Posts with tag IanBeckman

Ian Beckman, a popular WoW machinimator otherwise known as UncleTom, is very close to winning himself a brand new computer. GameRiot issued a call for filmmakers to insert the industrial-strength gaming PC, the HP Blackbird, into their favorite game. The winning entry will receive a machine that's supposedly worth $8,000 USD! His entry, Serious Business, was highlighted on WoW Moviewatch last week.

Ian is known for the European Machinima Fest nominated, Azerothian Super Villains - Episode 3, among other things. He is currently in the lead position, but to ensure our love, he has provided us with an Ask a Ninja spoof, Ask an Assassin. Voting ends on December 27th, at 10pm EST, so vote for Serious Business while you can!

Lots of good news recently on the WoW Machinima front -- both for fans and artists. First, we had Blizzard's recent "open letter" to the machinimators of Warcraft letting them know just what they can and can't get away with. In that, they also offered a contact to the artists on how to get more information if the letter wasn't good enough to codify things. Follow that with some fabulous new machinima out recently from Oxhorn, Baron Soosdon, and many others.

And then we see on the Machinima for Dummies blog, and in a great tip mail from Hugh, that Machinima Europe has announced their nominees for this year. Among the many entries from all across the world are a few solid entries from WoW! In the "Best Commercial/Game" category, we have 4 commercials for MtvU by Oxhorn. Later down the page we see that Oxhorn has received another nomination for yet another machinima -- Hark! Hear the Wails in the "Best Sound" category. Further down we see the third and final WoW nomination into this years' Machinima Europe awards, Azerothian Super Villains (Episode 3) by Ian Beckman. Hopefully they both will come away with awards and even more recognition for their fabulous creativity.

Best of luck to all of the nominees this year, but especially to our WoW machinimators -- without whom, WoW Moviewatch (and many lunch-hour viewings) wouldn't be possible.

[Thanks, Hugh!]

That's the World of Warcraft that You Play. Guards. The University of Stormwind. Azerothian Supervillians. Some of the best and most popular WoW machinima has come from the mind of one man: Ian Beckman. I met Ian at the WoW Insider meetup during BlizzCon last month, and just recently, we got together to do an interview about how he makes his movies, whether machinima has made the mainstream or not, and what's next, both for Azerothian Supervillians (Episode 4 coming soon), and a "crazy project" that he says will "blow everyone's pants off."

The interview starts right after the jump. Thanks very much to Ian for sitting down with us.

BlizzCon begins tomorrow, and with it comes the world premiere of Azerothian Supervillains Episode 3! Ian Beckman has crafted it as his entry in the X-Fire Video contest they'll be holding there. Hopefully Episode 3 will be available to those of us who can't attend BlizzCon in person tomorrow too. If you are attending though, be sure to find Ian there and tell him his movies are really funny!

While we wait for the real deal, I bring you two teaser trailers to whet your appetite.

(Click on the jump below for Teaser 2, or click the following links for Azerothian Supervillains Episode 1 and Episode 2).

Ian Beckman has done a wide variety of WoW machinima, whether spoofing our favorite super villains (twice), mimicking law enforcement reality shows, or rapping with the raid bosses. He also does commercial parodies from time to time, like this one based on an old Honda ad. It may be short, but it's quite adorable.

I found myself counting the number of faces I recognized from television or internet advertisements. I think one of the faces here, (number 6) might even be Lozareth, author of the "Discord Mods" addons that used to be quite popular. His site forums avatar is no longer his own picture, though, so I could be wrong on that. I'd mention more of the recognizable faces, but I don't want to take away your chance: which ones can you call out?

Previously on Moviewatch...