Posts with tag xcross

It's been a while since we've taken a fresh look at Xcross's Welcome to The Deadmines. If you're not familiar with Xcross, check out our interview with him. It's a great look into the mind of the creator.

I still chuckle whenever I hear "Stop! Hammer time!" I sometimes wonder how many of the new players entering The Deadmines for the first time really have a sense of the instance's history. Sure, the place has been updated. There was a time, though, when The Deadmines was the first crucible for Alliance groups. It could take the better part of a summer day to get all the way through it. This was obviously in the days before mass-pulling and AOE DPS-fests. But still, that's the image of The Deadmines that will always be locked in my head.

Xcross's homage to The Deadmines is still a favorite, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by emailing lisa (at) wow (dot) com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

You're bound to have seen the ebullient Welcome to the Deadmines here already, in WoW Moviewatch, spicing up a WoW Rookie article or linked in an enthusiastic reader comment. What you haven't had yet is the chance to meet its talented 17-year-old creator, Swedish machinimist X-Cross, a.k.a. Adrian Drott, or Tìnkle of EU Argent Dawn-A. We spoke with the young winner of Blizzard's World of Warcraft Movie Contest: Rise to Power to learn more about his creative process, his collaborators and where we might see him pop up in the future.

World of WarCrafts: Winner of Blizzard's Rise to Power contest -- and you've only just turned 17! How long have you been making machinima, Adrian?

X-Cross: I started with machinima in the early summer of 2008, and back then I was 15 years old. The first machinima I did was made together with my cousin and a friend of mine. It was a horrible WoW parody of Pokémon that for some reason a lot of people found quite entertaining and funny. After that, we decided to continue making the episodes but stopped after the third, since I wanted to go over to a bit more "serious" machinima making after all the great feedback.

The third European winner of the Rise to Power contest was Xcross, who submitted the comedic song and dance number Welcome to the Deadmines. The "story" of the video is fairly simple. A group of adventurers show up to the Deadmines to get their dungeon running happening. When they're just about ready to go, Van Cleef welcomes the adventures to his home with a little performance.

Xcross did some absolutely amazing work here. This video is just fantastic. The song is catchy and clever. It's very well performed, and includes all our favorite characters from the Deadmines. The graphics in the video are amazing. The choreography captures the flavor of this Monty Python-esque performance, spotlighting each performance with grace and aplomb.

My hat's off to Xcross. While I don't believe every video needs fancy graphics, Xcross has shown exactly how practiced machinimators can use their techniques to vastly enhance their films. The music was absolutely amazing. You can easily see why Welcome to the Deadmines was so well received.

As a last note, if some of the lyrics seem a little confusing, you should remember that we're all going to enjoy the Heroic Deadmines in Cataclysm.

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X-Cross has been building a new machinima series, titled FI5VE. As an author works on this kind of thing, there are myriads of outtakes. These aren't always mistakes. Some of the scenes they build, film, make all pretty, and then simply decide that the final product doesn't work our for them. This deleted opening is exactly such an out take. X-Cross ultimately decided that it was too long to open each episode.

But it's still an awesome piece of video. FI5VE is about five gnomes with unique, special powers. Well, unique and special to gnomes. The five superheroes have managed to become the five classes gnomes cannot be in game. (Those five classes are Priest, Paladin, Druid, Shaman, and Hunter.)

This sounds like a really cool project, so I was excited about this deleted opening. The animation and character work looks really great. X-Cross has managed to squeeze a lot of personality into these few seconds. And, of course, getting to see a gnome turn into a druid cat has long been a wish of mine.

Click here to check out FI5VE's deleted opening!