What is South Park Reloaded?

The South Park Matrix Reloaded is a video that I created due to my love of both South Park, and the most excellent Matrix movies. I started the project back in mid July of 2003, and work proceeded at a great pace. However, school began in September, and I was forced to halt production. I did a little work here and there, but nothing major until spring break of 2004. After this, production really sped up, and I was able to completely finish all the scenes by the beginning of April. I then simply added the credits and the opening screens, and voila! The entire video is a remake of the Matrix: Reloaded preview that I was able to download from the official Matrix site. The official preview was a 100MB Quicktime movie file, and I used it as the basis for South Park: Reloaded. I faithfully recreated EVERY scene from the preview, except for two quick scenes at the end which were changed because I wanted to show Kenny dead, and a quick shot of Professor Chaos.

IMPORTANT: LEGAL DISCLAIMER

It is important to note that I claim no copyright or trademark on ANY ASPECT of this video. While the scenes themselves were animated and slapped together by me, they are EXACT COPIES of the scenes in the Matrix: Reloaded preview. I attempted to recreate every scene as faithfully as possible, and therefore I claim none of the characters/choreography/audio etc. in this video as my own. This video would not exist if it were not for all the hard work of everyone at each of the respective companies below. They are the ones that deserve the real credit for this video, because if it were not for their diligent work on the Matrix Trilogy and South Park, this video would never have come to exist. All items are copyrighted/trademarked by their respective owners:

Warner Brothers Pictures - http://www.warnerbros.com

Village Roadshow Pictures - http://villageroadshowpictures.com

Comedy Central - http://www.comedycentral.com

Maverick Record Label - http://www.maverick.com

Why did you create South Park Reloaded?

As a loyal watcher of South Park, and as ahuge fan of the Matrix Trilogy, I realized that mixing the two would be a great idea. I one day stumbled upon the South Park Matrix video done by the guys over at Planet Terror, and realized that I could do the same thing, only for Reloaded. My aim was to not only stay true to the scenes in the movie, but to make 3D world as true to the South Park style of animation as possible. That's why you'll see the characters talk and move just like they do in South Park.

Did anyone help you create it?

As you can see from the credits on the video, a friend of mine named James helped me with a few suggestions as to what characters to use where, and my girlfriend helped a lot with quality assurance. Other than this, I created everything else from scratch, using free textures that I found online.

Which programs did you use to create the preview?

As far as 3D animation goes, I simply used Caligari's trueSpace 4.2. This program is a few years old, but it is VERY powerful, as you can undoubtedly see from the animation. Every single scene in the movie was done in this program, even right down to the credits, for which I painted a texture on a plane and animated a camera over it. For video editing, I used Adobe Premiere 6.5, which is an incredibly powerful video editing program. It allowed me to cut, crop, transition, and compile every single scene together. All the fade and zoom effects that you see in the video were performed with Premiere. I also used VirtuaDub 1.5.10 to view individual key frames when I was troubleshooting a few segments. VirtuaDub is great for frame-by-frame analysis of any movie, plus it's video conversions are FAST. To convert to a WMV file, I used the regular Windows Movie Maker that comes pre-installed on most Windows XP installations.

How long did it take to create?

Well, I started the project back in mid-July of 2003, and I never anticipated it to take so long. Between my senior year as a computer engineering student and my 25-hr a week part time job, I barely had any free time to devote to the project. I did a few scenes here and there, but all the major work was accomplished in July and August of 2003 and April and May of 2004.

Why did you encode the movie in that crappy WMV format instead of [insert your favorite format here]?

I was originally going to provide the movie in DiVX encoded format. I realized however, that there are many different versions of DiVX out there and I've had situations when I downloaded an AVI compressed with DiVX and I have problems running it. Also, I realized that many people that come to this site might not even have DiVX installed, which would prevent them from seeing the video. Since I figure the majority of visitors to this site will have Windows, I chose to go with WMV. I noticed after the fact that the compression in WMV isn't too bad, it's comparable to DiVX.

Do you plan to do South Park Revolutions?

As of right now, I have no plans to create South Park: Revolutions. It's not that I wouldn't want to, it's simply that I do not have the time. I am working as a software engineer 40 hours a week, as well as doing many other things on the side. I do not want to start a project only to delay it indefinitely and maybe never even complete it.

Are there other versions of SouthPark: Reloaded out there?

Actually yes there are! When I was 90% done with the animation and video editing, I came across the website of the original makers of the first South Park Matrix animation (LATRIX). It turns out that they were working on their own version of South Park: Reloaded. When I completed it, I showed my version to them and they liked the fact that more than one person was doing the same thing. I recommend you check out their video too, run a google search for "Latrix Reloaded".

South Park Reloaded: The Video

The South Park: Reloaded video itself is available in two versions - a 34.7 MB higher resolution version and a 13.5 MB lower resolution version. It is highly recommended that you download the high quality version over the lower quality version for an improved viewing experience. However, if you are on a slower connection, you might want to consider the smaller one.

13.5 MB zip	34.7 MB zip

Info

This animation is featured on the Caligari website, where it won Runner Up for the month of April 2004. Check it out here:http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/Animations/2004/apr/default.asp?Cate=GAnimations. I have since been notified by Caligari that South Park: Reloaded has been so popular that they have had to limit people's access to the file, because in the first three days, over 10,000 downloads ocurred! They say that the downloads continue at a record pace, so to attempt to slow it down a little they may require your email address before you can download!

South Park Reloaded 62 kB The South Park Reloaded logo, on a black background.

Chef 109 kB Chef lookin mighty pissed.

It's Him 160 kB The three agents that knock open the door, and proceed to get their asses kicked by Neo.

Me, me, me..... 132 kB Agent Smith (Cartman), making an extra copy of himself.

Duo 121 kB Wendy and Neo on a black background.

Flying 126 kB Neo flying through the city streets.

Jada 303 kB Jada Pinkett (her South Park incarnation of course), lookin' like a badass after kicking a security gaurd's ass.

Bullets 155 kB Neo stopping bullets in mid air.

Ouch 129 kB An agent getting knocked back into a wall by Neo (note the motion blur on this frame).

OMGTKK! 239 kB OH MY GOD, THE MATRIX KILLED KENNY! (Those bastards!)

Professor Chaos 244 kB Seraph (Professor Chaos), bustin' a move.

Dodge 268 kB The Merovingian's thugs shooting at Neo.