Interview with X-Cross (Blizz Contest Winner) The Blizzcon is finished for a few weeks now and in the last years there was one thing that became something like a recurring institution: The Blizzard Machinima Contest. So this time Blizzard as usually invited ambitioned machinimators to subscribe to the contest. One of this machinimators is Adrian Drott, aka X-Cross, a 17 year old Swedish guy, who, in his own words, won surprisingly the contests’ Grand Prize. With his short-film “A day in the Life” he prevailed against well known artists like Cranius, Legs, Ian Beckmann or Oblivious Films and convinced the jury and the audience with his machinima. And withal the competition was not less creative than Adrian was, which you can compare by watching the other winning subscriptions like Don’t make me get my main from Cranius & Legs, Cruel Moon from Mike Spiff or Warrior’s Dream from Samuel Pierce. We were watching Adrian’s work since his first releases and were excited about it. So we took the winning of the Grand Prize as reason for an interview with him. In this interview he is talking about the way he was told about winning the prize, what he’s doing when not machinimating and his plans for the future. Additionally you’ll learn about what exactly was the prize, which new projects he’s planning and what kind of tips he can give Machinima-newbies. So did these topics tease you? Don’t miss the following interview article. Have fun with reading and in the meanwhile we are looking forward to upcoming releases of Adrian “X-Cross” Drott.
Varath: Hello X-Cross
Adrian: Hey
Varath: First of all. Could you please introduce yourself?
Adrian: Well, alright. My name is Adrian Drott, but I guess i'm more known as X-Cross. I live in Sweden and I'm 16 years old (17 within 2 weeks). I'm a machinima artists and I've done machinima for over a year now.
Varath: What are you doing when you're not machinimating? Do you have further hobbies?
Adrian: Of course. I also draw alot, I'm going in an art school also. Then I'm of course a gamer which I guess many machinima artists are. But also I use to hang out with friends and such things.
Varath: You go to an arts school? Are planning to do arts as a professional when you've finished school?
Adrian: Actually, that would be a bit hard. Many artists don't earn that much money. It all depends on how much the people like it. But I just want to improve my art skills. I can still get the same kind of job as anyone else (almost). I would really want to work within the film industry but it's also quite hard to get a good job for that too I suppose.
Varath: So you're planning to study something that stand stands in relation to media, film and arts?
Adrian: Yeah, since I started making machinima I felt like this is something I really want to do. It's very funny and you can use your imagination to almost create what ever you want. Of course art is also fun. But I feel like this is something that i'm good at for my age and it's really something I want to continue doing.
Varath: Let us com to your machinima artworks. You've won the Blizzard Machinima contest the other day. What was the feeling when you heard about this first?
Adrian: Well, I got the a mail from one of the voice actors the day after Blizzcon and I had no clue who won but I did not expect to win anything since I didn't recive any mail. My reaction was like.. I don't know, I didn't really understand that it was true. I mean there were so many other great machinima makers and I totally didn't expect myself to receive the grand prize.
Varath: Some of our readers might not know what the prize/reward was. Could you tell them please?
Adrian: Well, the reward was an Alienware laptop and Adobe After Effects CS4, Adobe Premier Pro CS4 and then also Adobe Photoshop CS4. But in my opinion the prize was just as great as getting the honor to have your own machinima shown amongst 20 thousand people live.
Varath: Yes that is really a great honor. Unfortunately you were not there right?
Adrian: No, I actually had the livestream to veiw at my computer. But they had to cut off the broadcast before they showed my machinima. So I have no idea how the reaction of the crowd was.
Varath: Well ok that's annonying. But back to your work. When you look the machinimas you released e.g. on warcraftmovies there one thing everyone could see. You have a constant and very fast improvement in you're movies. Above you said you are making machinima for about one year. Did you really improve your skills that much in only one year? How did you manage that?
Adrian: Well, yeah. I knew nothing at all about editing videos before I started. But I viewed alot of tutorials and as I got better it got more fun. And probably I decided to continue since alot of people liked my work. Even my first machinimas which were just horrible in my opinion.
Varath: You are also skilled as 3D artist. That's something not really wide spread in the machinima scene. Some people say that 3D editing is not machinima anymore. What's your opinion about this topic?
Adrian: Well, I’ve heard many opinions about what's machinima and what's not. I'm not really sure myself. I mean I don't really want to say anything about it before I'm 100% sure of the right answer. But of what I've heard, machinima is when you use a game engine to make a movie but when you use 3D it becomes hybrid machinima. I'm not sure what it is if you mix them but that's what I do most often. I think it's hard to put a limit to either if it's a machinima or not.
Varath: At the moment you can look back to an respectable number of machinima films. And you've worked together with some of the best known names in the scene. For example in your award winning machinima "A day in the Life" the voice acting was made by Jesse Cox who's e.g. known for his great performance in Tales of the Past III. How did you make him to do the voice acting for your contest entry? You've just send an email and said "Hey there I'm Adrian and I need your voice?
Adrian: Well, yeah. I got him voice acting for the a half year back ago for a Christmas machinima that I made. He said yes and since then I've been asking him for voice acting a few times, and he is always up for it.
Varath: You're a planning a new project for a few months right now? Could you tell our readers something about this project?
Adrian: Well, I've more like been working on a project for a few months. Sadly my working speed hasn’t been the greatest. However, it's going to be a machinima series about 5 gnomes who meet up as the story moves on. Also, all the gnomes will have "unique" classes or such classes gnomes actually can't be. It will be a action/comedy series and the first episode will probably be released quite soon.
Varath: Could you tell us who's doing the voice acting for your Gnomes?
Adrian: Well, Jesse Cox, Genna Bain, Robert Richard, Demachic and me as the main role. I didn't really want to voice act for him but since i've done it earlier it would be stupid to just change his voice. Varath: Some of our readers might be interested in doing machinimas for their own. As an exprienced artist do you have any tips for machinima starters?
Adrian: Well, my main advice is to start by planning a script. And if you're no good at writing you could ask someone else. Working as a team is always better. Then ofcourse, a good thing is not to start with your "dream project" because you might get disapointed with the results. Just mess around, watch many tutorials because they are often helpful.
Varath: Great. Thanks a lot for spending time on this interview. I'm sure our community will keep an eye on your past and future works. And good luck with your next projects of course. I'll give you a vote ;)
Adrian: Alright, thanks a lot for the interview! :)
While reading this interview, I noticed how much I said "Well" in the beginning of each sentence. Hah, anyway. I'd like to thank Varath for the interview once again, but now i'm gonna continue working on my machinimaa! :D
2 comments:
Yeah! Finally. Great to see the translated version here. Enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed making the interview. :)
:D Hah, yeah. Better late then never I guess.
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