 AsiaFinest's
Interview with Proxicide
Proxicide is the creator of the popular MK vs SF flash videos. This in-depth
interview was conducted by Ben Li on December 21st, 2005.
 Ben:
Hi Proxicide, Thanks for taking taking time out of your schedule to do
this interview. Can you give us a quick bio on yourself?
Proxicide:Thanks for the interview.
The pleasure is all mine. Well, let's see...I'm 24 yrs old and was originally
born in Seoul, South Korea. I'm currently living in the United States
and attending school here. I haven't worked a day in my life yet (and
I'm 24!), but rather, I've been spending all my time studying programming
and design. Hopefully, I'll get off my lazy butt and do something productive
with my life. As far as hobbies go, I enjoy Photoshop, Flash, and Maya.
Ben: There are many game cross over
videos online. Your flash video is on a way higher level in terms of quality.
How long have you working with flash/animation to create videos this good?
Proxicide:About 2 years ago, I started
watching Flash crossover movies and was very interested in the concept
of it. The idea of intermixing videogame characters, and putting them
into creative, perhaps surreal, situations was very intriguing to me.
So a few months afterwards, I started learning the Flash development environment
myself, so that someday, I would be able to create a crossover movie of
my own. I initially used my knowledge of Flash to create small visual
'widgets' that would compliment website designs, but I wanted to work
on a larger, more interesting project, that would help me explore the
many facets of Flash development. And so, my first serious project was
the sprite crossover movie that I always wanted to do, and in May '05,
I created MK vs SF.
Ben: What made you decide to do a
cross over on Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter?
Proxicide:When I was growing up, SF
and MK were the two fighting game I played most often. Of course, I played
others, like Killer Instinct, Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear, etc., but the
combo system and visual styles of SF and MK appealed to me more. Also,
they were the most popular games being played when I was growing up (in
America), so, as a person who 'hops on the bandwagon,' I went along with
everyone else and invested all my time playing these two.
When I first watched Flash crossover movies, the one movie that really
intrigued me was the Ryu vs Scorpion crossover, by Dustin_a31. Watching
the movie fueled my desire in, not only creating a crossover flash, but
specifically, an MK vs SF crossover. Because MK and SF are popular games,
I knew there wouldn't be much difficulty in gathering whatever resources
I needed (sprites/sounds/effects) from the Internet to create a decent
looking battle. Although doing this wasn't as easy as I initially thought,
I was fortunate enough to find what I needed to produce the movie. And
so, with all the resources at my disposal, and possessing a rudimentary
knowledge of Flash, I started work on the MK vs SF crossover.
Ben: How long did it take for you
to create the first and second MK vs SF videos. I'm assuming the 2nd one
took a lot longer right?
Proxicide:Creating the first movie
took approximately 2 weeks. It was my first serious flash project at the
time, so I wasn't sure how the end result would turn out, since I was
still learning many of the fundamental aspects of movie development in
flash. This pretty much entails scene creation, frame-by-frame sprite
animation, incorporation of music, sound synchronization, and adapting
myself to Flash's actionscripting environment, all of which I knew little
or nothing about. I also had to deal with issues concerning the movie
itself, such as plot, settings, and choreography. I started working on
the battle sequence (which took the longest time to complete), and then
proceeded to do the prologue, then the ending, and finally, the interface.
Production for MK vs SF 1 began in early May '05, and was released later
that month.
Initially, after releasing the first movie, I never planned on producing
a sequel, but because it became quite popular, I decided to take a stab
at another one. Anyways, I regretted using Ken and Raiden, considering
Ryu and Scorpion are the overwhelming favorites from their respective
fan bases. And so, I started planning on what to do with a sequel during
the summer of '05. But shortly thereafter, I quited on this idea and focused
my attention on other projects (considering that sprite animation is too
time-consuming and boring). But in October '05, I went ahead and started
creating the sequel and finished in mid November. The order in which I
produced the movie was the same as the previous one (starting with the
battle sequence first). The production time was about thrice as long as
the first one. This was because I utilized newer techniques in making
the sprite animation flow more smoothly, as well as incorporating a better
camera-system, parallexing/animating the bg's, doubling the framerate,
eliminating redundant sprites, better emulating game physics, and using
a multi-tiered battle stage. All-in-all, it took me about 6 weeks to make
MK vs SF 2.
Ben: What made you decide to go with
the Ken, Ryu, Raiden, and Scorpion? Are they your favorite characters?
Proxicide:For MK vs SF 1, I initially
chose Ken for the SF side simply because he was my favorite character.
I almost always pick Shoto fighters when playing SF, and so my choices
really came down to Ken, Ryu, or Akuma, but because Ken is who I use the
most often, that's who I ultimately chose. For the MK side, the character
that I chose was more so random. Because I haven't played MK in several
years, I simply used whoever's sprites were available to me. I had all
of Raiden's sprites, or atleast enough to reproduce all his moves decently
without much choppiness, and so that's who I picked.
After reading much feedback to the first movie, there were many people
who wanted me to have used their favorite characters, as opposed to Ken
and Raiden. Also, there were people who were clamoring for a sequel, and
submitting who they would like to be in it. And so, for the next movie,
Ryu and Scorpion were chosen because that's what the fans wanted. They
didn't necessarily wanted them to battle against one another, but more
so, on an individual basis. Unfortunately, I couldn't get much Scorpion
sprites (probably only half of them), but I managed to convert Ermac/Sub-Zero/Reptile
sprites to complement the missing animations. Thank goodness for Midway's
recycled ninja look.
Ben: Which game series do you like
more? Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? Which game from Mortal Kombat and
Street Fighter do you think is the best out of their franchise?
Proxicide:Well, I easily favor Street
Fighter over Mortal Kombat simply because its a better game. The character
flow, visual style, combo system, and overall gameplay mechanics of SF
is head and shoulders above MK. This is why I continue to play SF3, and
quit MK several years ago. I think the main draw of MK is the gore aspect
of it, and that's just something I'm not really interested in (hence,
no blood splattering in my movies). My main interest in MK is the character
appeal the game has, but the engine itself seems lacking. I haven't played
the 3D incarnations of MK yet, so maybe they improved on it.
I never played the 3D versions of SF as well, so my judgement will lie
on the 2D versions. My favorite SF game is easily SF3. In every aspect,
its an improvement over SF2, and its a beautiful game to play, as well
as look at. As for the MK side, I'd have to pick MK Trilogy, simply because
it composites all the previous games into one. As far as the first 3 MK
games go, I enjoyed part 3 the most.
Ben: It seems like the fights usually
take place in the mortal kombat world. What went into your decision on
where the fight will take place, and the music that you selected to go
along with the fight scenes.
Proxicide:When I was producing MK
vs SF 1, I had to choose whether to use SF3 backgrounds or MK backgrounds.
Since many people are not familiar with SF3 (most grew up on SF2), and
I couldn't use the SF2 bg's because intermixing SF2 and SF3 gfx would
look odd, I opted to use the MK backgrounds. In deciding which MK bg to
use, not much thought went into it. Because I didn't create any sort of
storyline before creating the battle sequence, I initially chose whatever
looked nice, and the MK rooftop was what appealed to me at the time.
For MK vs SF 2, I stuck with using MK bg's again. I also realized that
MK's version of the announcer saying "Round 1 - Fight" was alot
more popular among the general public than SF3's version, and I couldn't
use SF2's version because it would appear out of place. For this reason,
I went with MK backgrounds. When first developing the fight sequence,
I initially planned on the story taking place at the same time as MK vs
SF 1 was happening. And so, I wanted the fight to be on the streets, and
have it proceed upwards to the roof where the ending to part 1 was happening.
And so, Ken would possibly join in on the fight. But I thought this would
be awkward, and so I abandoned the idea. I kept the rooftop stage as an
upper level for the fight to continue on. Then I decided to have the battle
spread throughout, not 2, but 3 stages, because watching a 3 minute battle
sequence on anything less would be monotonous. And so, a 3-level tiered
setup was developed, starting with the street level as the 'bottom' tier,
then proceeding to the roof, and finally, a sky stage. Later on in the
movie's development, I wanted to make Scorpion's Lair as the bottom stage
in a 4-stage scheme, but this would have delayed the movie's release by
another week or so, so I stuck with my original idea. I customized the
final 'sky' stage in Photoshop, since none of the existing MK stages convey
the 'celestial' feel I was looking for. All-in-all, I'm happy with the
way it turned out.
As for the music selection goes, not much thought went into it. As a Tekken
fan, I had the Tekken 5 OST on my hard drive, and I simply chose one of
the tracks to be the background music for the battle in MK vs SF 1. But
for MK vs SF 2, I intended the music to be a techno song, but after awhile
into development, I felt that the song didn't exactly fit with the mood
of desperation I was trying to convey. Therefore, I chose Pompeii as the
bg music, and I think it works quite well.
Interview continues on page 2.
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