Not Sims

November 27, 2010 11:31 AM

Since its viral reenactment of the Tiger Woods story a year ago, Taiwan's Next Media Animation has been churning out 11 minutes of surprisingly lifelike news animation a day, sparking a feud with Conan and garnering lots of social media attention.

You've probably seen Steven Slater slide or the US-Sino Currency Rap Battle (previously), but may not have seen more recent material on Black Friday, Wacky Sarah Palin, Colorful Christine or on how TSA scanners work.

posted by l33tpolicywonk (16 comments total)

Hooray, a well researched NMA post! Thank you. One extra link, I got from 7-7: Wired Magazine's profile Taiwan Tabloid Sensation Next Media Re-Creates the News. It has a lot of great background on the business, including that more than $30m has been invested in NMA.
posted by Nelson at 11:43 AM on November 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

Wow, NWA.tv's response to Conan is hilarious.
posted by ShawnStruck at 11:49 AM on November 27, 2010 [3 favorites]

Great post! Yeah, I'm the blogger over at CONAN, and we all thought what they did was awesome!! I really hope we continue the feud... But it took us a lot longer for us to make that animation than it took for them to make it, so I'm not sure if we can keep up. ;)
posted by V4V at 12:03 PM on November 27, 2010 [16 favorites]

Holy crap, they know more about what is going on in the US than I do.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:13 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think that Pixar needs to buy these guys, and then let Dreamworks ruin them by having them smirk on all their posters.
posted by ClassyHands at 12:17 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Is life real?
posted by Xurando at 12:53 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was quite pleased to see a fictional NMA video show up in an episode of The Good Wife a couple weeks ago. They must have gotten the actual NMA people to do it because it looked just like all the others, but it depicted the fictional characters' scandal. (On a side note, I thought the show was quit good in its first season but they have really started firing on all cylinders now in s2 and it's gone from good to fantastic with all the new interweaving story arcs.)
posted by Rhomboid at 1:14 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hehe, I was introduced to these folks last month via this Daily Show clip

"It went so well, the President had hearts flying out of his back."
posted by chaff at 1:43 PM on November 27, 2010

It is amazing that "spank the monkey" seems to be a term in Chinese as well as English.
posted by CCBC at 1:55 PM on November 27, 2010

"NMA.tv lawyers have filed paperwork to seize Conan’s blimp as payment for the IPR violations. We will also accept as payment Andy Richter, who would make a nice addition to the Taipei Zoo."
posted by kisch mokusch at 2:25 PM on November 27, 2010 [4 favorites]

This is hilarious and I love it but oh my god viewing a 30-second ad before every 60-second Conan clip is crazy annoying. Does anyone know of any AdBlock rules I can add? Because this is clearly why AdBlock exists.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 6:02 PM on November 27, 2010

They need to work to minimize the underwater effect.
posted by bz at 7:06 PM on November 27, 2010

Forgot to note this when I noticed, midas well share now.
"secret liberal Cabal: Meeting tomorrow". -Jon Stewart Secret Liberal ipod App.
posted by infinite intimation at 8:16 PM on November 27, 2010

Next Media's actually a Hong Kong company, though the animations do seem to be out of the Taiwan subsidiary.

Brilliant stuff either way, and the feud with Conan makes it all the more surreal and funny.
posted by jiawen at 10:53 PM on November 27, 2010

They do look like really good machinima, don't they?
posted by NoraReed at 12:19 AM on November 28, 2010

Does anyone know of any AdBlock rules I can add?

I use AdBlock and didn't see any ads. They were blocked by the default rules, I didn't have to add anything. Maybe try a different filter list subscription? If you want to manually add rules then I'd suggest 'tbs.com/resources/cnn_adspaces' and 'cdn.turner.com/xslo/cvp/ads/' would be good choices.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:20 AM on November 28, 2010