Interview: Cstyle12

Today while I was writing my E3 Article, I had the chance to chat with WoW Machinima maker, Cstyle12. Cstyle’s Newest 2 hour long Machinima, Light’s Champion was shown by Nixxiom during a Live Stream yesterday afternoon.

Thanks for taking the time to Answer a few questions Cstyle. Me: Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Cstyle: Not really sure what there is to tell. My real name is Anton and I am a lifelong resident of Sweden. My history with World of Warcraft goes back 10-11 years, being 12 years old, creating a dwarven paladin (a character still active to this day) at the start of The Burning Crusade. I’ve played on and off since, but have always remained loyal to Alliance!

Me: What was your inspiration to create Light’s Champions?

Cstyle: My biggest inspiration was the most famous WoW machinima of all time, Tales of the Past by Martin Falch. Other than that, for several years have I wanted create a compelling story with memorable characters, but I’ve never really had a way to do it since I’ve never had any particular writing or animation skills. Considering my interest in WoW and the relative simplicity of the software needed, I figured a Machinima was a good and fitting way to tell such a story.

Me: How long did it take you and the rest of the Crew to make Light’s Champions?

Cstyle: I started on it in January 2015, so two years and five months ago. But I also stopped working on it for about four months in late 2015, and for the last three or four months there has been a lot of waiting for voice actors, which did give me a lot of time to make improvements and polish the film.

Me: What were some of the difficulties during the production?

Cstyle: There was nothing really difficult about it, there were some frustrating moments, mostly when the software I used randomly decided to crash or decided to do the complete opposite of what I wanted it to do. Other than that, several scenes were simple to create, but were very time-consuming, in particular the battle scenes where I had to add tons of soldiers to the background. But again, nothing was particularly difficult once I had learned the basics of all the software.

Me: What were some of the easier things to do during production?

Cstyle: Probably scenes where the characters just talk or just scenes in general where there wasn’t much going on. In that case I simply had to add the character to the scene, add shadows and color correction and start rendering.

Me: Are there any deleted scenes we’ll be able to see any time soon?

Cstyle: Very unlikely, 95% of scenes that got made are already in the movie.

Me: What was it like coming up with a story that needed to last 2 hours in a Machinima?

Cstyle: It was never planned to be two hours long from the start, that’s just how it ended up. I had the general gist of the story when I began, and I had several scenes in my head that I wanted to create, but what happened between those scenes was mostly made up as I went on.

Me: Any advice for any aspiring WoW Machinima makers?

Cstyle: Be prepared for it to take quite a long time, especially if you want to make it look as good as possible, even if it’s just 15 minutes or so it will likely take several weeks to finish, unless you work for like six hours per day. Though the time spent is all worth it when you finish it and see your work actually coming together. Also, learn the basics of the software before starting on your first video, unless you want to have to recreate a bunch of scenes.

Me: How is the feedback so far?

Cstyle: The feedback so far has been amazing. People seem to think that the characters are the strongest part of the movie, and the various references to WoW events have also been well received. I have received lots of constructive criticism as well which is more than welcome. Though I am not quite done with the marketing yet so we’ll see if this keeps up. Overall I am very pleased with the reception.

Me: Any funny stories that happened while making Light’s Champions?

Cstyle: Other than the countless times where my software crashed causing me to have to remake a ton of work from scratch which was frustrating as hell back then but is pretty funny now looking back at it? Here’s something I’ll tell you, the film was originally going to be split up into six episodes of 15-20 minutes each, but I decided against this eventually. The very first episode, i.e. the first 15 minutes of the film, was so atrociously bad that I ended up remaking it all, this took another two months or so. Those 15 minutes will never be seen by anyone but me.

Me: Can we expect a Blooper reel?

Cstyle: As said earlier, apart from the first 15 minutes, 95% of the scenes created are in the film. My voice actors never sent any lines that they weren’t happy with, so even if I wanted a blooper reel I wouldn’t have the material to create one.

Me: What kind of things can we look forward to from you in the future?

Cstyle: We’ll see if I create more!

I hope that we do see more coming from Cstyle in the near future. If you’d like to check out his newest Machinima, Light’s Champions, I’ll be posting a link just below the article. Make sure that you stay tuned and Follow Cstyle12’s Twitter account, @Cstyle12. Without further ado, I’ll post Light’s Champions below for your viewing pleasure.