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WHERE ON THE WEB

Play. Cut. Create.

Cartoons adapted from video games are the latest online art form.

Some video games include a recording mode to capture and replay impressive battle maneuvers, a capability some players have used to create their own animated shorts. Sitting at a PC, it's possible to record dialogue that can be played over the characters' actions, creating in minutes something that would take hours by hand.

The resulting cartoons are known as machinima (muh-SHEEN-uh-muh). Its profile is rising: MTV2's "Video Mods" features machinima music videos, including a "Sims 2" clone of the Fountains of Wayne hit "Stacy's Mom." The Ottawa International Animation Festival added a machinima category this year, giving machinimators another venue besides the annual Machinima Film Festival in New York.

Those who can't make it to a festival can find most of the best machinima online. The art form's potential can be seen in the lyrical Anna, an enthralling short that matches the quality of traditional animation (machinima.com/films.php?id=525).

At its simplest, machinima is nothing more than a character walking and talking, as in the hilarious Red vs. Blue series (redvsblue.com), which uses the basic character models and environments of Halo to depict the misadventures of bored soldiers. Some machinimators "mod" a game to change its look, as in Ill Clan's "Lenny and Larry Lumberjack" comic shorts (illclan.com), which supplant "Quake II's" tunnels with diners and libraries. Ill Clan uses a puppeteering style of machinima: Actors manning a network of computers improvise dialogue while controlling their characters.

At this rate, machinima's next venue may be the Oscars.

-- Charles Herold