes upset that the only way people know me is for my weak films. They represent a period of time when I attempted too make films for an audience that I thought existed. I have learned now that Newgrounds is a very honest, fair, and diverse place who deserve more than violence and videogame parodies. I am upset with myself that my most popular films like Slowloft2 supports that unfairly placed "violence-culture" more than it parodies it.

If you've made it this far, I thank you. I take my real fans for granted sometimes, but you really do keep me going. My hope for this new year is to make films that best represent me as a caring person, and an original artist. I've set a goal for myself to create a new film like this by March. I hope by then, most of you can forgive me. Thank you, and I won't let you down!

Here was the challenge: play as many trial period or free MMO games as possible in one weekend. Why? Because I had a rare free weekend, & I wanted to research the available MMO games for inspiration for my next series. The results? 7 games - and 48 wasted hours...

To be fair, I had already played World of Warcraft the free 14 days the two weeks before. Before this however, the only MMO I'd played was Maple Story back at the beginning of the year. Basically what I found out was that most MMOs suffer from the same 2 problems: bad interface and repetative tasks. While the later needs no explaination, interface basically means "how natural is the game to play?" This means: are the controls well mapped out, are the systems easy to navigate, and are the goals clear to understand. Anyway, check out my list and let me know if you agree.

the 133T
WoW - by far the best looking game with beautiful characters and landscapes. Easy to play.
Maple Story - cute graphics, really easy to play, very repetative with a dull leveling system

the MEH
Final Fanasy XI - ok graphics, horrible controls, very hard to find goals and know how to beat them
Fiesta Online - free to play, nice graphics, bad camera, still very young so there isnt much there yet

the POOR
EVE - complain if you want, but this was boring and damned difficult. I want Privateer Online!
Second Life - nice idea, but it really isnt a game.
Star Wars Online - the force left this one a long long time ago...

So what was the point of all of this? Well, I learned a lot about different MMOs. What makes them good, bad, and different. I'm hoping to use those ideas in upcomming films. And for those who wonder, NO, I don't have way too much free time. In fact, I did this because I was ignoring a pile of it.

Ok to sum things up, I felt like the only nerd who had yet to play Warcraft, so I picked myself up a free trial and got down to some serious MMORPG research.

I started playing with a human warrior, but to me the warrior class felt way too underpowered to give up magic, so I started over with a Tauren druid. WOW! Not only was the druid a great balance of attack and healing magic, but I have really fallen in love with the Tauren race. Where the human world was rather dull and boring, the Tauren world is bright and colorful and I love the native american inspired lore and design. If anything, the only thing I sacrificed by switching races is that far less people Horde making the game feel empty.

I doubt I am going to cover more than 1% of the game before my free trial runs out, but I am impressed with the overall design. The landscapes are lush and colorful, the characters fun, and I am still amazed at how huge the world is! Although the game suffers from the "walk here, kill 50 of these" repetition, it has really given me great ideas to incorporate into my next MMORPG inspired film. I'm recording voices now, and expect some new news when I get some time off around Christmas.

I'm not going to post my name or server seeing as I am not going to play past the trial, but I'd love it if you'd share your thoughts and feelings about WoW.

http://youtube.com/CirrusEpix

I'm currently in the process of uploading my films to YouTube. Outside "Ganesha and the Mango," there is nothing new to speak of that you haven't seen here, but please spread the love and go give my films a few pageviews and 5 star votes to jumpstart my account.

As for news, I am currently working on two new films. Below you will find an image showing a few characters from "World of Arcane: Heroes!" or W.O.A.H!, my new parody on online games. These three are virus bots (thus the similarity)

(I need some help on my next film: details below...)

Ok, so most of you know me as CirrusEpix: animator. However, for 600+ elementary students I am better known as Mr. Schmoyer: Art Teacher.

While I never foresaw myself knee deep in nose dripping kindergarteners when I graduated college, fate has been kind to me and after three years, I have come to enjoy the enthusiasm and perspective young children offer. But, why did I feel the need to tell you this?

1. I'm not some pre-teen hidding in my room making flash films while mom makes dinner. For those who ask me for more films, know that I must balance time between film making, and real life.
2. Working with young children has offered me a real understanding of a lot of issues that I feel apply here at Newgrounds.

In my last post, I questioned the role of the staff in the moral direction of Newgrounds and I got some great answers from both sides of the discussion. I asked the question because, as a teacher, I get to see how changes in the world effect young children, and there is little doubt left that for better or for worse - the next generation of Americans are exposed to more via TV and internet, are angrier, and are more confused than ever before. I see this online not only in the films posted here on this site, but also in forums and MMOs across the net. You don't need to spend more than 5 minutes playing Halo online to realize that there is an immaturity pervasive in youth culture.

Rather than complain about it, I've decided to create a film about it. It's still taking shape in my head, but I want to create a documentary focusing on "youth behavior on the internet" and I am looking for volunteers from the Newgrounds community willing to create small documentary style segments either arguing against or defending personal experiences online. Ideas could range from weird messages you've gotten to experiences in games such as WoW.

If you are interested, message me and we can talk out the details. Thanks!

BTW. check out a painting I did as an example of a 5th grade self portrait lesson

I am sad...

For a long time I have been able to overlook the immature, sexist and overly violent environment here at Newgrounds because all of my complaints came from USER created content. Tom has created a wonderful resource here able to share films for free with millions of viewers world-wide, and for that I have been grateful. However, in recent months there have been several events that have alarmed even me.

From art contests featuring chest bursting cocks, to the memorializing of the overly violent Pico and Madness series, and the staff created Tankmen series that features more swearing than most rap records, I have been shaken. However, it was this weeks Breast Cancer Awareness month tag: "we love your boobs" that shook me the most.

I shouldn't be the one to talk. I DID create Slowloft 2. But as I was, I kept asking myself "what would the people at Newgrounds like?" In turn, I felt that I stepped beyond my own ethical line and made something that I doubt I would have on my own. Although it is my most popular film on Newgrounds, it stands as my least favorite film. I wonder if the same effect has taken over the staff as well?

I do not envy the job of the staff. Running Newgrounds must be a nightmare. "Everything by Everyone" is a bit utopian but I am a realist, in a free environment filth will happen. I guess however, that I had expected the more mature staff to stand as better moral pillars and help set an example by highlighting the better qualities on NGs, and not the worse.

Tom, Jeff - don't want this to sound wrong. I appreciate what you do. I'm just worried

Thanks for creating these forums so that I could post how I feel.